Concerts
Saturday, February 21st, 2004 at 8:30 PM
NESHAMA, Stories of the Soul
ICC-Scottish Rite Auditorium
Keshet Chaim Dance Ensemble presented the world premiere of “NESHAMA, Stories of the Soul” with David D’Or, a unique, highly-talented singer and Israel’s representative to the 2004 Eurovision. This performance honored Keshet Chaim’s 20th anniversary.
“NESHAMA, Stories of the Soul” is a multi-media production inspired by personal spiritual journeys enriched by thousands of years of Jewish legends, commentaries and religious texts, all centered on the significance of Jerusalem as a symbol and experience of human life. NESHAMA seeks to embrace biblical images and through dance and song portray them as dramas of the soul. This visual language corresponds to the inner space and journey that each one of us makes towards self-knowledge. Through movement, music, song, visuals and narration, the performance sweeps through the millennium, beginning before the creation of the universe and ending in the present.
For thousands of years and for millions of people, Jerusalem has been more than a city. It has been a dream, an aspiration, a source of myth, a place of pilgrimage and poetry, an ideal. Beauty and suffering: wisdom and godlessness: the city described in the Bible as “the joy of all the earth,” has also been the site of sorrow and devastation: the city of “peace” the site of countless brutal wars. Above all, Jerusalem has been a place of profound contradiction—as many contradictions, indeed, as there are within each individual human soul. And that is the pulsebeat at the heart of the presentation, “NESHAMA, Stories of the Soul”. It celebrates the myths evoked by the city for thousands of years. At the same time, to dance those myths, to dance the story of the city, is also to dance the great drama of human life. For however young or old we are, and whatever our religious or ethnic background, the failures and triumphs of Jerusalem mirror back to us the failures and triumphs of our own lives.
