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Vertigo Dance Company
Vertigo Dance Company is a physical, personal meeting place for artists and audience. Using the language of contemporary dance, Vertigo takes the spectator to an unexpected poetic and challenging dance experience – a journey to the unknown.
Since 1992, when Noa Wertheim and Adi Sha’al founded Vertigo in Jerusalem, the company has won prestigious prizes both in Israel and abroad, as well as excellent reviews from critics and dance aficionados. The many invitations that have followed, to represent Israel in festivals throughout the world, have helped to make Vertigo an internationally recognized dance company.
Vertigo takes a great interest in the community, workshops and master classes are part of the company’s daily routine, along with evening performances in Israel and throughout the world. Performances and workshops for every community, including the disabled, out of the belief that the dance language of Vertigo, is unique yet universal and challenges the limits of the body.
Vertigo includes Vertigo Dance Company with its broad repertoire, and Vertigo Dance Workshop – a professional training program and a dance school.
Vertigo's Official Website
Biographies
Noa Wertheim
Dancer, Founder, General Manager & Co-artistic Director of Vertigo Dance Company
Born in 1965, Noa was raised in a religious home in Netanya, Israel. She started dancing in the dance studio of Esther Bash in Netanya and with Sara Yochai, but her religious education had prevented her from continuing. She completed three years of National Service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and served in the Development town of Yeroham in Israel’s south. Noa graduated in 1990 from the Rubin Academy of Music & Dance in Jerusalem. She performed with the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Company, where she met Adi Sha'al. Together they established Vertigo Dance Company in 1992. Noa has won many awards, among them the Cultural Ministry Award for Choreographers 98', and the Landau Performing Arts Prize, Israel 2003.
Partners in work and life, Noa and Adi have two children, Yehonatan and Nov.
Adi Sha’al
Dancer, Founder, General Manager & Co-artistic Director of Vertigo Dance Company
Adi was born in Haifa, Israel in 1966. His first stage experience was at the age of 17 when he joined a three month tour with the Friendship Caravan, a touring company of Israeli folk singing and dancing. Adi’s army service in the IDF began at the Israeli Air Force Aviation Academy, and ended four years later, as an officer in the Golani troops. Adi's first dance steps took place in the Emek Hayarden Studios. He studied with the Kibbutz Dance Workshop and danced with Bat Sheva Ensemble and the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Company where he met Noa Wertheim. Together they established the Vertigo Dance Company in 1992.
Birth of the Phoenix
A dance project about the Human-Environment Dialogue
Birth of the Phoenix arises as the mythological bird from the ashes, disappears after each performance, and is reborn anew at its next location. Vertigo Dance Company invites you to experience a performance outside the confines of the theater, within a geodesic dome, where audience and performers are exposed - as they were in ancient theater - to the beautiful and at times challenging visual, auditory and sensory stimuli of the surrounding environment.
Birth of the Phoenix is a dynamic site-specific creation, adapting to the qualities of each performance site, in response to the rhythm of the heart, Earth, time and the seasons. This production received its world Premiere at the Karmiel Dance Festival in 2004.
“…wholly based on experiencing nature… Birth of the Phoenix is a unique work, rich and evolving, which transpires just like sand flying through the enveloping space. An extraordinary experience…” Meirav Yudilevitch, Ynet
Birth of the Phoenix, The geodesic dome, humans and the environment
The geodesic dome, developed by American inventor, visionary and philosopher Buckminster Fuller (1893-1983), was designed based on broad thinking about issues of sustainability. It rises from the ground without foundations and is composed of triangles that create pentagons and hexagons. Its forms resonate with the basic geometry of the universe, from small molecular structures to the relationships between the stars.
The dome extends over the maximum possible space using the absolute minimal amount of material. It is very strong and easy to piece together, like children's Lego. All parts of the dome are taken from nature or are recycled. The dance takes place on loose soil, the chairs were bought used, and even the winter covering is made from biodegradable polymer. Like the original Phoenix that disappears, the dome disappears after each project, leaving not a trace behind.
| Birth of the Phoenix - Technical Rider |
White Noise
The collision between an inner sense of quiet, the body's complete surrender to gravity's pull and the noise surrounding us – this is the buzz that lurks inside us all. White Noise wishes to give in to the force of gravity and reconnect with the universe, with the life force that binds us to the earth, to people.
Vertigo Dance Company encourages recycling and asks that audience members bring to White Noise performances objects that have collected dust from disuse, which others may find desirable. What one doesn't need may be a treasure for someone else, and what that person doesn't need may just be your treasure. We all share the desire to give, and we all like to receive. "From Hand to Hand" is a barter market intended for all those who own something old that they would like to pass on, or to exchange for something else. Many of the products we purchase are thrown away, producing large piles of trash. The ecological benefits of the "From Hand to Hand" project are primary.
Recycling decreases consumption, lessens our reliance on the Earth's limited natural resources and reduces the amount of waste we produce. Did we ever stop to think that maybe someone may find use in what we intend to toss. Does someone else have something that I need and doesn't want? Must everything we buy be new?
“… The new work stays true to Wertheim's unique movement vocabulary and is accompanied by a remarkable score composed by the company's musical director Ran Bagno.” Ynet
White Noise official website
| white_noise_technical_rider.pdf |
Photo Credits (top to bottom):
Miri Yanai
Jason Harris
Gadi Dagon
