“Adama”

Adama is a cultural center, built in a fashion that

allows each one that walks through its gates to take

off his shoes, dance, take part and grow.

In the ‘Spice Route Quarter’ of Mitzpe-Ramon, a

massive industrial hanger was alternated into a large

culture hall. Primarily it’s a dance and movement

center and the home base of the Liat Dror and Nir Ben

Gal dance company.

However, the concept that initiated it is much wider.

It is a dance school that operates like no other school.

It has a full studying program (three days a week), yet

beyond the dance studies, the students receive artistic

and general tools that would allow them to face the

world ready and whole both as dancers and people.

The school also enables the local residents, as well

as neighboring communities and passing tourists to

enjoy a variety of lessons and activities, from yoga and

relaxation lessons to free style dance parties.

The center imports and exports a diversity of cultural

activities in and out of Mitzpe-Ramon; dance courses

students from high schools around the country come

here for two days workshops, teachers and artists

from the center of Israel come to teach and perform

within the school, and the dance company performs

throughout Israel, being an ambassador of the center,

Mitzpe-Ramon and the Negev.

The artistic spring of the center is dance and

movement; however, other arts such as music and

video art, film, theatre and art performance are

represented. Therefore a multi artwork process as

well as the interrelations between the arts, becomes a

fascinating part of the studies in the center.

In order to enrich the students, the residents of the

area and guests from the center of Israel, the center

produces art festivals during the three Regalim (three

jewish high holydays) in which we always intertwine

dance shows performed by the company and students,

along with guest artists.

To facilitate these activities that may require a long

stay, the hangar is prepared for accommodation in the

same spirit and guides of the cultural activity.

The kitchen is vegetarian and partially organic, based

on the finest production of our home.

Sleeping is possible in a camping yard facing the

desert, or in small sleeping spaces. Whoever wants

to retreat in to the silence of the desert can be

accommodated also when there are no cultural

activities.

Besides the engagement in culture and art, the center

is involved in the preservation and developing of our

natural environment. Environmental Principles such

as recycling, preservation of resources and energy,

and cultivation of organic vegetable garden and

chicken-coup, are integrated in the activities of the

center and learned here. The lovely garden, slowly

becoming an oasis, proclaims so.

This is apparently the fundamental nature of the

interrelations between the two systems.

Between each two systems that we choose, between

each two worlds, the two coexist in our body.

The one initiates the self, the other works better

when it is passive. We can examine the function of our

heart and digestive system versus the function of our

limbs, the former know their job and do it on their own

accord, the latter welcomes us to initiate and perform.

The union of the two creates a home within us, the

more they coexist with understanding and acceptance,

the more stable and free our home will be.

Sometimes when we follow only one inclination, we

lose our ability to connect, accept and heal. We loose

our freedom.

When there is no anger in us we are free; when anger

appears we are captured.

The ability to release anger builds our physical power,

builds our strength. When anger exists there is a

dependency in another person or in a thing.

When anger disappears correlation begins. That

means that the two systems, the two worlds have

independent movements and cycles.

Dance and observation lead and guide us into the

two worlds. Through them we learn our strength, its

streaming, its source and its ability to formulate.

One brings the interior outside, the other, the exterior

inside. Dance demonstrates us our strength through

action, observation does it through silence. Both

systems guide us to acknowledge the periodicity of

movement; they lead us to accept both stability and

freedom. In order to create an electric circle there

must be a plus and a minus, likewise in the cycles of

our lives. We are all different beings, we have different

cycles, but the structures are the same.

The plus and minus, the good and bad will teach us

about the streaming force, that electric force that

engages and acts. Similarly we will learn to shut it

down, to turn off the light. We will allow our body to

know the elasticity that lies in the transition between

the two worlds, in knowing them and their signs.

When there is a change, when we must follow a

teaching, then it’s a learning that heals, a healing that

teaches. It is an expression followed by rest and rest

that is wholly an expression. The time is now and we

work in the present.

