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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Choreographing Livability: Dance Epistemes in the Kibbutz and in the Israel Defense Forces Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13b9m6nj Author Melpignano, Melissa Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Choreographing Livability: Dance Epistemes in the Kibbutz and in the Israel Defense Forces A dissertation completed in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance By Melissa Melpignano 2019 © Copyright by Melissa Melpignano 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Choreographing Livability: Dance Epistemes in the Kibbutz and in the Israel Defense Forces by Melissa Melpignano Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Susan Leigh Foster, Chair Choreographing Livability: Dance Epistemes in the Kibbutz and in the Israel Defense Forces traces the historical articulation of dance as a source of knowledge-formation in Israeli culture through two emblematic sites of performance, between the 1940s and the 2000s. It also proposes a theoretical intervention through the elaboration of the framework of livability, through which I explore the life-stakes and the political investment entailed in dancing within the specific context of Israel, in relation to its larger ideological tensions and political shifts. My investigation across sites of performance and time-periods ultimately reassesses existing narratives that have framed “Israeli dance” primarily as a joyful, nation-building, recreational, entertaining, and energetic endeavor. In order to do so, I set out the mechanisms through which different dance experiences, even those apparently disengaged from political preoccupations, have contributed to the enhancement of governmental policies and ideological goals, in ii particular when such political maneuvers reiterated ethnonational divides or mechanisms of settler colonial hegemony. More specifically, through my scrutiny, supported by archival research, ethnography, and choreographic analysis, I unpack how dancers and choreographers in Israel have often articulated dance as a multicultural, universalistic, and humanizing practice. By doing so, I maintain, dance in Israel has generally worked as a strategy for the mitigation and concealment of larger governmental and ideological apparatuses of marginalization, commodification, or oppression. The Introduction offers an interpretation of Zionism and Israel from a biopolitical perspective, an overview of my livability framework, and a reading of my project in terms of killjoy scholarship. Chapter 1 delineates how dance in kibbutz culture has been able to support shifts in the national strategy, evolving from engine for the international affirmation of Zionism, to agent for a rearticulation of the Socialist Labor Zionist agenda, to neoliberal enterprise. Chapter 2 charts the evolution of dance in the Israel Defense Forces from bureaucratic tool for the administration of military life, to spectacular device for the recalibration of the Israeli soldier’s masculinity, to globalized digital practice that reinforces military authority from the lower levels of the military hierarchy. The Epilogue, in addition, includes four choreographic analyses that, engaging with the kibbutz, the IDF, and the issue of choreographing in Israel, show how dance can invest in a critique of systems of oppression, and expand the possibility of living more livable lives. iii The dissertation of Melissa Melpignano is approved. Anurima Banerji Janet M. O’Shea Sarah Abrevaya Stein Susan Leigh Foster, Committee Chair iv If I’ve written it’s for thought because my thoughts are worried about life it’s for those happy beings close in the evening shadow for the evening which at a stroke collapsed on the napes of necks. I was writing out of compassion for darkness for every creature that backs away pressing their spine against the railings for the marine wait – without a cry – endless. Write, I say to myself and I write to press onwards more solitary into the enigma because eyes alarm me and the silence of footsteps is my own, mine the light desert – like the moors – on the soil of the boulevard. Write because nothing is protected and the word wood shakes more frailly than the wood itself, without branches or birds because only courage can excavate high the patience until it takes the weight away from the black weight of the meadow. Antonella Anedda From Nights of Western Peace (1999) (Translated by Jamie McKendrick, revised by Melissa Melpignano)* * “Se ho scritto è per pensiero / perché ero in pensiero per la vita / per gli esseri felici / stretti nell’ombra della sera / per la sera che di colpo crollava sulle nuche. / Scrivevo per la pietà del buio / per ogni creatura che indietreggia / con la schiena premuta a una ringhiera / per l’attesa marina – senza grido – infinita. / Scrivi, dico a me stessa / e scrivo io per avanzare più sola nell’enigma / perché gli occhi mi allarmano / e mio è il silenzio dei passi, mia la luce / deserta / – da brughiera – / sulla terra del viale. / Scrivi perché nulla è difeso e la parola bosco / trema più fragile del bosco, senza rami né / uccelli / perché solo il coraggio può scavare / in alto la pazienza / fino a togliere peso / al peso nero del prato.” Antonella Anedda, Notti di Pace Occidentale (Rome: Donzelli, 1999). v Table of Contents List of Figures ………………………………..