The-Artery Breaks Through "Boundaries" With Modern Dance Film

Directed by The-Artery’s Uri Schutzer, this dance video symbolizes the common longing in everyone from the past year: the desire to break free of the new boundaries created around us. By shooting in one continuous take, Schutzer emphasizes the strong emotions behind Avihai Haham’s stellar choreography. Schutzer collaborated with Haham and composer/musician Tomer Biran on the piece, aptly titled Boundaries.

“Editing is an amazing tool to control the emotions in films,” Schutzer said. “You can always manipulate the raw materials and mix takes to try to get to perfection, but in this work, we wanted the imperfection, so that’s where the continuous take came in.”

Haham added, “Following the dancers with no cuts let us better represent the escalation of their desire to break the limitations.”

In addition to the choreography and continuous takes, Schutzer used other abstract elements like a CGI ball of black liquid to further convey the message of the piece. He explained, “Liquid can spread everywhere with no specific shape. It’s fluid and free until you build borders around it, and then it conforms to the shape of its container. Like an energetic person locked in their home, the liquid in the video is trying to escape and be free from its limitations.”

The production itself faced the restrictions of shooting during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they were able to execute their vision in accordance with the most up-to-date health guidelines. In fact, Haham even taught many of the dancers the incredibly complex choreography over Zoom. 

A three-time winner of the Israeli Choreography Prize, Haham has directed and choreographed “Frida” for the Habima National Theatre of Israel as well as the musical version of “Legally Blonde” in Tel Aviv.

Schutzer, Haham, and Biran have been friends and colleagues for many years, and jumped at the opportunity to collaborate on this piece together. Biran commented, “We have wanted to create something artistic together for such a long time. It was a great experience to not follow our original titles and make all the creative decisions together.”

The-Artery founder and executive creative director Vico Sharabani believes this project reflects the creative company’s expanding offerings, saying, “It’s a rare moment in history to recognize that everyone everywhere around the world is feeling that desire to break free. The-Artery’s growing production capabilities allowed us to release some of that tension with energetic pixels.”