Queering Nationalism: Choreographic Challenges to Israeli Patriotism in Dances by Idan Cohen, Niv Sheinfeld, and Oren Laor

• In Event: Politics and Identities on the Israeli Stage

Abstract

This paper discusses two dances that challenge the relationship of queerness to the Israeli state: GENDER BENDER (2013) by Idan Cohen and COWBOY (2015) by Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor. I query the implications of meetings of queerness, theatrical dance, and corporeality on considerations of Israeli nationalism. I argue that these dances challenge the place of LGBTQIA culture in Israel during shifting relationships to Zionism and its gendered normativities. In GENDER BENDER, queerness offers utopian solutions for the 1980s collapse of democratic socialism; COWBOY shows the distance between queerness and Israeli nationalism. Through archival sources, film, and interviews with the choreographers, corroborated with theoretical discourses of Israeli nationalism and the history of Israel’s GLBTQIA community, I demonstrate the imperative to understand sexuality and nationalism as performed through the body. I first address how GENDER BENDER reflects the breakdown of Israel’s cultural model of army, masculinity, and kibbutz in the 1980s by accounting for the First Lebanon War, the changing role of kibbutz collective living within Israel’s Likud-Party-driven capitalist economy, physical culture’s masculinity, and the emergence of Israeli gay bars, homophile associations, and legal decisions for gay rights. In turn, these elements resonate with 2010s political factors that Cohen made GENDER BENDER alongside, including opposition to Likud actions against Palestine, neoliberal economic policies that eclipse communal living, and complications with LGBTQIA rights legislation. Second, I show how COWBOY indicts an insider/outsider relationship to Israeli patriotism in general, and a separation of nationalism from sexuality specifically, by presenting gay culture’s uneasy embodiment within Israel’s social landscape. In COWBOY, cruising abuts darker realities of homosexuality and Israeliness coming to terms with each other. At one point, two men, sweaty and entangled, peel off their pants to the ankles; their extended limbs, exposed buttocks, and inside-out pant legs form a Star of David, as Hatikvah plays. Another man, stripped and shivering, cries his fears of losing his wife and children if he loses his visa. Taken together, these dances show how investigating queer Israeliness through theatrical performance provides kinesthetic-empathetic modalities to address nationalism, Israeliness, and sexuality that impact investigations in Jewish and Israel studies.

Author

• Hannah Kosstrin, The Ohio State University