INTERVIEW: Ella Rothschild’s ‘Pigulim’ part of BAC’s virtual season
Photo: Ella Rothschild’s Pigulim is part of Baryshnikov Arts Center’s digital programming. Photo courtesy of BAC / Provided by press rep with permission.
Choreographer Ella Rothschild developed the new work Pigulim while she was in residency at several organizations, including the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, and although a pandemic got in the way, the piece is back at BAC with a special virtual production. Pigulim will play as part of the arts center’s digital programming through Dec. 23. Streaming the show is free and available on demand.
There are many themes that surface in Pigulim, including mortality, loneliness, fantasy, banality, fear and desire. Part of the choreographic work is the centering idea of a shared meal and how people seek happiness around a table, according to press notes.
Rothschild was a dancer with Batsheva Dance Company, the legendary group run by Ohad Naharin, and she now dedicates herself to choreography in her native Israel and around the world, although she leaves time to dance with Crystal Pite/Kidd Pivot. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Rothschild about the new work. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
Why is the piece called Pigulim?
Pigulim is a plural form of the term “pigul” (pronounced pi-gul), which is a Kabala concept indicating a sacrifice that was disqualified from sacrificing or eating, due to an impure thought of the priest. The word pigulim can be interpreted as “abomination.”
These powerful words point to an essential concept within the work, the idea that thought can change reality. It’s radical and dramatic to imagine that one “forbidden” thought echoes so profoundly in reality. The word abomination connects directly to the state of the characters in the show. They are constantly confronting perceptions of themselves, of their bodies, of the place in which they are trapped.
What inspired the creation of this dance piece?
I started working on the piece during an artist residency program I received at the Suzanne Dellal Center before the pandemic was in our lives. The theme of the piece emerged during one of the trips my partner and I took around Europe. I think we were in Turkey, just before we hitchhiked and caught a ride with a truck to Bulgaria. I thought about the gap between what goes on inside my head and what is actually happening around me. Sometimes the size of that gap between my physical being and my consciousness was overwhelming. Images and texts would go through my mind and hover over while my body manifested so little of it, if any. This distance was sometimes inconceivable and created an inner conflict that got my mind and body moving. I tried to imagine how I could create and recreate this gap and demonstrate it visually and emotionally on stage.
During that year a lot of opportunities came together, and I decided to work on that theme throughout the year in different places in the world, with different cast members, in different ways. The piece rolled from the residence in Tel Aviv to working with 14 dancers of the Lucerne Dance Company in Switzerland. It then moved to a residency in New York at the Baryshnikov Art Center with Ariel Freedman who is one of the dancers in the final work, and from there to Vancouver, Canada, where I worked with 25 young dancers. Finally, I came back to Tel Aviv where I constructed the full-length creation that eventually was converted into the film.
Each place I traveled to gave me a different perspective on the themes and added another layer to the work. Working with different personalities in the studio also added layers, and being able to transfer ideas, stories and movement from my body to other bodies created a more complex and elaborate content and movement for the work.
I love working with dancers — teaching them physical materials, seeing it move from my body to their bodies and how they wear the movement, change it and make it their own. It’s an inspiration. Finding the people to be with me in the studio is the most meaningful thing. Eventually this is what will change and dictate the direction of my work. I never work alone, and even if I am the one imagining the worlds, I need the people, the personalities, the bodies, figures, objects, architecture, colors, light and music to fill those worlds.
There were a lot of references that accompanied me during the process and gave me inspiration for the atmosphere and for the characters in the show. One example is the artist Kiki Smith. The sculptures she created of the female body capture an honest essence of human femininity. When watching her work I have the feeling that her characters are in a constant state of longing.
Is dance presented on a virtual platform as impactful as dance presented in person?
The essence of movement and dance is that it is temporary and does not stay. The movement appears for one moment, and then it disappears. In fact, I’m constantly feeling that I’m in a state of invisibility, and in a way so are my works. In my opinion, this temporality allows for a one-time holistic experience that for the moment we can’t recreate in the dance films we see today.
