Dance Dialogues with Flexer & Sandiland and Galit Liss

About Dance Dialogues with Flexer & Sandiland and Galit Liss 

In this Dance Dialogues event, choreographers Yael Flexer and Nic Sandiland are joined in conversation by Galit Liss, independent choreographer, artist and director of The Gila Project running extensive movement workshops and creating professional touring works with women over the age of 60.

This event opens with an informal improvisation showing by the Acting Our Age class from 4.15-4.30pm. 

Galit Liss initiated The Gila Workshops - Movement and Stage Art for Women of the Elderly Age in 2009.  Since then, she has been working, researching, and creating with more than 1000 elderly women throughout Israel. Redefining the aging body through movement and dance, Galit Liss has created a unique methodology for working with elderly women. Alongside her artistic work, Galit lectures and presents in artist meetings that deal with creative processes and the connection between arts and society, dedicated to challenging stereotypes, specifically around ageing.

In this discussion event, Yael and Nic will explore what inspired Galit to work with women over 60, what the main principles are that guide her teaching and artistic methodology, and how her artistic practice emerges from working with the aging body. Showing excerpts from Galit’s works GO & Blue Zone, Galit, Yael & Nic will discuss the works' socio-political significance alongside the intergenerational and inter-cultural dimensions of Acting Our Age.

Running time: 90 minutes

Latecomers: will be admitted.

Trigger warnings: none.

Biographies:

Galit Liss: Choreographer

Galit is an independent choreographer, artistic director and founder of The Gila Project, an artistic space for mature women. She's a member of the Israeli Choreographers Association. In 2022 Galit received the prestigious Rosenblum Prize for the Performing Arts of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality. As part of her artistic and social agenda, Liss creates with elderly women who are non-dancers. Her performances focus on the physiological aesthetics of the mature body in contemporary dance and have been performed in festivals in Israel and abroad. Galit is the creator and artistic director of the Gila Dance School for movement and stage art for mature women. There she brings the GILA practice - her unique methodology for working with the elderly body that she has been developing for the last 15 years. Her latest performance Blue Zone premiered at the Israel Festival in 2020. She is a graduate of the programme Artists for Social Change at Musrara School of Photography and holds a M.Mus in arts from the Academy of Music and Dance, Jerusalem. Alongside her artistic work, Liss lectures and presents at artist gatherings that explore creative processes, the connection between art and society, dedicated to challenging stereotypes, particularly around ageing.

Yael Flexer: Choreographer and Dancer

Co-Artistic Director of Flexer & Sandiland together with digital artist Nic Sandiland. To date she has created 14 full-length touring productions for the company touring throughout the UK and internationally. Recent company productions include Imagining Otherwise (2020-2023), Curiouser (2018-19), Disappearing Acts (2016) and the interactive works Border Control (2022) Trip Hazard (2014-2021), The Hum (2017-2020) and Weighting (2016-2017) by Nic Sandiland. Flexer & Sandiland are align artists at South East Dance and resident artists at Chichester University and work in partnerships with festivals and venues across the UK and internationally. Commissions as an independent artist include among others: E-Werk Tanz Festival (Freiburg, Germany), Trinity-Laban, mapdance, Motus Dance Festival, Scottish Dance Theatre, National Youth Dance Company Scotland, Maslool, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Recent comissions include London Contemporary Dance School, The Place, Dance East CATS, Hull Dance, Sandnes Kulturhus and Stavanger University, Norway and the over 60s dance companies Three Score Dance & Encore East. Yael has recently been appointed as Reader in Dance at The University of Chichester where she directs the University’s postgraduate touring company.

Nic Sandiland: Flexer & Sandiland 

Co-Artistic Director is a UK based artist whose work explores new choreographic forms through installation, performance and film. He originally trained as an electronics engineer before studying dance and performance in the late 80s. Over the past 30 years he has made movement-based works focusing on simple pedestrian choreography. He is particularly interested in engaging the everyday movements of the viewer in a choreographic context, often creating works which draw on interactive digital technology to do this. His work has been commissioned by such organisations as: the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Arts Centre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and The Brighton Festival, and his film work has been shown worldwide and has been regularly broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4). Nic is also a senior lecturer in fine art at Middlesex University.

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