2015

Photo by Gadi Dagon


The work 12 Postdated Checks deals with one of the burning issues in the Israeli public debate recently – the housing shortage. Many young people find themselves in a vicious race whose participants compete for nearly uninhabitable apartments. The search for the ultimate apartment invites countless grotesque situations. The work delves precisely into those moments in a humorous performance that combines text and movement.
In 12 Postdated Checks i work with 20 young dancers and with my former roommate.

This creation was first developed from a theater-performance/tour for Rega-Ehad#2 art event at Tel-Aviv city hall.

Photos by Gadi Dagon

Official trailer

Video: Yaniv Pascal
 

The story behind the piece

Ella Rothschild has been living in Tel Aviv for the past eleven years. Her first apartment was a studio, thirty square meters in Neve Tzedek, with parquet floors and large windows. In her excitement she bought a new refrigerator (1000 shekels), that she later sold, at a 30% discount to her landlord.

After two years in that small apartment, Ella moved to an apartment with two roommates at the corner of Yehuda Hayamit-Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, a peculiar choice that didn’t become any clearer as years passed. Ella could hear every bus that passed under her window, and the occasional accidents in the intersection, but just below the house there was a great bakery that had the best chocolate pastry Ella had ever eaten.

Two years later she moved to a quieter apartment in Lilienblum Street which she shared with one of the roommates from Yehuda Hayamit. It was a beautiful apartment with a terrible wet kitchen wall and thin plaster dividing walls through which you can hear everything. After she found love and a dead cat at the entrance, Ella began searching for a new apartment.

After nine months of an exhaustive search she found a beautiful apartment in Neve Tzedek, where she lived happily for three whole years – until her landlords informed her that the apartment was sold for several million shekels. Ella was forced to look for a new apartment again.

From Neve Tzedek she moved to Sderot Yehudit, the east side of town. The transition was difficult and the new apartment was full of problems. The new landlord was needy and intense. It took Ella three years to make that apartment a lovely place to come back to after a day’s work, and after all the effort she put in this apartment she had to leave it because it, too, was sold at a disproportionate price.

Today Ella is subletting an apartment uptown. The price includes taxes, electricity and internet. There is no washing machine a serious downgrade in quality of life -, but she lives right next to the beach. Occasionally she goes for an early morning dip and gets bites all over her legs from the fish who make their home there.

In 12 postdated checks Ella works with 20 Maslool dancers’ and with her former roommate from Lilienblum and Yehuda Hayamit.


From the press

HaaretzRuth Eshel CityMouseIdit Suslik DanceTalkOra Brafman HaBamaZvi Goren PortfolioAya Bentur TimeoutMagazine

EnvrAkJean Barak  FrequenceSud.Fr

From the show

 

Video: Oren Mansura

Credits

Choreography: Ella Rothschild
Dancers: Ella Rothschild, Ariel Freedman and the ‘Maslool – Professional Dance Program’ dancers
Set: Zohar Shoef
Costumes: Inbal Ben-Zaken
Music: Uri Frost
Lighting: Omer Sheizaf
Artistic Director of Curtain up-Hillel Kogan

The ‘Maslool – Professional Dance Program’ – Dov Hoz Arts Center, Tel-Aviv
Directors of the ‘Maslool’ – Naomi Perlov, Offir Dagan
Producer of the ‘Maslool’ – Roy Bedarshi


Photo : Gadi Dagon

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