The 3 Questions – Echoes from the Studio | Roni Chadash

We meet Roni Chadash, a choreographer exploring how a raw idea can grow through the body and how becoming a mother shifts everything, inside and outside the studio. After five weeks with the Nuova X dancers, she shares her movement language, her doubts and the small discoveries of this new phase.

When you begin a new creation, what usually comes first – a concept, a piece of music, an image or movement itself?

It changes from one work to another. Sometimes it’s a tension between two inner opposites; other times it’s a connection to music that inspires me without my fully understanding yet what it awakens inside me. It can also be a visual image or photograph that evokes a wish to find its physical interpretation, or a movement language that I’m curious to develop into a piece. 

In all my works, the initial idea is quite raw and undefined — I like to leave space for the body in the studio to take that starting point and discover something new. Often, I feel I drift far from where I began, only to realize in the end that I’ve somehow returned exactly to that first impulse.

Five weeks of research, working with dancers in training whom you didn’t know before, what approach do you use to share your movement language?

I find it very important to begin each day with a warm-up based on the physical language I work with. It gives the dancers a moment to focus on the technique of the language rather than immediately engaging with the creative or exploratory aspects. It helps them concentrate on the body and on the many details my movement language contains.

I often speak about using the head as an organ, not as a center of control, and I play with exercises that allow the head to become a motor for movement. I also use improvisation tasks that invite different body parts to lead the movement, rather than shaping it or moving from the center outward.

Another aspect I emphasize is what I call neural musicality — a sense of rhythm and timing that arises from inner bodily sensations rather than from external counts or beats. This helps dancers connect movement and perception in a more instinctive way.

I also find it very helpful to demonstrate myself; many dancers understand the subtleties of my movement language more clearly through observing how it lives in my own body.

Becoming a mother brings a new dimension to both body and work — how has this experience influenced your way of moving or creating?

Being a mother and giving birth is an overwhelming experience. I’m so full of love and meaning, and I still can’t fully grasp all the changes I’m going through so quickly. Something has definitely shifted — I can feel it in the studio. My patience has become a bit shorter, as most of it now goes toward my son. I can’t quite analyze what exactly has changed, but I sense a movement in what interests me. I have less patience for things that don’t bring me joy.

I feel the need to find excitement through the body itself rather than by watching it demonstrate beautiful movements. My time in Nuova X helped me reconnect with my choreographer’s role alongside my role as a mother, and to explore how on earth I can combine the two. I have less free time to reflect outside the studio, and sometimes I feel that’s actually a good thing — it forces me to be very present in the moment.

Photos by Andrea Guermani, Video by Umberto Sala