"Because We Love You" is a 1 hour long dance/theater duet by Tamar Lamm and David Kern. Created for the 2016 Zirat Machol dance festival in Jerusalem, the piece attempts to document its own creation. The starting point for the work was the contents of our own thoughts as we arrive in the performance space for the first time. The layers of thoughts and meta-thoughts eventually overwhelm us and the only way out seems to be to retreat into a fantasy. We take a vacation from our artist-selves before eventually coming to terms with our own inability to explain all of our actions.

We employed as many modes of theatrical performance as we could. Dance, theater, song, poetry, stand up comedy, instructional video, puppetry, TED type lectures, pantomime, psycho-therapy, hypnosis, confession and maybe more. The two main subjects of the work are 1) The creation process itself and 2) Our relationship as a couple. These two subjects are closely intertwined for us because we work and create together. The work flows from subject to subject and from modality to modality creating its own rhythm. Ultimately the transitions between sections are the main subject matter. Confusion and disorientation are encouraged for both the dancers and the audience.

We made the work in three different "Locations". 1) A typical dance studio 2) During long conversations in everyday life. 3) During walks where we looked through trash to find props. Nearly every Item you see on stage is something someone discarded. Once we would find discarded object or another, we committed ourselves to using it in more than one way. This was inspired by ultralight backpacking culture where "multi-use" items are prized. With all the objects strewn about the studio, associations naturally occur. We improvised dance and text in the studio, based on subjects ranging from the phenomenology of dance to everyday problems of choreographers. Eventually, a system emerged and we chose certain subject to focus on. Often, the rehearsals didn't really end when we left the studio. Our everyday life bled into the work. Even though we didn't plan this, it became obvious that this was a good thing. We recorded our improvisations on video. But this was only for security. Actually we rarely referred to the videos. We found that if we forgot something, it probably wasn't worth remembering. This gave us confidence in our ability to improvise during the performances.

Dance Piece performed on stage. approx 60 minute duration