Yossi Berg and Oded Graf present: Cult Fantasy and Love

The Tel Aviv Dance Festival presents a focus program on the Israeli duo artists Yossi Berg and Oded Graf. Two decades of creation have brought them international acclaim and a layered body of work that includes more than 30 pieces. They are known for their unique movement language that synthesizes movement and verbal expression, creating theatricality through movement that situates their work at the thresholds between dance, theater, and performance. In their works, the moving body opens the meanings of verbal language to more than one possible interpretation, staging a dance of emotions and expressions, stories and fantasies, in a lightful way. Individually, Yossi and Oded play significant roles in the Israeli dance scene as artistic directors of other institutions and festivals, teachers, and innovators in the field of dance.

Cult, Fantasy, and Love takes the audience on a journey through three of their notable works: The Rite of Spring #2, 4 Fantasies and a Monkey, and When Love Walked In. This triptych of works, when placed next to each other, invites the audience to contemplate their interrelations and to speculate on other narratives. Themes of heroism and sacrifice, compassion and love, humor, sorrow, and cultural clichés shed light on the human figure as central to our understanding of contemporary culture. In the context of the current situation, a reflection on human nature and the construction of narratives and ideologies is inescapable.

In addition, the program is a gesture of farewell to Ofri Mantel, one of the leading dancers in Yossi and Oded’s dance group since 2018. She has been a source of inspiration, and her talent and generosity are inscribed in Yossi and Oded’s body of work.