A Moment of Endlessness

This work reflects on how stories and histories, both distant and near, gain or lose meaning, depending on the contexts in which they are reiterated.

In this project, Aloni interrogates the rivalry on one hand and the seductive intermingling between the archaic and the ephemeral. Both relations surrender to the confluence of time and space, and with that, our ability to sense a gut-wrenching yearning for a terrain which we never visited, while carrying its residue in what we experience as our physical body. We decorate the hollows of our terrestrial heritage through storytelling and fabulations. Time birthed the space into which such stories can be poured, while space vitalises the mysteries of time. Time offers space for things to unfold, and space offers time for things to occur. There is an entanglement between space and time, and together they disorient the subject. 

The work encapsulates various processes of negotiations between, on the one hand, anticipating that the melancholy of being captivated by time and space will diminish, and on the other hand, wanting to be released from the captivity of the ephemerality of each moment. 

Through the research process, while visiting various archaeological sites in Serbia, Spain, Italy and Greece, Aloni noticed how the stories that are told about the places, and remains in the sites, not only reactivate what is the territory of the past, but actually collapse the walls between different temporalities and converge them into a multiplicity which activates the subject in the present.  

The choreographic and dramaturgical dynamics in the work are in dialogue with the grand gestures of the timeless and the intimacy of the timely. There is a sense of time shifting, and relocating moments from a past time, through iconography and the word (text), to a no-time and no-place from which any story can be told and therefore, in some way, all stories are told. 

This is an outstanding work from Aloni’s recent portfolio. This is evident in the gestures and choreographic language of A Moment of Endlessness. Here they take the visceral and intimate elements that are immanent in Aloni’s experimental and transgressive work and allow them to be disturbed by the temporal and spatial excesses that the research into archeological sites invited into this process. The convergence of these two sentiments offers A Moment Of Endlessness a particular atmosphere which is both in time and outside of it. 

The texts by Hayim Nahman Bialik and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) accompany the witness (the spectator) as they journey through moments, images, and sensations that are both personal and public, specific and general, intimate and distant, across and through time.

A Moment of Endlessness was initially performed within the Dancing Histor(y)ies project – a large European Cooperation project looking at the meeting between contemporary dance and archeological and heritage sites. In 2025, A Moment of Endlessness performed in Castel Sant’Angelo (Rome, Italy), Viminacium Archaeological Park (Viminacium, Serbia), The Temple of Diana (Mérida, Spain), Nora Archaeological Park (Sardinia, Italy), and Gathenhielmska huset (Gothenburg, Sweden). 

Trailer 2025

Behind the Scenes with Israel Aloni, 2025

CREDITS

Cast: Elias Khanamidi, Victor Persson, Jennifer Wallén and Tomer Giat

Concept: Israel Aloni

Choreography: Israel Aloni & Cast

Choreographer assistant: Tomer Giat

Production manager: Arunas Giambino Mozuraitis

Original composition and soundtrack: Didi Erez

Costume design: Amanda Wisselgren

Producer: ilDance

Creation residency host: Regionteater Väst Uddevalla

Photographs and videos: Adey