ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a powerful response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict emerges in the multilayered work of American Jewish choreographer Jesse Zaritt. Through a close analysis of his solo Isaac (2008) and his ongoing project Embodied Affiliation and the Politics of Availability (2015), I illuminate how his dancing body relates to this topic in an oblique, largely abstract, yet highly resonant manner. This relation is demonstrated through exploring his life story in relation to three interrelated themes: 1) an American, diasporic, Jewish identity and narratives around the body and being a male, gay dancer; 2) the influences of Gaga, a movement language developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, and critical perspectives of nationalism, gender, sexuality and ethnicity on Zaritt’s creative process and approach to embodiment; and 3) the theme of binding as related to the Akedah (the biblical story of the sacrificial binding of Isaac), and the significance of that theme in relation to Israeli national identity. The chapter ends with a discussion of what it means to offer the dancing body up as a resistant sacrifice when deliberating the ethics and aesthetics of Israeli-Palestinian relations and how that results from a larger question of the role of dance in thinking about human rights and mediating conflict between opposing ideologies and unequal power relations.
