The current war abruptly suspended plans for a joint evening by choreographers Bosmat Nossan and Roni Chadash with the Batsheva Ensemble, turning a milestone moment in both of their careers into another casualty of conflict. A date fixed more than a year in advance dissolved overnight into uncertainty, and the performances were left indefinitely postponed. **Who Gets Crushed** Nossan said, “I was very stressed by the deadline, the date for the show that was set far in advance. All of a sudden, there is no date. ‘The performance will happen [when the war ends](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-891758),’ is all we know.” That is the language of life under command from above: not planning, not stability, just waiting for the war machine to loosen its grip enough for people to work again. The article said the pair were in the final stretch before the premiere when the war hit and the project was suspended. It also said the disruption could mean postponements or cancellations of performances. For the dancers and choreographers, the cost lands where it always does: in the body, in the schedule, in the work, in the future that gets erased by forces they do not control. **What the Body Carries** Nossan said her piece, Dome, explores the physical implications of living under constant threat. “The work began from a feeling, an everyday sensation of vulnerability, of knowing that everything can end at any second. I experience it as something physical. There is fear, violence, and fragility, but also a strong desire to live now. When the future is unclear, the present becomes more intense. The piece is about this place and how it lives in the body.” That is the raw material of life under hierarchy: fear made routine, uncertainty made normal, and the present compressed by the absence of any secure future. The article said Nossan’s personal life had also undergone upheaval, and she said, “I think everyone is experiencing this overlap between the public and the private. There is instability in every sphere. I am witnessing the unraveling of the home that is Israel, and in parallel, the unraveling of my own home.” For over a week, the article said, it seemed as though all future plans had disappeared. Then, as restrictions shifted, the dance company returned to the studio, though performances remained indefinitely postponed. Nossan and Chadash were working in an interim space, able to create but without a set deadline. **Back in the Studio, Still Under the Same Pressure** Chadash said, “At the beginning, I didn’t know how to return to the work. But the moment we did, something clicked. Being back in the studio brings me back to the body. It reminds me who I am, my identity, and of a kind of beauty, not external but internal. It connects.” The article said that as the conversation took place, her newborn son slept in the next room and that she received news that shrapnel had damaged her car. She said, “I’ll deal with that later,” and returned to the present moment. Chadash’s new work, Separations, uses all 19 dancers of the ensemble, the largest group she has worked with to date. She said, “I wanted to engage with the physical language I work with, dismantling the body into parts. From there, the theme of separation emerged: separations within the body and within society. I am interested in the tension between the animal body, the organs, the raw physicality, and the socialized, contained human body.” The article said that since October 7, this inquiry had taken on a new dimension. Chadash said, “I understood that I am perceived in a certain way. Even if I didn’t define myself as Israeli or Jewish, that is how I am seen from the outside. I realized that I can’t separate Israeliness from my body or from my work.” The article said that now back in the studio, Nossan and Chadash continued to work within uncertainty. Chadash said, “It’s important to keep going. The studio balances the noise outside. It allows me to find simplicity, to feel grounded. When I’m dancing, I am temporarily cut off from everything else.” Nossan said, “dance has always been the filter through which I experience life. I don’t know that it’s important, in principle, to keep dancing. But the body continues. There is always movement. And within that movement, I feel there is potential for something to shift. Not necessarily hope, just something that exists within survival, and sometimes within resistance. Without it, I feel I have no meaning. Right now, everything is focused on the present moment. There is no future; we are working for the moment itself.” The article concluded that Miriam’s dance was not a distant story but an ongoing practice, “Not an act of celebration but of survival. Not a response to certainty but to its absence. In moments when the future disappears, movement remains, not as an answer but as a way to continue.”
