About the gallery curator:
Nicole Bindler is a body-based performing artist whose work is inspired by her training in new dance, dance-theater, Contact Improvisation, Butoh, Body-Mind Centering®, Yoga and Feldenkrais. Her work has been shown throughout the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Berlin, Tokyo, Beirut, Bethlehem, Mexico and Quito. Her work has been supported by Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (through Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts), the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Leeway Foundation, Puffin Foundation, FringeArts, Philadelphia Dance Projects and the Community Education Center. Bindler holds a B.A. in Dance and Poetry from Hampshire College, a degree in Muscular Therapy from the Muscular Therapy Institute, and certificates in Embodied Anatomy Yoga, Embodied Developmental Movement and Yoga, and Somatic Movement Education from the School for Body-Mind Centering. She is on the adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, University of the Arts and Temple University in Philadelphia. She is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artist Council, a member of Mascher Space Cooperative, a writer for thINKingDANCE and one half of the duo The Dance Apocalypse. http://www.nicolebindler.com

About the gallery:
I'm interested in exposing the ways that Israeli contemporary dance is disproportionately visible on the world stage, and Palestinian dance is marginalized. How does dance and culture reflect and perpetuate existing power dynamics? I have collaborated with Palestinian dancers and I am currently organizing a U.S. tour for them. This gallery includes some of my writing about our artistic process together in Bethlehem, and about the cultural boycott of Israel. I've also interviewed Jewish-American dance artists who have strong ties to Israel, and grapple with their Zionist upbringings through their choreographic process. I am currently working on several pieces of writing about Palestinian and Israeli dance presented at New York Live Arts this season, which will be posted here in the coming months. Dance is ephemeral, here and gone, here and gone. Writing about dance is an imperfect history because it is disembodied. But writing dance can keep the ideas alive and disseminate these new practices to audiences far wider than can be reached by a single performance.

Featured

Free Advice and an Interview with Farah Saleh

In this thINKingDANCE article, Nicole Bindler interviews Palestinian dance artist Farah Saleh after her performance of her new solo “Free Advice” at New York Live Arts as a part of the Live Ideas Festival. Saleh was born in Syria in 1985 in a Palestinian refugee camp. She moved to Jordan in 1990, and then to Palestine in 1996 after the Oslo Accords. In 2003 during the Second Intifada she had to go to Italy to finish her studies there. In 2009 she decided to go back to Palestine and use Ramallah as a base for her choreographic and curatorial work. Bindler has written several pieces on Palestinian and Israeli dance and politics for tD: Archiving Occupation, Identity, and Resistance (2016), Women (2015), Jewish American Choreographers Grapple with Zionism and the Nakba (2015), Palestinian Dabke Makes it to the Annenberg (2014).

Killer Sideburns’ Stochastic Stars

The ballroom of the William Way LGBT Center shimmers as Purim shpil attendees pour in, many wearing sequins, glitter, and wigs. My good friend Ezra Berkley Nepon, aka “Killer Sideburns,” comes onstage wearing Marx Brothers suspenders hooked onto booty shorts. They introduce their work, “No One Mourns The Wicked: The Wizard of Shushan,” co-directed by jaclyn Pryor, which is a mashup of the Book of Esther with the Wizard of Oz. They declare that the venue is ideal because “Purim is the queerest of Jewish holidays.”

Read more at thINKingDANCE

Archiving Occupation, Identity and Resistance

In Archiving Occupation, Identity and Resistance (thINKingDance, March 10 2016), Bindler and tD guest writer Hadar Ahuvia discuss two works–Archive and Badke–presented in the New York Live Arts, Live Ideas Festival, curated by Tommy Kriegsmann and Adham Hafez. This year’s series features work from the Middle East and North Africa. Archive by Israeli Arkadi Zaides features video of Israeli soldiers and settlers taken by Palestinians, coordinated by the human rights organization, B'Tselem. Zaides performs in front of the footage and embodies the actions of the cameras’ subjects. Badke, a collaboration between Belgian dance companies, KVS, les ballets C de la B and the Palestinian organization A.M. Qattan Foundation, features ten Palestinian dancers from various disciplines including hip hop, ballet, contemporary, and circus arts. All of the dancers perform Palestinian folk dance.

WOMEN - Excerpts and interviews

Video trailer of the dance WOMEN, created by JVP Artist Council member, Nicole Bindler, in collaboration with Diyar Dance Theater.

"Women," Thinking Dance

In June 2015, Bindler traveled to Bethlehem, Palestine to make an evening length dance with three young dancers from Diyar Dance Theater, a Dabke company. She was invited by the director, Rami Khader to make a new piece with them about their experiences as women living in the occupied West Bank. What follows are excerpts from her writing about their rehearsal process, the challenges they faced and the questions that arose about cross-cultural collaboration. This piece is also a document of what she observed crossing checkpoints and borders, the prison-like conditions that Palestinians face and how it affects them on a bodily level.

"Dancing in Bethlehem: A Diary," Jewish Currents

More writing from Bindler's trip to Palestine to work with Diyar Dance Theater.

"Hadar Ahuvia and Jesse Zaritt: Jewish-American Choreographers Grapple with Zionism and the Nakba," Thinking Dance

Bindler interviews two Jewish-American dance artists who are both currently making solo choreographic work that grapples with Zionism, identity, and Palestinian rights. They embody contradictions in their work: How can one celebrate the movement forms that have positively impacted their dancing lives–such as Israeli folk dance or Gaga–while simultaneously confronting the political implications of these forms that have been used by the state of Israel as propaganda tools?

"Palestinian Dabke Makes it to the Annenberg," Thinking Dance

On November 14th, 2014 the Philadelphia Coalition for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel (Philly BDS) and partners from Students for Justice in Palestine staged a protest against Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (KCDC) outside the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Here Bindler investigates the questions surrounding the cultural and academic boycott of Israel through interviews with Philly BDS members and artists.