SketchLine & The Spaces of a Lone Minute
Shortly after the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, in May 2020, I received a call from Yael Cnaani, my former teacher and a multidisciplinary artist, inviting me to collaborate on two virtual solo projects she initiated. It was an optimistic proposal, a creative call for life in a period of great uncertainty, where participants from Israel, Poland, Canada, England, and Spain came together and communicated through movement.
Communication between group members was brought to life through solo dances that were shared at a given time, in two WhatsApp groups. The dynamics were slightly different between each group:
In The spaces of a lone minute, a solo was sent by one of the members, and a week later, in response to that solo, everyone else shared their own solos with the group. On the Sketch Line group, Yael Canaani shared a sketch she made, and the group members drew inspiration from it to create a solo, which they shared with the group after ten days.
All the solo rounds were saved and edited by Yaara Nirel, a multidisciplinary video creator. Yaara created one cohesive work on three video screens, which was then presented at Kibbutz Cabri, Israel, in November 2020, as part of a group exhibition at the Cabri Gallery.
Except for a few individual zoom calls, there was no verbal exchange in the WhatsApp groups, and communication was only through the dances themselves, which were one to two minutes long.
The dances revealed the character, choices, movement materials, embodiment awareness, and personal environment aspects of each one of the participants, creating a unique intimacy between all the dancers. The groups continued these activities until spring/summer 2021.