Extract from: ABC NEWS
By Monique Schafter and Myles WearringUpdated Thu at 9:50pm
Map: Sydney 2000
Israel's Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company is one of the world's most original and innovative forces in modern dance.
It was founded in 1973 on a kibbutz — a communal settlement — by Yehudit Arnon, an Auschwitz survivor who developed a dance village which continues as the company's home base.
Photo: Yehudit Arnon, founder of Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, died in 2013.
The company is currently in Australia for the world premiere of a new work called Horses In The Sky at the Sydney Opera House.
Arnon died three years ago, but the dancers continue to live and work together.
"She was a very strong and special woman that I loved," artistic director Rami Be'er says of Arnon.
"She had to stand in the snow (as) punishment by the Nazis because she refused to dance for them. Then she told herself that if she gets out alive from this, she will dedicate herself to dance. And that's how she later founded the company."
Life in a kibbutz
Be'er was three when he was placed in a kibbutz kindergarten where Arnon was the teacher."She recognised, that's what she told me, when I was three years old, my talent, my ability, my potential."
Photo: Artistic director Rami Be'er says the kibbutz the dancers live in is "a very special place".
He joined the company in 1981 as a dancer, went on to be a choreographer, and became artistic director in 1996.
Be'er's company is based at Kibbutz Ga'aton in northern Israel — one of around 200 kibbutzim around the country.
"It's eight kilometres from the Lebabon border and it's a very special place," he says.
Dancer Nadav Gal describes life on the kibbutz as being like living in small village.
"Everyone knows everyone, you have just one store, or one coffee place, one big centre and this is almost the whole village, the whole kibbutz," she says.
"It's really developed in the past few years as a dance village. Lots of dancers come all over the world to be there.
"Because we are such a small place, the people really get to know each other. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. It makes us more together."
'I'm not a word person at all'
Photo: Dancers Roni Ben Simon and Nadav Gal.
Dancer Roni Ben Simon says each member of the company has their own individual style.
"Each one is his own personality and you can really see on stage different movement. We are not like robots, the same.
"Actually every dancer has his own movement, his own colour and I think it's because the kibbutz is allowing this to happen."
"I'm not a word person at all, so it was really a way for me to belong to something, to feel confident, to feel beautiful on stage, this is what it gives me."
"It's the safe place to do and be whatever you want," Gal says.
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