Migrena2X2
I used to think that I am wrong somehow
I could not understand
That I was as close as I could ever be to myself
When love grew inside of me
So did destruction
Waves of intensity, joy, and excitement
Were accompanied by silent thoughts about death
Not my own
Not terror, nor fear
But a bittersweet truth
Of no-immortality
As if it is my first lesson in a path
I learn that
Art is undoing what I know
Creation is an end as much as it is a beginning
Decay will nourish (as they say in Butoh)
Think of the dead as you rise
Think about the living in your fall
You are flowers.
Everything that is alive, that is precious
Experiences pain
I often think that much like
A woman’s bleeding
Even my migraines
Are a reminder
That I am a part of something
migrena2x2 >>
creation 2020/21

I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart
still I feel nothing or everything at once
I perform a series of rolls on your carpet
A memory of future past
Sweating bodies in limbo
red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows
I can do nothing but
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender
Small children sharp knives
Can’t hurt me anymore
I am far
inside
my armor

There is a wound in my chest
I am not sure that it is mine
It is a spirit wound - It belongs to someone else
Perhaps it belongs to someone right now,
Or even to me in another space and time.
I cannot close it
How can you close a spirit wound
“Here doctor, you cannot see it but it is there - close it”
The pain of a spirit wound is different
You can ignore it, you can fight it
But eventually the tide carries you in
It is frightening and comforting at once,
To submit to the pain of someone else’s wound
Sometimes I wish I had a spirit hand to go through it
I think it could be a gate
To another story
To another life
For a while I resisted the call, I tried to close the gate.
Now, when I hear it - I let go, my eyes are waterfalls
I used to wonder what opened the wound to begin with, and what could close it
I thought I needed to see a spirit doctor.
But somehow I already knew from before I could speak - that it will be there with me forever
I used to think that the pain will consume me,
That my body will fold and collapse into the wound, but it doesn't.
I feel spaces opening up inside of me.
So I try to look at it now as a gesture of balance
A certain darkness I carry
In order to remember something that I do not understand yet
That perhaps
Somewhere else in time and space
Someone is carrying my wound.
I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart
still I feel nothing or everything at once
I perform a series of rolls on your carpet
A memory of future past
Sweating bodies in limbo
red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows
I can do nothing but
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender
Small children sharp knives
Can’t hurt me anymore
I am far
inside
my armor


I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart
still I feel nothing or everything at once
I perform a series of rolls on your carpet
A memory of future past
Sweating bodies in limbo
red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows
I can do nothing but
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender to
Surrender
Small children sharp knives
Can’t hurt me anymore
I am far
inside
my armor
We were not prepared.
But if we practice the fall,
it will slowly get softer.
We will learn to be
aware of our body falling,
as it is
falling,
knowing how much time remains until we hit the ground,
and prepare our limbs
for the landing.
And when we land,
in one piece or a few, or many,
we will trust the glue
inside of us
to bring them all together
until we recover.
And perhaps the world
will be slightly different now,
but our heart will be open
and our body strong enough,
to continue
falling.

One of the first things a baby learns to perceive is depth
And so, we spend most of our life
in fear of falling.
We wrap ourselves in layers of protection,
avoid certain places or situations,
make decisions to keep ourselves safe.
We try to control our destiny,
we try to control nature.
Then, when it comes eventually,
and it always does - it is a crash.

We practice alignment
It is important to make sure that the knee
is in the same direction of the toes,
keeping the back at the back
and the front at the front.
But life, like a wild dance, is never aligned.
It throws us constantly and
instantly in many directions
It doesn’t care about sides.
So perhaps it is good -
Sometimes
In order to prepare,
To practice no alignment.
supported by
Collider AIR / Contemporary Calgary
LAKE Studios Berlin
Fonds Darstellende Künste #takecare
performance, texts, images, and editing by Yotam Peled
video recording by Agustin Farias and Nabu Taka
On my last visit the chiropractor has told me to search under my ribcage, and so, as the migraine begins and my neck stiffens, I reach out to my golf ball.
I place it under my shoulder blade and surrender to the hardness of it, slowly shifting positions. I imagine the ball piercing holes into my armor, I let my flesh melt to create space for it. As I lie down I am reflecting on where my pain begins.
If I could decide on a point in time and space, if it is at all possible, it would be when I left the Kibbutz. It is also when my migraines began. My Heimet, the Kibbutz, was communist - but not necessarily only as a system, or at least I did not care for it back then. It was communist simply because it belonged to a community. It belonged to everyone, and also to none somehow. My appearance, my gender, my sexuality, my house, money, success, all of these didn’t seem to matter so much back then, and I never bothered to define myself through them, or my position to them. We were all part of a tiny utopia, a lost paradise, at least in my eyes back then as a child. Life was simple, and small somehow.
Small in comparison to the vastness of nature, to the wild surrounding us. Home was a resting place, a camp in the wild, from which I left to explore my little green universe. Sometimes I had partners, allies for these investigations, but I was often alone, and I liked it.
When we left, I felt torn. I cried for a while. It was taken away from me - this universe. It was when I began, inevitably, to see and understand myself through the eyes of others. I began questioning everything, and finding binary solutions. I began having an idea of what I need to be, which seemed to be more and more distant from what I desired to be, or what I simply was. I began constructing an armor, layer by layer.
The layers are countless.
I was, all of a sudden, in a land that confronted me with my queerness. That marked the soft and the wild, which were my strengths, as weaknesses. I was reminded daily that I was the other. That I was strange. That the way I talk, walk, stand, and dream, is wrong. I was confronted with a notion of masculinity. It was clearly described to me, verbally or otherwise, as an exclusive club I could never have access to. And I tried, very hard. I tried distancing from myself so much to fit in. I buried my Heimat.
It took me about 20 years, and moving to a new home, to a new continent, to face this pain. To go through the archive of my body, to trace its source. My path as a dancer, as a performer, as a maker, as an artist, as a raver has been subconsciously leading me there. Movement has been a way of slowly melting down the layers of armor, peeling metal, skin, flesh, bone, to reach the spirit. My moving body has been a vessel on a journey to the source, to points before and during the transformation. Dance has been a journey of surrendering to the subconscious.
Today I understand that in order to survive I need to regain my soft and my wild.
I see no other way for me to travel this world.

The smell of a forest after a night of rain is one of my favorites.
I go out running in the morning, there are very few people along the path
We nod and smile as we pass each other
I look to the horizon and I am reminded of an island in the south of Japan
Or another place I went running in, hoping to get lost knowing I will find my way back.
I notice that my hands are curled up in fists
As if preparing for some unknown prophecy or danger
I look at them with a smile, and the fingers unfold like a breathing flower