The 2016 trend. It scared me. I normally don’t do trends anyway, but something about my resistance meant there’s something to look at.
Then I discover it was the year I created my first dance. Back then, I was nascent in my performance journey. I’d left the cocoon to start belly dancing with Nataly Dvir & join her course אומנות המופע. I was hungry for the stage and eastern rhythms.
But, looking back at these photos, I also remember that I’d almost quit and didn’t perform because I was heartbroken. Yet, somehow I pushed through. Could hear an inner knowing saying my Higher Self wants this; Future Me will be grateful in retrospect — and it was true. If I look at the recording now, I cringe but I’m also extremely proud of 2016 Shoshana. She did the damn thing despite it all.
2016 was also the year my son Kedem was born — in the photos I’m dancing 5 months pregnant — and the year I had postpartum depression for the first time (after 3 previous births). I’d never experienced such an uncontrollable lack of joy and it frightened me; its grip enough to convince me that he was my last child (but what a grand finale he is, a compass 💚).
A lot of learning happened on the path that unfolded. Years deep in the pelvis with Orly Portal up to becoming a teacher of her method (a dream come true), diving headfirst into Feldenkrais, and falling in love with contact improv with Dafna Hemmendinger and Michal Sternbach. Last year, the revolutionary act of HaKvutza Full Track (ballet, contemporary, contact, improv, and more) that whipped me into shape. Now, a second turning of everything upside down — I joined the Movement Focus at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
This year is the first time I’m creating again — a whole decade later. I made a tiny 2-minute number to the song הגו בגוף for the Feeback performance by Danielle Galia Kind at JAMD. Next semester there’ll be personal projects. But I’ve already begun working on a piece in קורס יצירה אישית at HaKvutza with the legend Anat Katz and the beloved-by-all Ewa Szubstarska. Looking through the mirror of a decade is fascinating, a full circle. I don’t look back pining away for yesteryears of youth; I look with gratitude for the joy and clarity of the present.
Photos credit: Natasha Shaknes
Shoshana Sarah 