Shira Eviatar is a Tel Aviv based independent choreographer and dancer, awarded for her groundbreaking research on transmission of embodied cultural knowledge. She researches traditional forms of celebration, reflecting collective values, states of mind, sensations and feelings in cultural practice. Her work nurtures spaces for excluded forms, recentralizing Mizrahi/Arab Jewish aesthetics and subjectivities. Eviatar performs, leads workshops and lectures worldwide, she is a 2015 DanceWebber.
This is the Blessing, a blessing upon your head, a blessing upon the crown of one person in the room, and above her/him hovers the blessing.
The blessing is composed of her own tears. Drops of blessings run down your forehead, your cheeks, blessings, running down your temples, blessings that have eyes, bad eyes and good eyes and your head is soaking wet from the blessing.
SHE is a blessing of the creator of the world
And it makes your head holy
Holy holy, like the day you were born
And this is an amazing accomplishment
And it is exciting that you are still
Breathing since the decision
Of your soul to arrive
To this world
because you have been breathing
Since your soul decided to arrive
To this world and to arrive
Here in the body that your mother
Designed for you designed for you designed for you
9 months of waiting
And holding her lower stomach
As if she was touching your little belly
Inside the womb
Caressing and touching your heart
And the moment when your hearts
Are the closest, the closest
In the womb, her heart across from your heart dancing
To her beat
Her DJ heart
You were Dancing in her water
Dancing and learning deep in her Torah*
Learning the Torah and learning the Torah
And at the end
you felt
Ready
and then
The soul decided
And entered through the tunnel, your head got through her legs, flowing with her water, out to the mother land
and since then, you have entered through a thousand doors
And made a thousand decisions
To stay alive in this lifetime
thousands of births of your self
thousands of births of your self
thousands of births of YOURSELF
and now you are born
Each time a new
That you are breathing
And this is the blessing
Upon your head
Amen