In Still, Guernica Maayan Cohen Marciano extends her ongoing exploration of the body in relation to the tradition in which it is rooted, this time she addresses the iconic masterpiece ‘Guernica’ by the artist Pablo Picasso. The work seeks to examine how the contemporary body of the second decade of the 21st century can relate to it, deconstruct it, and inquire about relationships between subjects through it. Through a persistent choreographic practice of slowness and stillness, the work dismantles the way we look at tragedy, pain, and violence and thus expands our perspective on the human, the brutal, on tragedy and healing.
Creation by: Maayan Cohen Marciano
Dancers and creators: Gal Levinson, Yehuda Dromi, Avigail Kochav.
The work is supported by ‘Mifal Hapais Council for culture and arts’ and enjoys the residency program at ‘Ta Tarbut Kiryat Hamelacha ‘, ‘Yad Elayahu Art Center’.
Maayan Cohen Marciano is an independent dancer and choreographer, she holds a B.A in movement and choreography from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, she also studied M.A. studies in the interdisciplinary Program in Arts, Tel Aviv University. Maayan is a guest lecturer at TLV University, Kibbutzim College of Education, and The Israeli Society for Dance Research. Maayan uses liberty and artistic courage in order to create new aesthetics based on deep research and a careful listening during the process, Her works span across the axis between body art and the plastic arts, and the material serving as the foundation of her choreographic work is the nude body. Maayan works develop an embodied discursive sphere in which she relates to the body captured in the traditions of plastic arts and photography, while the living body dissects them, reacts to them, and conceptualizes its present position to the tradition that shapes it. Maayan uses well-formulated movement mechanisms which based on reduction, a minimalist movement choice, and excessive use of it, purposely intending to allow the movement to dig deep into the body and expose its cultural layers such that the body is revealed as a cultural palimpsest. Maayan's objective is to direct attention through these enactments, to question art through the body, and to shape an autonomous space in which the body breaks apart and reassembles, releasing and reclaiming a wide variety of cultural and social contexts, and acquiring various essences and meanings.
