Yonit Ben-Yehuda

Due to her vol­un­ta­ry work in the art and cul­tu­ral sce­ne (Bahn­hof eV. in Ot­ters­berg and Tor zur Welt e.V. in Is­ra­el), Yo­nit Ben-Ye­hu­da has de­ve­lo­ped an in­te­rest in com­bi­ning the so­ci­al sphe­re with per­for­ma­ti­ve arts.

Yo­nit Ben-Ye­hu­da is a trai­ned Er­leb­nis­päd­ago­gin (ex­pe­ri­en­ti­al edu­ca­tor) and a so­ci­al worker. In her B.A. stu­dies at the Hoch­schu­le für Küns­te im So­zia­len (HKS) in Ot­ters­berg she had a fo­cus on dance and thea­t­re pe­dago­gy. Her im­mer­si­on in so­ma­tic prac­tices and mo­ve­ment re­se­arch led her to Con­tact Im­pro­vi­sa­ti­on. Es­pe­ci­al­ly the in­ten­si­ve trai­ning with An­ge­la-Mara Florant and Els­ke Sei­del in Ham­burg gui­ded her to dance im­pro­vi­sa­ti­on and ex­plo­ring her mo­ve­ments.

Su­per­vi­sing in­ter­na­tio­nal camps (Lü­thi-Pe­ter­son-Camps) whe­re the fo­cus was on cul­tu­ral ex­chan­ge she has be­co­me fa­mi­li­ar with his­to­ri­cal and eth­nic dan­ces. She is par­ti­cu­lar­ly fond of Is­rae­li folk dan­ces, as they con­nect with her fa­mi­ly back­ground. She uses tho­se dan­ces in dif­fe­rent con­texts to form groups and phy­si­cal in­ter­ac­tion. Li­ving in va­rious com­mu­nities has sen­si­ti­zed her to group dy­na­mics and she sees herself using this abi­li­ty pro­fes­sio­nal­ly.

Lear­ning in an in­clu­si­ve con­text at the HKS and en­ga­ging ar­tis­ti­cal­ly in this con­text has awa­ke­ned her in­te­rest in working with mar­gi­na­li­zed peop­le. Par­ti­cu­lar­ly the ci­vil dance pro­ject HU­MAN from Prof. Hans Joa­chim Reich in Ot­ters­berg, in which va­rious so­ci­al groups ad­dres­sed hu­man rights and de­ve­lo­ped a joint per­for­mance in­spi­red her. Her par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on in the dance pro­ject has shown her that she would like to take an in­ter­di­sci­pli­na­ry ap­proach and is in­te­rested in trans­forming dance into so­ci­al are­as and com­bi­ning so­ci­al is­su­es with ar­tis­tic pro­ces­ses.

Cur­r­ent­ly she is col­la­bo­ra­ting with Stel­zen­art from Bre­men and dis­co­vering her phy­si­cal ex­pres­si­on in stilt fi­gu­res. In the MA CoDE at the Hoch­schu­le für Mu­sik und Dar­stel­len­de Kunst she would like to con­ti­nue ex­plo­ring herself in the de­ve­lop­ment of ar­tis­tic pro­ces­ses and in­ten­si­fy the link bet­ween the­me and dance and dive in de­eper in dance tech­ni­que and dif­fe­rent styles.