New Work Preview: Do it Yourself

Sunday, May 3, 2:00 PM
Free admission with RSVP
60 minutes with a Q & A to follow, no intermission
Black Box Theater, Studio Complex

Do It Yourself is a contemporary dance work in which choreographer Hillel Kogan places performer Danielle Agami at the center of a turbulent identity discourse, examining how female identity is constructed, negotiated, and performed within Western culture.

The piece emerges from the personal biography of Agami, whose life has unfolded between different geographies and identities: Israeli, American, Moroccan, European. Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, the work unfolds as a sequence of situations in which identity is questioned, misinterpreted, and redefined. Through dance, spoken text, rap, and storytelling, the performer confronts a series of familiar social interrogations: Where are you from? Why are you alone? Why don’t you have children? What kind of woman are you? These questions reveal the persistent cultural expectations imposed on female bodies.

The work draws inspiration from the figure of Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights, reimagined as a contemporary feminist strategy: survival through storytelling, delay, intelligence, and imagination. Do It Yourself does not attempt to resolve these tensions. Instead, it creates a space where contradictions can coexist—where identity remains open, fluid, and embodied, without giving up on virtuosity, sexuality and honesty.

Photo by Cheryl Mann

Danielle Agami is an Israeli-born choreographer, dancer, and movement artist who has lived and worked in Israel, the United States, and Europe. She danced with the internationally renowned Batsheva Dance Company before developing her own artistic voice as a choreographer and performer. Her work explores identity, embodiment, and the tension between personal biography and cultural narratives.

Hillel Kogan is a choreographer working at the intersection of dance and performance. His internationally presented works cross the boundaries of dance and combine genres, texts, humor, and drama to explore questions from current cultural discourse, such as identity or cultural distribution of power. Alongside his choreographic practice across dance, opera, and theater, Kogan engages dance as means for critical cultural and political reflection.