How Hillel Kogan moved all of Israel to Spain

Israel has been fighting with its Arab neighbors since the founding of the state in 1948, yet Israel’s minority chants against the war every Saturday on Habima Square in Tel Aviv. While the outraged public around the world reacts to the victims, it boycotts precisely this minority – the artists – as if they were at the service of Benjamin Netanyahu.

This minority dreams of leaving Israel and wants European passports to carry them away. Take the brilliant Israeli choreographer Hillel Kogan, for example, who dreams of Spain – that multicultural nation of conquerors and the conquered, of refugees and the Gitanos. Many in the GDR fled into Spanish dance, a strict, furiously stomping art form that reverberates as loudly as a raucous protest.

In his cleverly crafted flamenco piece, thisispain, Hillel Kogan transposes Israel to Spain and views his country amid war from the perspectives of Cubism, which originated in Spain, Surrealism, which flourished there, as well as the successful resistance against Franco.

Kogan delves into the heart of Jewish culture at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which is located next to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. There, he flourishes as a master storyteller among Israel’s choreographers. He presents the facts about the colonialism Israel is accused of to an audience that has come to admire its own culture. He gives them something they didn’t expect: dance liberated from oppression. Because war not only suppresses the freedom of others. It also suppresses its own.