Nate Yaffe

Benjamin Samson

Nate Yaffe is an experimental dance, theatre and video artist, based in Tiohtà:ke (Montreal) who researches queer strategies for bodily permission and courage. His tactile dances dismantle movement shame through un-correcting the self-censored body. He weaves a relational web with his audience, and uses affect as a tangible choreographic material, reminding us that performance is a social exchange, after all.

As co-artistic director of Le Radeau, Nate seeks community-centred alternatives for being a dance artist in face of the uncertain future. He has also co-curated many events including Signal Vibrant: a ceremony for the dead, and Hommage Fromage. His work has recently been presented at FRAC Bretagne, Lachapelle scènes contemporaines, OFFTA, Performance Mix festival (NYC), SummerWorks (Toronto), Plastic Orchid Factory (Vancouver), and Biennale d’art performatif de Rouyn-Noranda.

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A Hard Garment (working title)

A Hard Garment is a work of performative archaeology, an excavation of our personal Jewish histories and the politics of archaeological digs. Through Kabbalist songs, experimental noise and dance, Nate revisits the Jewish folktale of the Golem, a mythical hero/antihero made of clay.

With Gambletron, Thea Patterson, Maxine Segalowitz, and Daph Bendavid V’yosef, Nate will explore the Kabbalist philosophy of sacred heresy, and gematria meditations to shatter calcified Jewish artefacts, remembering that, above all, culture lives in the people. Nate’s research will also examine doikayt, a Yiddish term meaning “hereness”, strengthening Jewish communities wherever they live instead of focusing on founding a separate ethno-nation-state.

Together, they will create a clay golem from shattered artefacts, scan for angel messages on ghost radios, learn sung prayer poems (piyyut), and remount dances from ancestral muscle memory.