The Joshua Generation: Israeli occupation and the Bible

Abstract

Rottenberg argues Be’er’s Reservist’s Diary ’89 and Zaides’s Quiet address the Israeli– Palestinian conflict through different modalities: by portraying scenes taken from the experiences of war (Be’er) and via metaphorical emotional relationships that do not necessarily point to the conflict but come directly from it (Zaides). Rottenberg determines a dance’s politics through audiences’ reception. Because Reservist’s Diary, performed by Jewish Israelis, dramatized clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, audiences read it as being “about” the conflict and therefore political. Quiet, on the other hand, was more abstract in terms of theme and the way the movement played out through the mixed cast of Israeli and Palestinian dancers that reflected interpersonal relationships. As a result, audiences did not consider Quiet to be about the conflict or political. Whether the dances are political is not the right question to ask about these works since they are both clearly politically enmeshed. Instead, a question arising from Rottenberg’s claim that these dances expand concert dance might be, which methods of addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are most effective in doing so: making a dance that explicitly portrays violence through formalist theatrical conventions or creating a dance that appears more visually abstract built on the pain of the crisis and expressed through the bodies of its dancers? I would argue the latter, in order to manifest the structural, emotional-psychological, and human dimensions of the conflict, which are deeply engrained in audiences and performers. Moving through Conflict exemplifies the visceral stakes for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’s personal implications. The essays demonstrate how dance embodies politics and how we can better understand Israeli history through dance exchange. This important book will benefit undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of dance and the Middle East, as well as readers interested in understanding politics through the body.