Everything you have is yours? Photo by Karl Cooney.

Your dance
Takes place
In a circle

Your history
Takes place
In a circle

Your family
Takes place
In a circle

Your dabke
Your Judaism
Your appropriation
Your ideology
Your nationalism
Your denim-footed, sure-steps
Take place
In a circle

Your dance
Takes place
In a circle
They are just steps, stomps
They signify so much

Hadar Ahuvia in Everything you have is yours? Photo by Karl Cooney

Is this a space for joy
For longing
For speeches
For thinking
For lessons
For revisions
For partaking
For taking
Taking
For taking…
For dance
For a dance that was never yours, ours

The only way out is through
A series of edits
And poorly filmed
Instructional videos

But, then
There’s the part about you, your life
When I thought you were speaking to me,
My life

Could we share this
A history
A lineage
A knowledge
A family
If not by blood,
Then.

1924, 1930, 1947, 1967
You can’t copyright a culture, can you?
How hard have you tried

I’ll say this:
The Bible is just a book.
Is that allowed?

I’ll (again) say this:
The Bible is not just a book.
Allowed?

Exploit your influences;
That’s what we’re here for.

Mor Mendel Ahuvia in Everything you have is yours? By Hadar Ahuvia, Projections by Gil Sperling

Between Walled Rooms is a series of freeform responses to live performance works by female identifying and gender nonconforming choreographers, initiated by Tara Sheena. This work is a response to Hadar Ahuvia’s Everything you have is yours?, which took place at Brooklyn Studios for Dance in November 2017. The piece will premiere at the 14th Street Y in February 2018. More information here.