NO/ The Architecture of Obedience in Broken Time (2023)
This video explores themes of obedience, frustration, and surrender through the intimate interaction of a woman and a piano. In a series of fragmented, disjointed cuts, the performer physically breaks down, navigating the tension between internal resistance and the weight of external demands. The work reflects the emotional collapse of being forced to comply, particularly in the context of war.
As a Ukrainian-Israeli, the piece speaks to the moral struggle of refusing to participate in a conflict one does not believe in, embodying the exhaustion and helplessness that come from resisting societal and cultural expectations.
Piano Dancer: Maya Schwartz
Camera: Ina Gorodeva
Special thanks to Larret en mouvements, France.
Duration: 5:23
The lowest place on Earth (2019)
A body balancing on a thin crust of salt, above uncertain water.
This work reflects on the illusion of stability—how we build meaning on surfaces that later dissolve.
Filmed in a time of emotional rupture, the piece investigates disconnection, projection, and the quiet clarity that emerges when illusions fall away.
Filmed at the Dead Sea – the lowest place on Earth
Music: Marc Ribot
Video: Thomas Schlijper
Dance: Maya Schwartz
Duration: 2:02
DOM (2024)
Supported by Rabinovich foundation, SVT, Keshet Makers space (NM)
This work navigates the layered experience of war—external and internal. It moves through personal and political geographies: Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, ancestral memory.
It asks: Where does the body end, and the territory begin? In conflict, is the body still ours—or does it become a vessel for forces beyond itself?
Through movement, it explores the architecture of protection: skin, home, border.
The body as shelter. As shell. As something both fortified and fragile.
It is about the need to hide, to defend, to obey.
About holding on, and the slow work of grieving.
In war, visibility becomes vulnerability.
Stillness becomes resistance.
Choreography: Maya Schwartz
Music: Zohar Hovav
Camera: Daniel Pakes
Supported by Rabinovich foundation
Duration: 15 minutes
Moozar / along the road
The Netherlands, Amsterdam (2022)
A dancer moves alongside a rural road. Cows graze, uninterested—until slowly, one by one, they rise and turn to look.
The work considers visibility, perception, and the quiet thresholds between presence and recognition.
What draws attention—and when does something become worthy of it?
It reflects on how easily significance can pass unnoticed, and how that delay in recognition shapes experience.
A study in subtle shifts: from indifference to awareness, from shadow to form.
Voice: Marina Abramovich
Dance: Maya Schwartz
Camera: Thomas Schlijper
Duration: 3:52
UP
The Netherlands, Amsterdam (2022)
Shot on a trampoline, this video engages with the culture of beauty and the pursuit of perfection.
In the brief moments of weightlessness, the body seems to defy gravity, capturing an illusion of flawless form. But as the descent begins, the pull of gravity reveals the reality: the softening cheeks, the subtle shift from youth to age.
This work explores the tension between societal ideals of beauty and the natural, inevitable process of aging. It questions how we can approach our changing bodies with objectivity—seeing imperfection not as a flaw, but as an essential part of the human experience.
Dance: Maya Schwartz
Camera: Thomas Schlijper
Duration: 6:02
All the impossible (2023)
This underwater video focuses on what lies beneath the visible.
The mover’s head remains unseen—only the body, submerged in cold water, revealing what is usually hidden. It reflects the dissonance between external appearance and internal reality. The surface may show calm, even a smile, while below, there is tension, struggle, a quiet collapse.
This work explores the unseen forces that shape our behavior, our resilience, and our ability to function. It speaks to the invisible weight many carry—emotionally, politically, physically.
Dedicated to my family in Ukraine, who continue to endure the silent, ongoing impact of war.
Shot by Yale Gazit Music by Yehezkel Raz
Filmed in Larret, France
Duration: 3:29
NoThing (2021)
Supported by the Tel Aviv Municipality and Fresco Dance Company
Trailer of the full-length piece
A solo work exploring the tension between disappearance and presence, between costume and core.
Through shifting layers—textiles, emotions, movement—the piece reflects on what remains when everything else falls away.
Improvised with live musician Yehazkel Raz, it investigates the urge to dissolve the self and the parallel need to be seen.
Inspired by the writings of Yaakov Raz and research by Dani Rave, the work questions whether transcendence is a form of depth—or a subtle act of denial.
Diration: 30 minutes
Nothing at all (2021)
A quiet scene, set in the repetition of morning.
This video reflects the fragile threshold between routine and rupture—where the simplest acts of functioning begin to fail. Sitting, dressing, beginning the day: nothing holds.
As time loops, the body resists normalcy, inviting distortions, mutations, even absurdity.
What emerges is a portrait of exhaustion and internal chaos—where performing the everyday becomes an impossible task, and breakdown becomes the only form of expression.
A study of disintegration beneath domestic surfaces. A choreography of almost nothing.
Duration:
ALATA (2023)
Supported by Rabinovich foundation, Dance center Menashe.
Trailer of the full-length piece
You and I – Temporary States
A trailer for a full-length piece by Maya Schwartz and Shachar Dolinsky
Rooted in Zen Buddhist thought, this duet moves between two ideas: impermanence, and the absence of a fixed self.
Everything shifts—form, presence, identity.
What seems stable dissolves. What feels separate becomes entangled.
Through the body, these concepts are not explained but lived—revealing the quiet instability beneath what we think of as "me" and "you."
Duration: 25 minutes
Pursuit Steps (2023)
A solo dance work on roller skates
Trailer
Created and performed by Maya Schwartz
A performative solo on wheels, exploring grief, fantasy, and the body in flux. The work examines the elongation of the body in motion—and the social discomfort around mourning.
Set against personal ruptures and a broader cultural resistance to loss, the roller skates become both liberation and constraint. They allow escape from gravity, but also resist control. Between playful motion and emotional weight, a choreography of imbalance unfolds—where the desire to move forward is haunted by what clings from behind.
A physical elegy for the past self. A dance between levity and collapse.
Camera: Ariel Spiegel
Duration: 20 minutes
I cry things I don't know (2025)
supported by Keshet makers program (NM, US)
Trailer of the piece
The choreography lives in a state of limbo: between urgency and helplessness, between the wish to act and the paralysis of disbelief.
It asks what happens to the body—its movement, its voice—when caught between personal grief and collective trauma.
How do we process what we don’t fully understand?
What does it mean to carry a war inside, long after the world stops looking?
Duration: 15 minutes
Primal Feelings (2024)
in collaboration with Judi Adini
Supported by Mifal Hapais, Yael association and Zuzima- Mitzpe Ramon
A large woman stands at the edge of a border.
Whom is she calling for?
How long will she manage to stand her ground?
What will break her spirit?
Where will she go when her legs give out?
This is a duet of extremes—an attempt to cover both the dominant and the unprocessed.
To cast a safe shore in whatever can still be held onto:
a story that once was, a piece of fabric, a wig, another body.
Dancers and creators: Judi Adini and Maya Schwartz
Video by: Omer Messinger
La Passionyard (2022)
An afternoon in owr past.
Camera and edit: Lam Son Nguyen
dancers: Shahar Seri, Jonathan Amir, Maya Schwartz
Duration: 2:45