We will go through the past and look at the future, but

we will know that the source of our strength is always

here and now, in modesty, simplicity and routine. Each

time we pass a different gate, but all gates lead us

to the same house, the same kingdom, a kingdom of

knowing our selves and all we are.

“Adama” Dance School

Liat Dror Nir Ben Gal The Company

Along with the group we established a school that

allows scholars to learn an intricate body movement language.

The way we work combines minimum and maximum,

the supportive healing movement as well as the

professional dance with its accuracy and complex physicality.

The school is designated for adults with a background

in dance and arts involving bodywork, who wish to be

trained both in professional and healing dance.

If you have been dancing and performing with groups

on stages for many years and something was dulled,

hurt, you are invited to try and dance from a different

source of strength. If you are beginners, who are

intrigued by the world of dance- the movement of the

body and the movement of life, come and try to set

things in motion from a different place. If you have

been practicing martial arts, methods of healing and

have been looking for a clear, simple and effortless

move, you are welcome to come and expand your spectrum.

It takes great freedom and strong self-discipline

to contain the vastness, to inhabit life as a place of

possibility. Adama Hangar and the desert, provide

support and an environment for learning.

The school offers a three years training course which

focuses on these contents:

* Choreography

* Learning a variety of techniques

* Studying the group’s repertoire as a foundation

* Dance theory

* Independent work – opportunity to build and create

* Production of shows

* Teaching and service - passing on the knowledge acquired

* Work involving the cycles of the body and the earth

 three days a week - Sunday, Monday,Tuesday.

The program begins in October and concludes by the

end of June. A summer class and teachers training are

offered in July.

In each and every one of us there are two main

systems. One may distinguish them in many ways, or

give them different names, though they are all based

on the same principle.

One expresses, gives and acts

The other listens, receives and rests

Resembling our nervous system, there are actions we

control and actions that happen by themselves.

Peace, wholeness and health are derived from our

ability to distinguish them as well as to perceive both

as parts of one cycle.

In our regular life we often tend to see only one part

of the whole, or at least to incline only to one of the

systems. whether I am a doctor I heal, whether I am

sick I must be healed. whether I am a teacher I teach,

whether I am a student I must learn.

Undeniably there is a connection between the two, a

we realized the meaning of the gap between words

and between actions. Dance has become a part of a formation of life.

Gradually we realized that not wandering resulted in

the accountability to the place where we work. Bravely,

through building the hangar in Mitzpe-Ramon, a

supposedly god’s forgotten town, we found god in

the vast spaces of the crater and the beating of its

heart. We realized that not all could be conquered and

negotiated, that we loose what we gain with power,

and what is gained with compassion stays with us.

According to the tradition of the desert, we made

Adama Hangar a resting-place where anyone can

come to rest, dance and contemplate. One can gather

energy for a journey, remember what is left behind

or approach mistreated issues. In the vast spaces,

between the blossoms of the garden paths and the

shadows of the huts, with sunsets and sunrises which

dye the desert purple, with children’s laughter and

cry, herbal brews and smells coming from the kitchen,

we can go back to the simplicity, humbleness, joy and

intimacy that may have been forgotten.

We learn the physical qualities that generate dance

and enable freedom, through observation of our

surroundings and ourselves, thus we get to know our

strength. It is the sound that creates a vibration in

which all is possible. It’s a small, humble yet brave

dance streaming straight from the legs and the heart.

Dance it, and you will experience all that is here, all

that has passed, and will return home peacefully and

full of love to its glimmering lights and its only light.

Any action or act that would make us forget ourselves

from the lightning dazzle and sparks would only inflict

darkness and turn off that spark inside us. Accepting

darkness, discomfort and imperfection would lead

the water to the desert, blossom and amplify the abundance.

