Tamar Borer
Posted on | November 3, 2008 | No Comments
Therapist and artist of multidisciplinary stage creations
The courage to live is the greatest courage we can have. The courage to accept death as part of our daily life is probably the major gate through which we can realize freedom.
Bravery is a problem. Bravery for me is the other extreme of being a victim. In Israel we have a great history of victims and heroes, and I deny it by definition. We are all humans with the common denominator of trying to live life to its fullest.
People tend to see me as very brave. I don’t see myself as brave, I just try to live my life to its fullest. All heroes are victims. If you become devoted to being a hero, you become someone admired for your mistaken understanding of living your life for the sake of ideas of an anxious and fearful society, like the one we live in. In that instant, you become a victim.
Tell us about your family.
My parents were born in Israel before 1948. I have 2 sisters, one of whom is a Tel Aviv artist. My mother died 9 years ago. I had and still have a strong connection and communication with her. My son is 9 and half years old. He is the glory of creation, as I see it. I have a grand family of people with whom I collaborate. Every year, I find new family because for every new project, I gather new people I am excited to meet.
What art do you bring to the world?
I am a performance artist, dancing is the major love of my life. I live in the state of dancing—creating, performing, teaching. I dance Butoh. Butoh is the Japanese word for soul dance—a state of being that creates an inner movement dance that wishes to arrive to a profound concentration. In this special way of motion, one can awaken the self and realize the wholeness of one’s life as an integrated part of the dance of the universe.
Butoh is a state of being that expresses the everyday wish and will to feel the wholeness of life. Butoh is a research of consciousness through motion.
Why do you work with people with disabilities?
An amazing event happened 17 years ago, a moment of becoming, of accepting, of being given a new body when I was in a car accident that left me paraplegic. I wanted to share this process with other people with disabilities, especially women. I started working with battered women, doing a performance with discussion and dancing together. Now I work in hospitals and rehabilitation centers as a way to empower, encourage, and experience collectively the possibility of coming from the depth of death to being reborn.
We women should remember our intuitive gift of creating, which derives from our ability to contain all, like the generous earth contains the sperms, sprouts, as well as the dead, which are within us as well. What makes us women is the possibility to be reborn and endure what it means. With our tremendous abilities of transformation, we must learn to appreciate the possibility of dancing freely.
What are you proud of?
I feel grateful for being the mother of my son and for being born with the natural possibility of evolving. Being proud is not something I’m comfortable with, but being grateful is something I can relate to. I am grateful for being alive, for being able to live, create, interact, and communicate.
I am grateful to help people realize their abilities of consciousness. It makes me very happy when I help someone who didn’t think it was possible to experience freedom—freedom from pain, freedom to move, even if the only motion you can make is to move a finger while sitting in your wheelchair.
Are you afraid of anything?
Hurting people makes me afraid, and I fear of losing the right way, of losing the golden thread that connects the crown of our head with what we can realize from the upper worlds, and of losing the red thread that keeps us connected to our generous earth.
Is peace possible?
I have to believe that peace is possible here in order to live. Peace starts with oneself, in the moments of relating to the person very close to you and to the person further from you.
I regret every day the ignorance that comes from reading the history of the Jews as the victims and heroes. I wish with all my heart that we will let go of our prejudice and see people as they are, as humans. We are all one family, implicit in the concepts of akhi or achoti; this opens the possibility of warmth and relationships.
The Israeli society pays an enormous price for not allowing the ma to exist. Ma in many languages, including Hebrew, means the feminine aspect of God or divinity. It means the space that is between the things. This is the space where I wish to dance, where Butoh happens. I wish for us to appreciate this ma even if it means letting go of our shortcoming private needs. This approach could help create peace amongst us.
Borer is a performance artist, Butoh dance teacher, and movement and guided imagery therapist. A paraplegic, Borer works with people of special needs, especially women, to explore the processes of death and being reborn. She lives in Ramat Gan and feels that, by definition, being an artist in Israel makes her involved politically. Her dances focus on life, society, and the evolution of human consciousness.
