Songs&Borders brings together artists, intellectuals, and community members from different cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds from Israel, Germany, and Norway. It wishes to expand people's personal and communal practice. Supported by MART Foundation.
The issue of identity has been the issue of the twentieth century. Israel is a tiny country. However, it takes more than a lifetime to understand its complex narrative and diverse inhabitants. It is a land with no man's land agenda. Borders made on the map around a round European table soon became mental boundaries between communities, families, and individuals. Songs&Borders is about people, land, and their specific selfidentity and genealogy.
CREDITS: Artistic Concept & Creation/Choreography Michael Getman / Musical Concept & Composer Prof Dr. Daniel Biro / Performers: Naveen Makhoul Elias, Rabʼa Halabi, Ronny Shavit, Ronit Nahmias, Nira Agmon, Marina Avzach / Singers: Neue Vocalsolisten, Stuttgart / Germany Johanna Vargas, Suzanne Leitz-Lorey, Truike van der Poel, Guillermo Anzorena and Andreas Fischer / Dramaturge Yael Venezia / Director of Neue Vocalsolisten: Christine Fischer / Producer Neue Vocalsolisten: Jakob Berger / Production Manager: Zachi Cohen / Executive Producer: Mia Chaplin / Amulet Artist: Ayelet Adiv / Stage Designer & Puppet: Maʼayan Tsameret/ Costume Designer: Renee van Ginkel / Photography: Roni Bitton / International Communications & Development Katherina Vasiliadis
"We are an international collaboration project which brings together artists, communities, and intellectuals from different cultural and religious backgrounds from Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Germany, and Norway. In a time when both individuals and communities are experiencing a growing disconnection, Songs& Borders asks to address these issues by bringing us closer to ourselves, our identity, tradition, surroundings and nature, our beliefs, aspirations, and each other. We welcome the human body through a careful process of identity exploration, historical research, narratives, and political situations, observing how these are embedded and expressed. We ask to listen, sense and embody different narratives without fear of losing our own. We ask to challenge and redefine structures and concepts of borders, borders between different communities, within communities, and mental barriers within ourselves. We also create a shared space full of stories, rituals, tensions, wounds, and hope. The North of Israel is home to disparate Ethnic and religious communities: Palestinian Muslims (Sunni), Lebanese Maronite Christians, Arameans, Syrian Druze, Circassians, Bedouins, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi Jews. These populations exist in a common geographical space but a reality of multiple narratives, tension, and mental boundaries."
