Idan Cohen, Ne.Sans & the Yes Manifesto

by Rachel Silver Maddock

Idan Cohen’s work, which brings together dance, music, dramatic costumes and makeup has an enticingly theatrical quality. In Vancouver, a city where the current of postmodernism in dance runs strong (a minimalistic, “dance first, dance only” approach), Cohen’s work feels indulgent, like a forbidden fruit.

Cohen’s company, founded in 2017, reimagines opera, seeking to reconnect the artistic disciplines found within opera with contemporary dance. At the meeting point of many elements, Cohen tries to give each part its own agency in performance.

The Vancouver-based Israeli choreographer comes from a multidisciplinary background. His early life was characterized by the study and performance of classical piano, visual arts, and theatre. But Cohen says he was always more interested in the creative process than performing.

At nineteen (“quite late”, he says), he began training in dance, and went on to work with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company for six seasons. In his time at KCDC, he was given opportunities to develop his choreographic voice, creating and touring his first works on the company. In 2005, Cohen left to start the Idan Cohen Dance Company. He spent the next decade making his own work, winning a number of European choreographic awards.

As a well-rounded appreciator and practitioner of the arts, Cohen was always drawn to opera. But he says he was dissatisfied with the quality of dance in the productions, feeling the choreography was often outdated. After directing his first opera production in 2016, he relocated to Vancouver and founded Ne.Sans with the goal of deepening the connection between dance and opera.

Dance, Music and Storytelling

Cohen and I spoke on Zoom shortly after the run of Hourglass at Vancouver International Dance Festival in early March, a livestreamed duet set to four of Philip Glass’s solo Piano Études. In the work, pianist Leslie Dala shares the stage with dancers Rachael Prince and Brandon Alley.

Hourglass has an interesting non-narrative sweep to it. Stage lights define an oblong performance space, the sides of which fall into a dark abyss. In opera-inspired (perhaps 18th century) costumes and exaggerated makeup, the dancers are like dolls trapped in a dollhouse, contending with complicated power relationships involving each other and a folding chair. The choreography, which shows off the dancers’ strong ballet technique, is dramatic, quick, and expansive, rising and ebbing with the arc of the études. Though there is some back-and-forth between the music and dancing in Hourglass, the movement primarily responds to the music. The music also has a strong visual presence: the piano is often “onstage” in shot of the camera, and Dala even performs his own gestural sequence in full costume and makeup.

RM: I noticed the music had a prominent part to play in Hourglass. Can you expand on your relationship to music in your work?

IC: I think because I started as a young musician, music has always been there as my main source of inspiration. Even when I created with non-classical themes—I did a piece entitled Joy Ride which was created to American music from the ’60s, like Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin and John Lennon— the soundscore of a piece was always the main theme, relating to something that has to do with a specific time within our history or culture. For Hourglass, I wanted the work to not only read as a dance performance but also as a concert—that the movement would stand on its own terms but also “support the music” so that the audience can experience both.

The first opera I directed was in 2016 and it made sense to me because I always try and tell a story through this abstract form of art that is dance. Maybe it’s a story that isn’t necessarily linear, but one that is layered and abstract. Still, [music helps] to have a certain arc within the piece that conveys a certain journey that the dancers are going through. Those two things—that meeting point of storytelling and music—is opera. I studied theatre and visual arts and music and dance (again, these are the four main components of opera), so it was very natural to me in that sense. I could add that I was always excited by opera. To quote the No Manifesto of Yvonne Rainer, I would say I’m the opposite. I would say yes to everything. Yes to spectacle, yes to virtuosity, yes yes yes! And I think opera is very much that. It is very much the ‘Yes Manifesto'.

RM: Yes, that’s interesting. In some ways, the No Manifesto was the start of postmodernism and minimalism in dance. If you see dance as coming through the lineage of opera, it used to be “extra” and so much more. I admit that I haven’t experienced much opera, living in Vancouver. How did you come into contact with opera?

Dancers Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley

Flick Harrison

IC: It’s a good question. I think there’s a reason so many of us don’t come into contact with opera as dance artists. So often in opera the dance is outdated, and pushed into the background as a refresher or “mouth cleanser” and it’s not the most exciting part. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve seen a lot of opera productions that I did not enjoy in the past. I was interested in that because I’m interested in the arts in general—in theatre, and film and visual arts; one of the things I enjoy most in the world is to experience and study the different forms of art. I started imagining ways that opera can be a wonderful, exciting contemporary form of art.

Postmodernism, Modernism, and Definitive Terms in General

Before we continue, let’s pause for a moment to think critically about the Western and exclusive nature of terms like “modernism” and “postmodernism” in dance. The definitive, academic terms assume there is an all encompassing lineage of development in dance history that loosely corresponds to that of the visual arts and music over the 20th century. Such a framework is damaging in many respects. It is inherently hierarchical in its assumption that “what came before” is untrue or undeveloped, colonial in its blatant disregard of cultural and folk forms and has pushed a predominantly white perspective.

RM: I wonder if the minimalist, dance-first and dance-only approach of many contemporary dance artists has been directly influenced by this codified way of thinking: that less is more, or that stripping away all other theatrical layers is somehow more “authentic”?

IC: One of the arguments I often have with postmodernist dance is that the strength of postmodernism is layered and relating to the past, not by saying “no” to it but by quoting it or creating a multi-layered work that is in conversation with the past. When you think of postmodernism in visual arts, what postmodernism does is quote. It would take the Mona Lisa, for instance, and make a comment on it that would be embodied in the creation.

