(VOVworld) – Dancing has been regarded as an integral part of religious, national, community, and family celebrations of the Jewish people. In VOV24/7’s “Culture Rendezvous” this week, we will talk to ArtLana, an Israeli duo about Israeli contemporary dance, which has won international acclaims.

Q: Hello! Welcome to Vietnam and thank you for joining us today! Firstly can you introduce a little bit about your troupe?

A: It’s just me and Ilana. I’m Artour Astman and Illana Bellahsen. We are a couple. Both of us are dancers and painters. We dance together some times. We dance in different companies, different projects.

Q: Have you ever performed in other countries?

A: Of course, we perform a lot in other countries in Europe, Asia…but not with this piece of dance. This piece is the first time in Asia.

ArtLana duo in a performance in Hanoi (Photo: japanfoudation)

Q: Is this the first time you have been in Vietnam? How do you feel?

A: Yeah. We love it very much. We’re very exciting to be here. We’ve been already in a relationship for ten years. And this is the first time that both of us, just two of us going outside for a tour, so we’re very excited. People here are amazing. This is a big opportunity for us to rest and also to share our art.

Q: Can you tell us some of your achievements in dancing?

A: Illana got one of the best prizes in Israel: the “Best Dancer” in 2007. And I was in TV competitions also, so people quite know me. The best prize for us is people coming to our performance and they know us. Each time we perform, they come and see what it is.

Q: What pieces of dance will you perform in Vietnam?

A: This is quite a naïve piece. It’s full of love. It’s really about the relationship of ours. This is the piece created when we’ve just left the big company. It’s kind of welcome to the world of the dance from two of us. The piece was created from our exhibition of the paintings that is called “ArtLana”. ArtLana is Artour and Illana. It’s two names together. We felt that we want to bring this picture into the dance, so we created this piece.  We perform here just a half of the piece.

ArtLana has won international acclaims thanks to their creativity in movements (Photo: VOV)

Q: Wonderful! What makes Israel’s contemporary dance special to the world?

A: Israel is very full of projects and companies, each of them are very different from others. I know that people from all over the world like to come to Israel to learn because Israel has many high-levels dancers, especially contemporary dance.

Q: So are there any differences between contemporary dance in Israel and neighboring countries?

A: I think it’s connected to the lives and how we live with all the pressures. We think that we’re keeping too much inside, so we try to bring it out, because we don’t know what gonna be the next day, so we just explode. We are not waiting, we are doing doing doing all the time. 

The ArtLana piece of dance speaks of the relationship between women and men (Photo: japanfoundation)

Q: Why do you choose dancing cuz you said that you are a painter?

A: Yeah I’m also a painter, but I choose dancing for my life because my mother was a dancer. She has a big company in Russia. And my grandmother was a ballet dancer. They are very close to me when I was a child, so I decided to do it. 

Q: How do you create the movements in a dance? For example in this piece of dance?

A: We create some stories and then we create movements for the stories. Each time, from the beginning of the story, the movements can be changed in the live performance. This piece is about the combination between two people, the relationship between woman and man. Each of them resists his own color and energy.

Q: Thank you for talking with us. I wish you had a great time in Vietnam and good luck with your performance! For VOV24/7’s Culture Rendezvous segment, I’m Thu Ly. Catch you next time!