Idit Suslik, PhD
Dance Lecturer, Scholar and Writer
My connection to the world of dance begins with my body, and the encounter with unknown movement, culture and language I experienced during my first flamenco lesson, back in the late 1990s. The excitement from discovering flamenco as a way of expressing myself gradually turned into an intellectual curiosity about the historical sources of the dance and its cultural significance. The dance and my studies became two parallel paths of being and doing that continue to echo each other until today, and formulated into what I am – a dance lecturer, scholar and writer.
My BA studies in the Multidisciplinary Program in the Arts, and MA in the Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts, led to my PhD research on contemporary flamenco dancing, entitled: Flamenco and Fusion: 'Reaction' and 'Resistance' to Traditional Movement Syntax. The movement in it between art and society, flamenco and other disciplines, broadened my interest in writing on live performance.
For more than 15 years, I am teaching a wide variety of courses (Dance History – An Interdisciplinary Perspective, Art and Society, Dance Evaluation, Criticism and Judgement, Israeli and Ethnic Dance, Archive-Based Dance – Dramaturgy Action-Research, Seminar on Contemporary Choreography) in various academic institutions such as: The School of Visual Theatre (Jerusalem), Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts and Haifa University.
From the start, I have dedicated my academic studies to Spanish art and dance. After receiving my BA cum laude and MA summa cum laude at the The Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Programs in Tel-Aviv University, PhD studies were both a logical continuation and a dream come true. Over the years, I have also been teaching in non-academic dance training programs such as: Kol Atzmotai Tomarna – Dance-Theatre School for Men; Gila Workshops – Movement and Stage Art for Women of Mature Age; The Interdisciplinary Preparatory Semester for Performance Art in Arabic, the School of Visual Theatre; Hakvutza – School of Movement, Contact and Improvisation, and more. In addition, I give lectures to the general public in series I curate, such as 'A Look on New Premieres in the Israeli Dance', within the Israeli Dance Archive at Beit Ariela.
My research focuses on performance analysis, the aesthetics of the body, and choreographic discourse from an interdisciplinary and cultural perspective, and is regularly presented in conferences in Israel and abroad. My papers have been published in various journals and sites, such as: Dance Now (Israel), Textura (Israel), The Israeli Center for Digital Art Archive, Performance Research, Aware. In addition, I regularly write in platforms for the general public like City Mouse (Achbar Ha'ir) and Israel Today (Israel Hayom) to connect dance and theater to readers and resonate with the activity taking place in these fields in Israel.
Alongside my academic research, I am active in various roles and contexts in the dance and Fringe fields in Israel. Between 2016-2017 I worked as dance-coordinator in the Ministry of Culture's Culture for the Periphery project, and since September 2022, I serve as chair of Israeli Society for Dance Research. Moreover, for more than a decade I have been serving in several advisory committees in the culture field: the National Program for Educational Observation in the Arts – dance committee; Habait Theater – board of directors; Tmuna Theater – artistic committee; Adi Agmon Foundation for the Promotion of Spanish Culture and Flamenco – artistic committee and head of documentation and content.
During the last years I have been engaged in initiating and taking part in projects that develop my writing into a creative-performative action, among them: IntimaDance booklets 2017, 2018 and 2021 (artistic directors: Dr. Erez Maayan Shalev and Anat Katz); Tmun(a)t Matzav (Snapshot) – An Artistic-Intellectual Reflection for a Wall in a Theatre (initiative: Dr. Erez Maayan Shalev); Sharing Screen: Live Writing after Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, in the exhibition Imagine a Museum (or: The Remembering Body) – Six Weeks of Live Art in the Museum, curator Ruti Direktor (January-February 2023).
These days I am working on my most comprehensive writing project – a book dedicated to the works of Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, noting 20 years of professional creation.