With dance, because our main instrument is our bodies, and the body is always contemporary in the sense that it’s one of a kind—only you have your body and only I have my body—so postmodernism in dance tends to strip all layers. In the minimalist approach it stays only with the body, shies away from music or uses music as a background texture as opposed to something that has its own agency. I’m interested in the collaborative conversation between the arts, and that is opera.

RM: For the modernists, there was this inherent appreciation or at least knowledge of the arts and dance in culture and making a statement against it really affected people. In the 21st century, people may not have the same experience of appreciating stage performance first so they can find postmodernism dance alienating.

IC: I agree, but I also think it is connected to one of the negative things modernism as a concept has done. When we think of modernism, it is a very European, masculine way of looking at the history of the arts. Modernists basically said: past—bad; present—good. What they did (Picasso is a very clear example) was break with the past. They thought romanticism or classicism is bad because it’s untrue, irrelevant and insincere, and so we’ll break it apart. It is a very masculine act. There is this sense in our history that what happened before me is bad and what I am bringing is good. I can’t stand that approach. It seems so white supremacist

RM: And how do you think that plays out in the dance scene?

IC: I think with postmodernism in dance especially, because dance is relatively young as an art form—it was only declared an art form in the late 19th century, before that it was always connected to music as part of a concert or opera—we’re still trying to find our way. Of course, dance has existed since the beginning of time, but not as an “art form” in our Western cultural context. I think we [as dancers] are still trying to compete with other art forms—to take agency and say ‘this is what we do, this is what dance is.’ It’s a little like growing pains, like a child saying ‘this is me, this is what I do!’ We could look for alternatives in a more creative way.

RM: Along those lines, the experience of a postmodern artwork when you don’t have the history (whether it be dance or visual arts or opera) can be so limited. And so for you, coming into a milieu in Vancouver where people may have different levels of experience with opera, what would you say is your goal for the audience experience?

IC: It’s worth mentioning that there is so much opera in Vancouver—there’s Vancouver Opera, a beautiful company, and there are many independent smaller opera companies here that are doing a wonderful job. But I think so many of us as artists are kind of segregated in our own artistic discipline, and we create these mini communities where we all watch each other’s work, and it creates these mini pockets or bubbles.

With the audience—I invest a lot of thought and energy into creating a coherent world within my pieces. It’s not that I’m trying to please the audience, which is impossible— some people will love the avant-garde somatic work and some people love the more balletic traditional work. I do what I do, I do what I love, and what I believe in, and say what needs to be said, but I definitely take the audience into consideration. I try to make sure what I am saying is translated well, and would have the effect that I want it to have. It makes me most happy when I hear that people who are not necessarily dance viewers (but are still passionate for the arts and life) enjoy it or at least it starts a discussion.

I think if we were to be more inspired by different disciplines and artists in our community, we would all benefit. Because in the same way that many of us do not attend opera productions, so many opera people do not attend dance productions. Imagine if it were different! If we would benefit from the knowledge and interests of the visual arts, theatre, puppetry, and vice versa. They would benefit from our knowledge and perspective. I think this is what I’m trying to do in opera and this is what excites me most—that you come to watch an opera production and it’s actually a dance performance.

RM: With Ne.Sans, it seems like you are bringing multiple elements together, to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

IC: Yes, I think that’s a great way of describing it. It’s bigger than the sum of its parts, but it also highlights each part.

Dancers Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley

Hourglass Photo by Theo Bell

Orfeo ed Eurydice

In April, Cohen finished three months of artistic residency with The Dance Centre. During that time, he developed and expanded an existing work Orfeo ed Eurydice, a reimagining of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 1762 opera. Excerpts of the work-in-progress were pre-recorded and livestreamed from April 6-12, 2021.

Even in non-pandemic times, the project would have been ambitious—involving seven dancers, five opera singers, a costume designer and Leslie Dala as music director/ pianist. After months of watching bare-bones digital shows, it was almost overwhelming on April 6 to see so many bodies on the digital stage in full costume and make-up. Orfeo ed Eurydice is delightful in its visual complexity; the choreography frames and guides the eye, blackouts act as a palette cleanser, and subtitles translate the lyrics to give context to the scenes.

Orfeo ed Euridice

Still shot from video taken by Yasuhiro Okada

Something about the drama of it all succinctly captures human emotion: the human heart, after all, is a complex, layered thing. In a postshow talkback, Cohen said he wants to bring “the human body” back to the world of opera, and in this early presentation of the work, the body is a central focus. As Shane Hanson, (Orfeo) sings a lament in Act One, the dancers peel away from him, covering their faces with their hands and moving slowly as if consumed with grief. Their fully embodied expression visually anchors the scene, heightening my experience of the centuries-old music.

In this new work, artistic disciplines take turns in the spotlight, bolstered and supported by the others. And as he moves forward with Ne.Sans, Cohen is achieving his larger goal of connecting artistic communities through collaboration and multidisciplinary research.

Rachel (Silver) Maddock is an independent dance artist, writer and choreographer. She holds a Diploma of Dance Studies from Trinity Laban (UK) and a BA in Visual Culture & Performance Studies (SFU).

Idan Cohen is an opera director and choreographer. He holds a BA in Choreography from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and an MA in DanceChoreography. He was born and raised in Israel, Kibbutz Mizra. The socialist community of the Kibbutz had a deep affect on his artistic life and work. Since 2005, he's been creating, performing and teaching successfully as an international award-winning director and dance artist.