Sharon Eyal describes dance as the “best language,” perhaps because our movements—those mannerisms and tics, both unique and universal—communicate meaning with a primal urgency that words often lack. Eyal developed her somatic vocabulary early. She trained in classical ballet as a child, and in 1990, as a teenager, began her professional journey in contemporary dance. First as a company dancer, then as artistic director, and later as the in-house choreographer. In 2012, she left to found L-E-V—now S-E-D—with her partner, Gai Behar. This company has been the primary platform for her choreographic output ever since. Her work—visceral, hypnotic, repetitive—has been performed in some of the world’s most iconic and unexpected locations. At the Palais de Tokyo and the Sydney Opera House. On the Christian Dior catwalk at Paris Fashion Week and in a car park in Peckham. Eyal describes her work not as choreography, but as “experience and dreaming,” a way of connecting people to one another and the world around them. “When I’m creating, I’m not thinking,” she tells us. “I’m just creating, from my heart to the art.”
hube: Dance is one of our oldest forms of communication. When we speak through movement and gesture, we often find more freedom than we do with words. Are you always on the side of freedom?
Sharon Eyal: Dance is the best language. I think freedom is not just freedom, for me freedom is a system, and it’s organised, and it has a very precise atmosphere. Freedom comes on top of very, very strict things. Anyway, I love much more to dance than to talk, so this is a short answer.
Photography by DAVIT GIORGADZE
