Negiot

As Lian Kizner (the creator, choreographer, writer and co-director) said: “In 2020 when the covid pandemic broke out, this project felt more important than before. During the times where there is a fear of being close to other humans because of a virus, wearing masks, not being able to see all the emotion that is expressed in the mouth. Being quarantined away from people for so long, that after that, hugging someone felt like a reward.” - Based on this, our objective for this project was clear, to lyrically project the pandemic’s emotional/psychological effects onto the screen through rhythm and movement.

Due to the pandemic, the dancers had to do all of their rehearsals via Zoom, which led the decision making process in terms of shots and style to be based completely on a pre-pandemic video of their performance, making this process be led mainly by good communication, imagination and intuition. Due to the meaning behind Negiot, the idea was to showcase their movements as a group in wide shots as much as possible and to alternate to thighter individual shots only when necessary, particularly when the dancers go through their “isolation” dance phrases.

Negiot is a piece that speaks about isolation, lack of affection and community, in a lyrically abstract way. A topic that must be talked about more during this technological era and pandemic times. The beautiful thing about dance is that it’s up to the viewer to interpret the movements and to connect them to an internal narrative that they personally relate to.