“The Archive”

(Premiere)

 A site-specific performance, music, theater, and dance work

The Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem is proud to present the premiere of The Archive, a site-specific performative journey following the footsteps of choreographer’s Neta Pulvermacher family history in Berlin and Frankfurt. In the work fragments of voices, characters, narratives and shards of life emerge for a brief moment, and disappear again…A charged and multi-layered post-memory landscape that raises important questions about the ephemerality of memory, about identity and belonging and about Germany 1933-45 and Israel 2023.

July 18-20, 2023 @ 19:00 and 21:00  (two shows)

July 21, 2023 @ 11am

At the garden, archive and rooms of the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem

The Leo Baeck Institute presents the world premiere of The Archive, a site-specific, dance-theater work by choreographer Neta Pulvermacher and her performers.    In this evocative work, four characters (Pulvermacher and her performers) invite the audience for a performative journey following the foot-steps of the choreographer’s family history in Berlin and Frankfurt.

The Archive takes place with-in a post-memory landscape, where facts and fiction, and fragments of lost narratives and characters mix and collide.   The work hovers between here and there, past present and future – asking: what is left when the last person who remembers is gone?

In September of 2022, I visited Berlin and Frankfurt, where I found myself wandering the streets and city squares following the paths where my family once walked. I brought with me a red leather-bound folder that Matilda, Pulvermacher Rosolio (my paternal grandmother) carried with her when the family escaped Germany in 1933. Deciphering locations and addresses from the documents and letters in the folder, I visited past homes, schools, train stations, gardens, archives, memorial sites and cemeteries. But…. there was no one left alive to tell me about the distinguished gentleman photographed behind the large wooden desk… or, the stunning beauty in the photo, marked “Klara Zaling Berlin 1890”… And who was Elsa Lam – whose mental collapse is discussed at length in the 1928 letter of Herr Direktor, Moritz Rosolio to his son Werner? Why did Thomas Mann write to Grandma Tilli? And, why did she keep his letter for all those years?   I am neither a witness nor an archivist, but for me ‘The Archive’ project is a kind of – long overdue – homecoming, a return to Frankfurt and Berlin the cities my mother so loved and hated.

The creation and production of The Archive is made possible in part with the generous support of The Jerusalem Foundation, The Israeli Ministry of Culture, the Israel Choreographers’ Association, Shosh and Eliezer Carmel, The Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem,  and Roni and Dan Tochner.

BIOGRAPHY OF NETA PULVERMACHER/CHOREOGRAPHER AND PROJECT DIRECTOR

Neta Pulvermacher, a Choreographer, Dancer, Performer and Professor of Dance, was born in Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, Israel, and graduated from Juilliard in 1985.  She earned an M.A. in Dance and Dance Education from Teachers College/Columbia University and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University. She is a professor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the artistic director of the JAMD Ensemble.

Neta choreographed over 90 works for her NY based company, and other companies and institutions around the world.  In New York, her company, the Neta Dance Company has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, The Joyce Theater, The 92nd Street Y and many other venues.  The company toured throughout the U.S., Israel (Israel Festival), Europe, Costa Rica, Africa and Canada.

Pulvermacher is noted for her collaborations musicians, composers and directors, such as Roy Nathanson and The Jazz Passengers, John Zorn, Anthony Coleman, David Broza, Miri Ben Ari, Sarah Davis Buechner, the English rock band XTC, and film director, Mira Nair for whom she choreographed for the film, The Namesake (2007).

Her choreographic work has been supported by the American Israel Cultural Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, The Jerome Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Jerusalem Foundation, Maxine Greene Foundation, the Israeli Ministry of Culture, and The Greenwall Foundation among others; and she received a special choreography award from Bessie Schoenberg (1995). In 2006 she was invited to the White House in recognition of her international work as a choreographer.

Pulvermacher served as associate professor of dance at the University of Florida School of Theatre and Dance from 2006 until 2013.  While a UF Faculty she was awarded the 2010 UF College of Fine Arts Teacher of the Year and the 2011 International Educator of the year.  In 2013 Neta moved back to Israel following an invitation to become the Dean of Dance at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.  In 2018 and 2019 she created and directed a unique city and site specific project in Jerusalem, entitled “Body, Site, Dance” – a full evening combining original commissioned work by seven Israeli and Palestinian choreographers that opens up a shared space for the multiple and often contradictory narratives that are Jerusalem.  The latest project in the series, Public Parking was commissioned by the Israel Festival 2021 and premiered in June 2021 at the Yes Planet Underground parking garage in Jerusalem.

Her solo works Its About Time and Utopia and the Night tours throughout Israel and was invited to Berlin, New York, Arizona and Australia.   She directed and organized “Dancing to A Different Tune”, an International Dance Deans and Directors gathering” held in Israel in May 2017.  In January of 2023 Neta was a guest at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy for a one-month fellowship, where she will develop materials for her new project, The Archive.   http://www.netapulvermacher.org/

The Archive

Choreography, concept, writing, video, and sound design: Neta Pulvermacher

Musical management: Netta Spiegel, production: Koby Even Haim

Dramaturgy: Nofar Sela

Sound and Light: Tomer Avraham

Costume and Art Direction: Reut Shaibe

Collaborating Dancers/: Itamar Gelina, Viola Gasparotti, Avigail Karvi, & Neta Pulvermacher.

Spoken/sung languages: Hebrew, English, German 

Premiers

Tuesday-Thursday, July 18-20, 2023 – two performances every evening | 19:00, 21:00

Friday, July 21 | 11:00

At the garden and indoor spaces of the Leo Baeck Jerusalem Institute | 33 Bustenai St. Jerusalem

Tickets limited to 25 per performance

Price: NIS 100, student discount: NIS 60

Click here to buy tickets for 18.7.23 | 19:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 18.7.23 | 21:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 19.7.23 | 19:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 19.7.23 | 21:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 20.7.23 | 19:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 20.7.23 | 21:00 show

Click here to buy tickets for 21.7.23 | 11:00 show SOLD OUT