As Valeska Gert Visiting Professor (Winter Semester 2024-2025), internationally renowned Israeli director and choreographer Saar Magal, together with the master’s degree students of the Critical Dance Studies program at Freie Universität Berlin, will devise a new project of performative research that explores the histories, memories, narratives, and textual source materials of the three Abrahamic religions. In an opening lecture and conversation on October 14th, Magal will present her new topic of artistic research – titled “Sacrilege” – in a free event for the Berlin public. The closing event of her visiting professorship will be held at Akademie der Künste on the 14th of February 2025.

Biography

Saar Magal creates dance theater and opera performances, and collaborates with actors, dancers, singers, scholars, visual artists and musicians. Her work strives to enable the convergence of artists, audience, objects and materials on stage to create new contexts and for movement and narrative.
 
Amongst Magal’s creations are: A Kafka Project, commissioned by Theater Basel, premiered in December 2023; 10 Odd Emotions,co-produced by the Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, premiered in January 2023. The piece also performed at Hellerau Dresden and at the Theater Der Welt Festival in summer 2023; Love Me More, a crossover project loosely based on the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. Commissioned by the Schauspiel Köln and premiered in October 2022; (Ob)Sessions, another crossover project exploring our culture's obsession with Self Optimizing, Youth and Aging in an era of shameless capitalistic narcissism. Commissioned by The Burgtheater Wien, premiered in September 2021; A Monteverdi Project, dealing with the potential development oflove, eroticism and human relationships in a future shaped by the influence of new technologies, post-humanism and the Anthropocene era, commissioned by the Staatsoper Berlin Unter den Linden, and premiered in November 2018; Jephta’s Daughter, based on the story of Jephta and his Daughter from the Old Testament and the Oratorio by Giacommo Carissimi, comissioned by the Bayerische Staatsoper and premiered in July 2015 at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich; Hacking Wagner, which aims to interact with the Wagnerian monumentalism on both the German side and the Israeli side, and debates the Wagner Ban through a field of personal associations and a strain of a collective subconsciousness as regards to the Wagner issue. The piece was commissioned by the Bayerische Staatsoper as part of its Wagner Opera Festival and premiered in July 2012 at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich; Up Your Ass, Virginia! The Valerie Solanas Project, a dance piece based on Valerie Solanas’ 'SCUM Manifesto' and her play 'Up Your Ass'. The production premiered in May 2014 at the Rote Fabrik in Zürich and performed at Tmuna Theater Tel Aviv.

As a teacher for physical theater, contemporary dance, improvisation and dance composition, she taught amongst other schools at ART Institute for Advanced Theatre at Harvard University, University of Chicago Theater and Performance Department, Peridance Scholarship Program in NYC, Bat Dor Studios of Dance and The Maslool Dance Program in Tel Aviv, and at The School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem. She also participated in the City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference Presentation, gave a Master-Class Workshop and created a performance with an international group of students at Zuni Icosahedron in Hong Kong in 2017.

Magal has received a research and development fellowship at the Freie Universität Berlin International Research Center for Interweaving Performance Cultures in 2016, and a position of Visiting Artist In Residence at the Stanford Arts Institute at Stanford University, San Francisco 2017. 

Saar Magal was born in Israel and studied at Thelma Yalin Arts High-School in Tel Aviv, and at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London, for which she was awarded a full scholarship by the British Council. From 1996 until 1999 she created several pieces for the Batsheva Ensemble Dance Company under the directorship of Ohad Naharin: Pandora's Garage, Yossi The Grounded Angel and C.F.C. Furthermore, Magal created several dance performances, such as The Boy and the Dolphin and Under the Belt at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv 1993-1995; Furniture Showroom at the Laban Center London 1996; Shin at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv 1997; The Ulysses of the Mediterranean, in collaboration with composer Luigi Cinque and Multifrazione Progetti & Fabbrica Europa at Stazione Leopolda, Florence 1999; Bottom of the Ninth at Peridance NYC 2000; Telem and Adagietto at the Bat Dor Dance Company Tel Aviv 2000-2001; Roaches at the Curtain Up Festival in Tel Aviv 2006; Showdown and Come Back at Hazira - Performance Art Arena in Jerusalem 2007-2008. Her dance film CellFish, in collaboration with visual artist Shelly Federman, premiered in 2005 at the Lincoln Center in New York. 

With Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, Magal has collaborated as a choreographer on numerous theater and opera productions: Pericles, Prince of Tire, Piccolo Teatro di Milano 1998; Phoenician Women, Beer Sheva Municipal Theater 1998; Hamlet, Teatr Rozmaitosci Warsaw 1999; The Twelfth Night and The Tempest, Staatstheater Stuttgart 1999-2000; Speaking In Tongues, Toneelgroep Amsterdam 2004; Macbeth, Schauspielhaus Hannover 2004; Wozzeck and Ubu Rex, National Opera Warsaw 2003-2005; Iphigenie en Tauride, Opéra Garnier Paris 2006; Eugen Onegin, Bayerische Staatsoper 2007; Medeé and Macbeth, La Monnaie Brussels 2008-2011; Le Roi Roger, Teatro Real Madrid 2011; Parsifal and Le Roi Roger, Opéra Bastille Paris 2008-2009; Medeé, Theatre Des Champs-Elysees in 2012. Magal has co-created Death In Venice with Warlikowski at X Wohnungen project, HAU Berlin 2004.

With American director Robert Woodruff, she has co-created Phaedra 4.48 at the ART Institute in Cambridge and Mxat Theater in Moscow 2002. She has also collaborted with Woodruff as a choreographer on the following theater productions: The Changeling and Jude Suss, Beer Sheva Municipal Theater 1994-1996; Fossil and Medea, Habima Tel Aviv National Theater 1997-1998; The Changeling, Theater For A New Audience NYC 1997; King Richard The Second and Oedipus, The American Repertory Theater 2001-2004; Iphigenia in Aulis, Toneelgroep Amsterdam 2008.