Kookl@: A Ballet Where Letters Dance and Dolls Outlive People

The Jerusalem Ballet unfolded a story that could have been an unwritten letter from Franz Kafka’s desk. It might also have been one of his manuscripts—rescued by Max Brod—now reappearing in the interpretation of Nadya Timofeyeva and Martin Schonberg as a living, dancing character. The manuscript itself moves, converses with other dancers, and engages in a subtle dialogue with the video art, which is intricately woven into the choreography: shadows and projections leap beyond the edges of the screen, becoming part of the living fabric of the performance—not to mention the dolls.

                                     Photo by Ofer Moldovan

The story begins in Jerusalem, to the sound of Mahler’s First Symphony. Children clutch white rag dolls with little stitched crosses for eyes, discussing their modest destinies. They circle, collide, whisper; each doll is a small philosophical riddle. Or perhaps each is a letter waiting to form a word. Then, one girl’s (Noa Levy) doll disappears. She runs in search of it, tracing circles and spirals on the stage. Her dance lines—loops, falls, sudden stops—are almost mathematically precise, yet leave space for accident, like in letters where spelling mistakes turn into part of the meaning.

Through Mahler’s “Bruder Martin,” letters and manuscripts come to life as Kafka (the wonderful dancer Dmitry Shevtsov, whose every muscle seems to be charged with expression) hunches over his desk. His Muse (Naama Beller), embodied by a dancer, is the manuscript itself, transformed into human form. She dances duets with Kafka, then with the girl who lost her doll. The letter turns into a body; gestures become words; retrograde movements punctuate the air; glances tilt into italics. Imagination insists on sketching the rest: Kafka’s hand becomes the pen, the Muse’s movements form the lines, the girl’s gestures supply the emotional syntax. The video art mirrors these movements, turning light and shadow into flowing words, giving the sense of an endless correspondence.

                                  Photos by Ofer Moldovan

The doll wanders through a world at once familiar and strange. In the Netherlands, girls in bonnets and heavy wooden clogs tap out dances to “The Syncopated Clock.” The scene is funny, playful, and delightfully absurd. Flowers bloom across the stage; Dutch paintings flicker on the screen; Van Gogh himself appears at the footlights with a bouquet of sunflowers. The dancers turn to face the audience, and each spectator sees something different: a red-light district, a field of tulips, a gallery where brushes become feet and paint turns into rhythm. Kafkaesque absurdity thickens. Dancers crawl across the stage with chairs strapped to their backs, forming a circle; Kafka ends up at its center, resting on the legs of his beloved beetles (though who can say for sure what Gregor Samsa really became?). The beetles flip the chairs upside down; letters appear on them, forming words and entire cities.

The doll moves on to Argentina, where tango reigns—“Oblivion” and “Libertango” trace an alphabet of passion. Mikhail Botsok (yes, the very same Houdini) performs a virtuosic solo with boleadoras, while Kafka remains alone, like a letter forgotten on a desk. But melancholy doesn’t linger: the dolls return, growing before our eyes to the sound of “Oh, My Beautiful Doll.” They look almost real, though these dancers in white costumes seem to hail from another dimension; their movements are childlike and adult, precise and chaotic, comical and touching all at once.

The Japanese scene is a whirlwind of paper fans and white umbrellas, swords, circles, spirals, and ideogram-figures: movement and music weave a wordless text. The fire scene is the climax of suffering: Kafka nears the end of his life, burns his manuscript; the Muse weakens; Kafka collapses onto a chair. Then Dora Diamant (Anael Zateykin) appears—his beloved. Their adagio is tender, slow, almost metaphysical. The finale brings us back to Jerusalem: the doll is with Dora again; Kafka remains alone. All the travels, letters, beetles, sunflowers, and fans merge into a single flowing stream.

                                      Photos by Ofer Moldovan

The choreography by Nadya Timofeyeva and Martin Schonberg is witty, precise, and metaphysical. Inna Polonskaya’s stage and costume designs, together with Natalia Volkova’s video art, lend it both lightness and absurd musicality. And music itself—especially Mahler’s “Titan”—is one of the main protagonists of this piece.

Franz Kafka, who dreamed of the Land of Israel but never set foot on it, arrives in Jerusalem through the ballet of the "Jerusalem Ballet", through the manuscript saved by Max Brod. Here, imagination does not flee reality; it becomes a way of empathizing, a gesture of care when words fail. All the more reason to step into the layered world of Kookl@, where absurdity is the rule and logic—a distinguished guest.

“In our performance, Kafka is not a hero, not a symbol. He’s a mirror,” says Nadya Timofeyeva. “He shows how a person survives within a system they can neither understand nor escape, and still seeks a path—through movement, through music, through the belief that even in a shattered world, one can write a letter, even if it’s from the perspective of a lost doll. Perhaps Kafka offered us a way to explain the world to a child under any circumstances—and to remain human when the world itself defies explanation.”