…………………………………………..….....vii Acknowledgements ……...………………...…………………………………………………..viii Vita ...…………………………………………………….……………………………...……….xi Introduction: Theorizing Livability ...………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 1. Dance in the Kibbutz ……………………………………………………………...50 Part I The “Folk Dance Assemblage”: Introducing Dance as a Kibbutz Practice ……..56 Part II Dance as Ambassador …………………………………………………………...82 Part III Rechoreographing the Kibbutz from Within …………………………………..135 Part IV Choreographing the Global Kibbutz ………………………………………….. 162 Chapter 2. Dance in the Israel Defense Forces ……………………………………………...179 Part I “Choreocracy”: Introducing Dance in the Army ……………………………....186 Part II Choreographing a Sabra Soldierhood in the IDF Dance Troupes …………..... 226 Part III The Israeli Soldier in the Digital Age ………………………………………….258 Epilogue: Choreographing Livability in Israel ……………………………………………..283 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………..299 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Screenshot of the Home Page of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company website (June 2018). 178 Figure 2 Still from the film HaLahaqa (The Troupe), dir. Avi Nesher, 1978. 273 Figure 3 Still from the film Foxtrot, dir. Samuel Maoz, 2018. 273 Figure 4 Screenshot from the YouTube video “IDF Soldiers Take a Little R&R” (2014). 273 vii Acknowledgments While writing can often be a solitary activity, research is definitely a crowded party. I am very grateful to all those who have danced with me throughout the research and writing process. The fantastic four women of my committee are the real marvel. Anurima Banerji has been an enthusiastic partner in the exploration of theories, concepts, and research dilemmas. She has encouraged me to move tactically and without fear in the complexities of fieldwork and research. Her provocations in the field have definitely inspired my journey as a killjoy scholar. In a similar way, Jay O’Shea has taught me to alternate ginga and sparring while researching––which is what actually matters. Her focus as a writer, dance scholar, and martial artist is a model for me. Sarah Stein instills passion for research with her elegantly choreographed writing, and her unique way of smoothly moving through the most complex histories. She is always attentive and supportive, and her energy, powerful and calibrated at once, constantly amazes me. Susan Foster has filled with humor my dramatic scholarly frustrations, has reactivated my kinesthetic energy as a writer throughout my impasses, has believed in me and in my research with perseverance. Her capacity to move extremely close to a dance and then extremely far away in space and time to conceptualize its impact is, fundamentally, what inspires my whole work. Before graduate school, she was my model on paper. In the past five and a half years at UCLA, she has always, always been present, becoming my compass, and now I can only inexhaustibly dance out my gratitude. I am in debt to my colleague friends who helped me edit, make sense of, and clarify different parts of this dissertation. Archer L. Porter is a marathon editor that, with her pragmatic wit, has resisted until the very last page of this manuscript (I do not believe in heroic narratives but this might be an exception). Christina Novakov-Ritchey, the coolest of comrades, is an honest intellectual and friend that helps me further unfold and pursue my intuitions and ideas. Shir Alon, a companion in our common journey against the flow, always offers the most brilliant insights and questions, with affectionate care. I have been lucky and privileged enough to spend some years in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance, where its faculty members Dan Froot, David Gere, Lionel Popkin, Vic Marks, Aparna Sharma, David Shorter, and Ros Warby have made my journey in graduate school a profoundly exciting, warm, and human experience. They all have shaped my thinking and understanding of how dance can make lives more livable. How could have I made it through