 ליאת דרור ניר בן גל הלהקה

Language of Dance

To us dance has always been a language. It was

not the physical capacity of the body to perform

complicated steps that fascinated us so much,

but the incredible ability to communicate without

words, as in diving into the depth of the ocean

where we observe and listen in silence.

During the ten years of our work in the center of

Israel, we acquired skills of accuracy and discipline

that enable us to express through the body a language with no words.

“Two Rooms Apartment” was the first work

in which we formed a simple direct language,

followed by other works. Slowly, other dancers

hare joined us, and we became a company. The

work “Inta Omri” was our door to the world.

Traveling from one stage to another in Israel

and abroad helped us expand a spectrum of

communication, by using the personal and the local as an innovative language.

As we grew we felt that we are on the verge of

loosing our physical home and that our bodies

are no longer stable and supportive structures.

Through many questions and realizations we created

the “Dance of Nothing”, a work that emerged from

a new core and made us realize it was time to move

from one reality into another in the heart of the desert.

It seems that we wanted to acquire a new tool in

the desert with the intensity of a place with no

stimulations, full of silence and endlessly vast. We

wanted to face fears such as loosing our love for

dance and ourselves as a result of our professional

dedication in the city. We left the beautiful lights of

Paris behind us, where we had last performed and moved to Mitzpe-Ramon.

In Mitzpe-Ramon we began learning a different

kind of art; an art that believes in its ability to heal

wounds and doesn’t dwell on them, which accepts

our weaknesses. It seems that all structures cannot

function only with the strongest and the fastest- that is

aggressiveness. Strength is derived from accepting the weak.

By living here we realize that domination increases the

bleeding of wounds, and results in a collapse. In the

desert we breath deeper, our pace of life is spouting

out of our hearts. We learned of growth and healing,

Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal are a duo of dancers\choreographers.

Their first work together, “Two Rooms Apartment”

won in 1987 the Israeli “Shades of Dance” prize and

later on other important international prizes, such as

the French “Bianola” and the German dance festival

in Keln, and was followed by the works “Donkeys“ and

“The Third Dance” that were successful in Israel and abroad.

In 1991 the two established a dance company and

went on creating with the dancers an innovative and

unique movement language. The company worked in

Tel-Aviv and produced several shows that gained much

attention, mostly in Europe and the United States (“In

The Passion Undertow”, “Sit-Down Get Up My Love”, “Inta Omri”, “Investigation” and others).

Their artistic path, the search for new meanings in

dance and movement along with the dialog between

the studio and “Real life”, had brought them to make

the “Dance of Nothing”. A production created in the

Loire valley in France that was shown around the

world and received great reviews. That show became

the closure of a chapter in their work.

Thus in the year 2000, realizing that dance, as a way of

life, cannot coexist with the reality surrounding them,

the couple moved with the company to Mitzpe-Ramon

in the heart of the desert, believing that this change

would create the union of dance and therapy.

“We wanted to live a life without separation, so dance

would be a part of our daily life and not a detached

art that demands a competitive and hectic life. We

wanted to return to dance from a place of dedication,

discipline and love”.

In Mitzpe-Ramon the company produced new works

which form the next step in their creative path:

“Earth”, “Don’t Ask Questions And I Won’t Tell

Lies”, “The Rite of Spring”, “Like Heals With Alike”

“Earth is Shaking”. These works mark a new way of

transforming body movement and attentiveness into a

healing process.

The work “Hold Me Now” co-produced with musicians

from the bands “Seven” and “The Prophecy Fools”

connects to the desert, to silence, a place where the

company works and dances. “Prince of Dreams” a

dance with twelve dancers and bamboo poles, was

invited to be shown at the Israel festival 2007 in

Jerusalem in 2007.

ליאת דרור נירבן גל הלהקה

Liat Dror Nir Ben Gal The Company

972-8-6595190

The association was founded in 1996 | Association 580200830

The company is being supported by the Office of Science Culture and Sports\ Culture Administration\ Dance

Department

Tel 972-8-6595190

Fax 972-3-5696191