15/10/2018
Have you ever dreamed of being able to enjoy a dance show in the intimacy of your own living room where the barriers between the artists and the audience are broken down allowing room for a true dialogue?
"At your place"brings art in the comfort of your home
The main interest of this project lies in this proximity; the dancers’ breath, eyes, and sweat blending with the spectators. The viewers stay captivated, lost in the movements of the artists, suspended in time and space. Gazes meet across what feels like no distance at all.
Dancing in a small, intimate venue of a living room, in front of a small audience is a project born six years ago by Sergio Antonino and Avi Kaiser. These artists were looking for new inspiration started to dance in the stairs of a Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv. When they reached the top, they landed in the living room of an Israeli comedian. And so, "At your place" was born.
While the project ideated in Tel Aviv, it was further developed in Germany where the Ministry of Culture gave the artists the necessary resources. The main goal was to bring culture directly to people without resources to easily make it global. The house owner takes on a unique role as the agent, the spokesperson of the event, and the ‘theatre’ director in an effort to offer a unique show for the guests.
The spectators have the privilege of being involved in a unique artistic experience in which close proximity creates an intensity in the exchange between artist and audience. The role of the spectator is no longer limited like it frequently is in a theatre. The spectator can actually become a real contributor to the performance through something as simple as an exchange of glances between them and the dancers.
This feeling of involvement provokes strong emotions from all the participants: uneasiness, astonishment, embarrassment, admiration, sadness and happiness. These reactions are inescapable at such close range, prompting each participant to explore their own fears, their own self, their own limits in a space where everyone is equal. According to the two artists, it is this commitment that creates the event and makes each representation unique.
The aim of Sergio and Avi is to abolish institutional barriers. This project redefines the very concept of art in the forms and spaces which one can experience it.
"At your place" and "Non place"
In conjunction with the project "At your place", the artists started another project, "Non place" which consists of dancing in urban, anonymous places in order to give them an alternative dimension, both human and artistic.
Tel Aviv is an ideal city, a fertile ground for all of these new initiatives, off the beaten track. These projects show the emergence of the creation process and the strong will to remove the distance between people.
Touching each other, looking each other in the eyes, sharing, exchanging, going back to simple human interactions; this is what this experience aims to recover.
The work of Sergio and Avi questions the established rules and structures, and interrogates the very identity of art : how does art exist or how does it take shape?
"At your place" and "Non place" redefine the notion of space in a country which greatly lacks from it.
