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ليلة Lila / Shutdown
Creations by Orly Portal / Noa Zuk and Ohad Fishof
A new evening by Batsheva Dance Company, featuring two works:
Lila by Orly Portal, created especially for the Company’s dancers, and Shutdown – a revival of a work by the creative duo Noa Zuk and Ohad Fishof, never before presented on stage in Israel.
Portal reclaims Moroccan movement and music, while Zuk and Fishof create new cultures through invented rituals and folk dances. Together, the works bring existing and imagined folklore into dialogue, exploring different ways in which the individual finds their place within a shared physicality.
“Whenever guest artists enter the Batsheva Dance Company studio, a new space for research and discovery opens up. Inviting artists to work with the Company is an act of opening up and expanding horizons — the dancers are exposed to different ways of working, while audiences encounter a diverse and intriguing range of aesthetics and performance practices.”
— Dr. Lior Avizoor, Artistic Director, Batsheva Dance Company
*Tickets will be available close to the event
About the Artists
Orly Portal
Orly Portal is a сhoreographer, dancer, singer, and music researcher; founder and artistic director of the Orly Portal Dance Company. Creator of a unique dance language that merges ancient North African traditional dances with contemporary movement. Over the past three decades, Portal has developed the Orly Portal Method, which offers a profound understanding of the connection between body and culture. The method is currently taught worldwide (teachers’ courses in Israel and Italy) and practiced by many dancers.
Portal is a former dancer with Kol Demama Ensemble and the Batsheva Ensemble. Her works offer a contemporary interpretation of ancient traditions, incorporating elements of modern and contemporary dance, contact improvisation, spontaneous movement, and the Feldenkrais Method. She leads artistic collaborations, and her works are presented in Israel and around the world.
Active participant, lecturer, and facilitator in dance and music conferences and panels. Member of the Israeli Choreographers Association and part of faculty at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Graduate of the Mandel Leadership Program for Jewish Culture. Recipient of the Yitzhak Navon Prize for the Preservation and Advancement of Israeli Cultures, and the Rosenblum Prize for Outstanding Artists and Creators for 2026.
Noa Zuk & Ohad Fishof
Noa Zuk is a choreographer and dancer. She spent twelve years as a dancer with Batsheva Dance Company. Over the past fifteen years, she has established herself as a choreographer, creating works for dance companies and presenting her work around the world.
Ohad Fishof is an interdisciplinary artist and performer. His work spans and intersects sound, performance, dance, video, and text. His idiosyncratic, time-based work—ranging from live music and performance to video, installation, dance, and soundtrack work—is regularly presented worldwide.
Zuk and Fishof have been involved in each other’s work for twenty years. Since 2008, they have been creating dance works collaboratively, for both stage and camera. Their works include Garden of Minutes, ADR, The Nothing Trilogy, One More Song, The Burnt Room, Rakonto Kun, and Shutdown. Their work has been commissioned and presented by companies, festivals, and art organizations in the U.S., Switzerland, Singapore, Germany, Norway, Scotland, England, Russia, Italy, and Israel.
The collaborative practice of Fishof and Zuk often unfolds within the imaginary territory of ethnographic fiction, with an affinity for the absurd. At the heart of their collaborative practice lies the complex relationship between the visual and the auditory. The ways in which they work within, around, and against the audio-visual contract draw on a wide range of audio-visual traditions, including sound art, film, ballet, pop, and folklore.
Fishof and Zuk are both senior teachers of the Gaga movement language.