As for the experience of filming Pigulim, I saw it as a new opportunity. The process and work that was in and out of the studio was constantly focused on creating for the stage. The intensity did not change, and the purpose was still tuned to the fact that the work would go up in the theater. The option of making it into a film version kept looming over us throughout the process. So, when the decision was finally made, it was interesting to understand how we could look at the work through frames. We experimented with filming in the studio before we got to the actual filming day on stage in order to understand from what point of view one chooses to tell the story, what enters into the frame and especially what stays out of it. The filming allowed the viewer to get closer to the characters and gave us the option to guide the viewer within the work.
I believe that there is a lot to gain from the virtual tools we were all exposed to over the last two years. I think I have a lot to learn and discover in that digital medium. I believe my approach towards presenting dance on a virtual platform should develop. The intention should be completely different when creating a work for the virtual sphere, simply by virtue of the fact that it is an entirely different medium that operates by different rules than the stage. We are in a transitional time when we learn how to create impactfully in the virtual world. From my perspective, the stage and the live holistic experience is still more powerful than the virtual platforms we use today. But I can imagine that it will change, and I’m looking forward to being a part of that change.
Is your choreography specific to the performers who are dancing the piece? Would there be changes if you had different performers?
The show is the performers that are performing in it. They are the storytellers, and they are my partners in the construction of the story, the show, the plot and the space. Without them a different story would have been told. So, yes, I am confident in saying that if I had different performers you would have witnessed a different show.
Do you think the piece has gained more poignancy during the pandemic, when so many are considering themes of loneliness?
Loneliness is a life experience that characterizes the society we live in today. Our environment is oriented toward accomplishment and asks from the individuals in it to succeed, to multitask, to be bigger, faster and more beautiful. To start a family and in the same breath have a thriving career or have great social skills and also to be outstanding academics, to be content with the present moment and also to make a lot of money. These expectations produce impossible internal conflicts and gaps between people and themselves, and these conflicts in turn produce an anxious society, burying its greatest fears. I experience this as a kind of alienation. The existence of that separation from consciousness to physical being inholds the emptiness that drives my work. The current plague has only intensified things.
In this period of time, working on this creation, I’ve learned we share more than we might think we do as individuals. One can enter to the other’s sorrow, sadness and loneliness. I have learned that time makes ideas sink in and that colleagues are the bridge between you and whomever you want to share your ideas with. I learned that loneliness can be humorous.
I want people to identify with the characters. I want them to laugh with the characters and to be sad with them and reflect. It is my wish that people will be able to see themselves in this creation and recognize that although we are lonely, we are not alone in our loneliness.
What was it like to perform with the Batsheva Dance Company?
The years I danced at Batsheva were significant for me. I absorbed a lot of knowledge about body, dance and stage. I guess there are a lot of things that were also not necessarily adopted by my body, but much of what Ohad [Naharin] taught that was related to awareness and movement are within me and I have access to them. The time in Batsheva, learning from Ohad and other colleagues of that period in the company was a vital, deep and meaningful experience. It changed my thinking about creation, dance, about choreography, performance and improvisation. All of these things were important discoveries for me to continue my path as a creator. It opened up a space for me to create.
In addition to that I still collaborate with people who danced with me back then in company. One of them is my dearest friend Ariel Freedman who is one of the main dancers in the creation of Pigulim.
I created my first piece 15 years ago, on the platform of Ensemble Batsheva Creates. I was lucky that Batsheva incorporated into their program a chance for dancers to create works themselves. When I think about myself then, I remember I had the confidence to do what I wanted. I had no doubts. I was full of inspiration, and I just wanted to explore. As time progresses my hunger and ambition to create grows even more, and with them arise many more questions and doubts. I have been blessed with amazing teachers along the way. People who have taught me a lot about the body, about the commitment to a goal and about the endless pursuit for learning and deepening in the research of an idea — among them Inbal Pinto, Avshalom Pollak, Ohad Naharin and many others. I’m still learning today from people I create with and work with like Crystal Pite.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Pigulim, by Ella Rothschild, is part of Baryshnikov Arts Center’s digital programming through Dec. 23. Click here for more information.
