The Kaddish

Playing Time: 35 minutes | Playing Space: 4×4 meters, 12×12 feet | Genre: Dance Theatre with spoken text

Leonard Bernstein wrote The Kaddish to commemorated J. F. Kennedy’s death. The piece reflects man’s contemporary inclination to project his own frustration with a sad and disappointing world onto God himself, by assuming God has rejected his image in man.

Kathleen Ann interprets the text and music in dance and dramatic movement portraying the ‘image of God in man’ moving through the agonizing doubt that God has lost faith in His image to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on this earth. She finally realizes that a commitment to share in the pain and to live in the center of that world, continuing to resist its evil, can bond her in a pact of honor with God to continue to believe. The Kingdom of Heaven will come on this earth just as God imagined it, if we promise to believe.