Israel Institute Visiting Artist Alon Karniel’s New Work Vexations Premieres at Spring Forward Concert

Ohio State Dance welcomed Alon Karniel in spring 2022 with the support of the Israel Institute for the semester. He taught contemporary movement, improvisation and created a new work, Vexations, for our students for the Spring Forward Concert. Karniel brought his deep practice of Feldenkrais into the studio and our students gained profound experiences through this work. As part of the departments weekly Community Conversations, he shared how the Feldenkrais Method informs his creative process and discussed his 2017 solo work, "Surrounding," which was performed in the archaeology wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. 

His new work for the spring concert was inspired by Erik Satie’s Vexations, a mysterious, one-page musical work bearing the inscription: “To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.” Alon partnered with Music Supervisor Susan Chess as she developed approaches to the music in daily rehearsals and performed live with the dancers. “Shuttling between theme and variation, the music creates an environment where time becomes elastic and in whose stream the subtleties of experience emerge,” says Karniel. “The movement material used in the work is from a solo I created in 2018 as part of a 12-hour durational performance of Vexations led by dancemaker Amos Hetz.” 

Alon Karniel is a dance artist, rehearsal director and teacher based in Tel Aviv, Israel. He has danced with the Vertigo Dance Company and a range of choreographers including Noa Dar, Dafi Altabeb, Gil Kerer, Efrat Rubin, Shahar Dor, Leo Lerus and Anat Cederbaum. Karniel is certified in the Feldenkrais Method® and has studied anatomy and biomechanics in the context of the Axis Syllabus. In 2013, he created the improvisation-based solo, “Moved,” staged as part of the Julidans festival in Amsterdam.