Laying on my back as I project my voice into space is what had been the incentive for creating this performance. The awkward position facilitated both qualities of sounds and twisted movements which fascinated me in their suggestion of both lament and birth.

Dreamy

He was in bed and he had been fatally ill – his voice sounded straight out from his loins, long winded, and so impressively sustained – a blend of a cry and a Tibetan chant. I recognized the “Daniel sounds” just as I entered the oncology ward. The Daniel unrestrained vocal expressions, whether welcomed or not, were always free for everyone to hear – he was happy to see me, tucked in bed with the precision of a masterful nurse, he “sang” as he lay on his back, his set-in eyes sparked like green diamonds in the dim morning lights.

Although the 2^nd Lebanon War had been waging for already longer than one week, eighty persons arrived at the Heder Contemporary Art Gallery. While I was lying on my stomach, in the passage way, in between the studio and the gallery, the crowd had seated themselves on the floor alongside the walls of the rectangular gallery. My legs were extended back towards the studio, my head was in the direction of the gallery, and my face nearly touching the floor – I was singing. It was “Zemer Zemer Lach”*, a song that I had sung in a high rolling voice as a young girl at school: “A song for you my country; The circle goes round for you; the song speaks to you”. But now, my voice was expelled from the deep part of my stomach to the floor, where my face was stooped, causing it to bounce in staccato from the tiles into the air. I then raised my head and let the thinned softened melodic words, describing the dancing on the mountainous flower pastures that had once been a desert, swivel through the narrow passage of my outstretched throat.

I stood up, when I had finished the song, and stepped out from the passage way. I swayed my head, with my usual cordial welcoming gestures, towards the seated persons. With measured steps, taking in their silent gazes, I walked from the passage to the far end of the gallery. I bent over towards one of the seated persons as I caressed his body with both my arms. Giving him all the support I was capable of, I pulled his heavy body upwards, towards me. I must have smiled to at him as I maneuvered him, cautiously, with my hands gripping his arms, turning him around to face away. I facilitated his movement with a rounded, outward movement of my hips, while I held steady with my bare feet on to the floor. I then moved one hand upwards, to his neck, to render him support while his head slid into the pit of my arm. His weight drawing upon me, I was forced to come down to my knees. Then, pushed backward, I attempted to halt our sway with an outstretched hand to the floor, though I had to finally succumb to his weight. I was already in a complete recline, on the floor, with him lying in my arm – “a fleeting vision of a Pietà” *. At last, I let him lie down on the floor as I swayed my self, gently, from under him, permitting my chest and face to move across his with a curtsying gesture.

Standing up again, I looked at the lying man, who seemed complacent, and took a few hesitant steps towards another person. I crouched down beside her and put my head lightly to the curved shelf of her shoulder as it tilted downwards. My hand enfolded her back, as my other hand moved underneath her arm to meet my own hand and take a tight hold of it. It was a strong hold with which I could transfer my position to face her, so that both of the fronts of our bodies were now pressed onto each other. I was leaning on her, with all my weight, as my legs were left to dangle from her knees which had now also collapsed, sideways, under my body’s pressure. I then placed my hand on the floor behind her and with my other hand I instructed her, with a tap on her upper chest, to let herself lie flatly on the floor. I let my body follow hers in the slight backward collapse, and managed to block her fall, with both my hands, before her head met the tiles. Now, again, we were snug face to face. I smiled in appreciation of her trust in me. I swayed my body from hers, removed one hand from under her head and rested my palm on her chest, this time, as I gazed at her thankfully. I then slid my other arm from under her head letting her recede softly to the floor.

I stood up again, I looked at the man and the woman lying in their relaxed positions on the floor. I walked over to another seated person. There was silence and attention accompanying each improvised decline. Each movement downward was directed by two persons, one of which was not me, in a unique way that had not been planned beforehand. I was now looking at the few remaining seated persons, and they had replied to my gaze by laying themselves on the gallery’s floor.

The floor was a design of laid down persons – I let my body down to the floor, as well, but this time on my own. I laid myself on my back with my head beside another’s head, nearly touching it, while the rest of my body was in a diagonal, aligned from his head along his body. I remained there for a moment and then rose to resituate myself. I lay again on my back, this time in a straight angle to a young woman, with my head resting on her stomach. I was now ready to resume singing.

I had merged two songs whose combination was objectively remote, but which I liked together since they served as emotional points of departure, potent with personal associations. The two songs were: 1)”Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)”, from Leonard Bernstein’s American Musical West Side Story, 1957, and 2) Avinu Malkeinu”*, a Jewish prayer recited during Jewish services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as on the Ten Days between the two high holidays.

I started with the love song “There’s a Place for Us”, sung by Maria and Tony,  then sung to each other, and by Maria to Tony when he was dying. I released the song from my head and from my stomach, interchanging the sources, the vowels were open and pronounced so that the physicality of the sounds, as bodily compounds, were visible in my body’s expressions. They became audible as they were expounded into the space, rising from within my body, in a plastic presence; resonating from the floor towards the walls and into the open space.

I had never sung the song in its entirety during this performance. My assumption was that if one had recognized the movement, whether visual or auditory, then with this recognition there was no need for me to actualize it any further as the action will have already been achieved, by the audience, in their imagination. By this way of thinking, while I had begun singing “There’s a Place for Us” in tune with the original, the melody soon evolved by my expression, by my own manners of producing the sounds, as a physicality of an actual substance.

I sang the prayer “Avinu Malkeinu”, meaning “our father, our king”, in a continuous extending breath, evolving organically from my palpitating moving chest and stomach into the space of the mouth, made to sound as if it had materialized, so that its molding onto “There’s a Place for Us” could not be really noticed. The audiences’ ability to recognize a few melodic and tonal transitions and certain words or combinations, was all that was necessary to render the association and impact of expression that I desired.

This hybrid piece was evolved explicitly, in a long process of searching, in voice trials, until I was able to sense the innate logic and authenticity of the work as well as method, technically, with which to enact the production of the sound. In watching a video of my work, whether in movement, speech or sound, it becomes apparent that I am attuned to the live situation which I created together with the audience’s presence. I had a defined plan but its strength was engendered and provoked by the moments shared with the audience. It demanded practice to provoke sounds when laying on my back, but once I was producing them it became audibly clear that Lamentation and Birth had emerged into one, and that it was about a life that had been irreversibly positioned horizontally.

* My quote

זמר לך זמר לך

זמר זמר לך

זמר זמר לך

זמר לך מכורתי, מכורתי

המחול סובב, זמר לך דובב

זמר לך, מכורתי כתורתי

הרריך המה יפרחו

עת מחול ההורה יושר

אלף פרחים לפתע יפרחו

מלאו את עין המדבר

* Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)

There’s a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.

Peace and quiet and open air

Wait for us

Somewhere.

There’s a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time to spare,
Time to learn, time to care,
Some day!

Somewhere.
We’ll find a new way of living,
We’ll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere . . .

There’s a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there.
Hold my hand and I’ll take you there
Somehow,
Some day,
Somewhere

אבינו מלכינו 

אבינו מלכינו, חנינו וענינו

אבינו מלכינו חנינו וענינו

כי אין בנו מעשים

עשה עמנו צדקה וחסד

עשה עמנו צדקה וחסד

והושעינו

*Our Father King

Our father Our king

Have mercy on us and hear our prayer

We have done no wrong.

Be just and merciful to us

Have compassion upon us

and bring us salvation