Dance Beyond Boycott

book as I was by this one. You could say it’s no big deal: our capacity to choose to love each other is experientially real, however biologists choose to explain it. But to the contrary, I think we are in desperate need of significant intellectual support for a post-capitalist, post-patriarchal, postindividualistic socialorderthatprioritizes community, caring, and interdependence. What a gas, what an unexpected bonanza, whatagrace,ifitturnedoutthat’swhatbiologysupportsatageneticlevelanyway . I DavidBelden,D.Phil,isthemanagingeditorof Tikkun. [DANCE] DANCEBEYOND BOYCOTT PERFORMANCEBYTHEBATSHEVA DANCECOMPANY ReviewbyJillGoldberg I should have known I was going toapoliticalevent.Ididn’tseeitcoming until the very day that I was scheduled to see “Deca Dance,” choreographedbyIsraeliartistOhad Naharin, and performed by the Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv. I suppose I’m glad that I read in the Georgia Straight that there would be protests outside the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre; I had time to collect my thoughts before I approached the venue and heard the bellowing of a voice through a megaphone crying out, “dead children can’t dance.” The group was small, but the message was amply clear: by attending this show, the audience was in some way complicit with the atrocities that had recently unfoldedinGaza. But is boycotting Batsheva the most effective course of action? Of course I understood the reasons behind the protest: the horrors that took place in Gaza were innumerable and bloody. More recently, the Israeli government—under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, with Avigdor Lieberman at his side—has all but dismissed Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo. Instead Israel has continued on a path to add to the settlements in the West Bank, therebyinsultingPalestiniansandenthusiasticallycreatingmassiveobstaclestopeace intheregion.Yes,therearemanyreasonsto protest against the policies and acts of the Israeli government, but I can’t help but think that protesting Batsheva creates a missed opportunity for dialogue with a group of people, the members of Batsheva itself,whoquitelikelyholdnuancedandintelligent ideas about the situation in their homeland. Choreographer Ohad Naharin, for one, has publicly stated his interest in using dance to turn conflict into dialogue, anadmirablegoalforsomeonewhosework isoftenboycotted,hiscompanythreatened. Itmayseemlikeanimpossibledream,butI would much rather have witnessed a civilized conversation between, say, Naharin and the protesters than watched the two polarized performances: the one outside thetheaterandtheoneinside, eachonereinforcing the other’s feelings of alienation fromtheother. In the author’s notes that accompany the novel Life of Pi, Yann Martel writes: “If we,citizens,donotsupportourartists,then wesacrificeourimaginationsonthealtarof crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.” Watching the superlative talent that went into “Deca Dance,” I was transfixed; how could participating in such imaginative, beautiful, and clever art not be edifying? “DecaDance”wassuchatremendousoffering that I feel certain it has the ability to reach people in a way that transcends the harsh reality of life in the quagmire that is the Middle East. If art is the triumph of imagination over crude reality, then “Deca Dance”istheproverbialvictor,vanquishing the ordinary with the power of creativity as itsonlyweapon. Attheriskofsoundingnaïveandoverly idealistic, I have to wonder: if the small group of protesters outside had snuck in and watched Naharin’s choreography, would they have been moved out of the rigidityofrhetoricandintotherelativesoftness of dialogue? Would they have seen something in the work of these immensely talentedIsraelisthatshowedthemthatthey too are human with the same longings for peace and security and the same fears as 64 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 deepresistanceeventotestingthetheories. Let me be clear. Roughgarden’s is not an argument against sociobiology, and whatever explanations and descriptions of a universal human nature it can establish. Her beef is only with a vision of sexual and socialrelationsbasedinselfish,asopposed togenial,genes. Other books have objected to selfish gene theory because it appears to be an ideology,andonefullyinlinewithmodern capitalism and competitive individualism. ButthisisthefirstbookIhavereadthatattacksthewholeideologyofselfishDarwin ismonabroadscalefromtheperspectiveof purely biological research. As a Christian and transgender woman, Roughgarden has plenty of ideological reasons to oppose selfish gene theory and a worldview based on binary male/female conflict and traditionalsexroles .Butthebeautyofthisbook isthatshehaspursuedinastrictlyscientific manner whatever skepticism her own life experience has taught her to hold about mainstreamscientific ideologies.Hereshe is concerned solely with what...