“the space in between heartbeats”
Mor Mendel
Interviewed on July 16, 2022
by Anabella Lenzu
Anabella: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. One thing that we share in common is being a mother, but I want to ask you how are you able to deal with these three things: being a mother, being an artist, and being an immigrant in New York City. How do you juggle these three things to keep your mental sanity? How much time do you spend on yourself?
Mor: I don’t! I was just complaining about it while driving here. I feel really out of balance for how much time I have for myself even to hear my own thoughts. I don't have enough time to notice, listen, give, take, and receive. I feel like I’m going crazy. I think being an immigrant layers everything with extra challenges, pain, and distances –– there’s always a gap with English as a second language, without the support of family and close friends I have in Israel. Even culturally, there's a different mentality. There’s always a gap. Being an artist means I’m not making enough money to support the life that I would love, and that I would like to have more of. I feel there are a lot of contradictions. I mean motherhood is one big contradiction for me.
Anabella: Can you talk more about that?
Mor: I’m the happiest and saddest I’ve ever been. I want to run away and never come back, and of course, I can’t. Not that I can’t because I don’t want to, but if I go away for more than two weeks, I’ll go crazy. It’s just a matter of needs and where I want to be, where I can be. What they need from me, what I need from myself. Contradictions in motherhood mean I am trying to give space to all the different edges and emotions without constantly judging myself. not ever thinking I can only be one thing. I will be the happiest and the saddest. not judging when wanting to disappear and be"free" while being in one place all the time. parenthood is the most meaningful commitment of my life and it also means I have to compromise a lot. Life is one big contradiction, which also means I’m constantly trying to find the point of balance. How am I actually the balance of everything?
Anabella: How old are your kids?
Mor: I have an 18-month-old boy, and my other son will be 4 in November 2022.
Anabella: How did you decide you wanted to become a mom?
Mor: For a really long time I wasn’t sure. I thought “Maybe not, maybe yes,” but I’m coming from Israel and, there, if you’re not a mom, you don’t exist. In Israel the importance of having a family is very felt. For my partner, it was very clear to him that he didn’t want to go through life not knowing what it means to be a parent, without experiencing that feeling of being a father and having that relationship. It dawned on me that I wanted to be a mom around the age of 34. Then I had 3 miscarriages, so it took some time, and my first son was born when I was 36.
For a really long time, I was very nervous, because I’m an artist and a dancer, and I felt I needed to establish something before becoming a mom. Then the fact that my body is my tool and I need to have a job, I need to make money, and of course, the cliche that says “it’s never going to be the perfect time” -and those cliches are always right. So I thought to myself, “I'm with this man that I love and I have a deeper understanding that I want to be a mom, so let’s go for it!” We ripen when we can. I couldn’t do it earlier, so that was it.
Anabella: Great, so another question I have is about being a mother and an immigrant. It’s extra work to pass the cultural values and identity to the next generation. Your kids are American, but you are not, how do you deal with this?
Mor: I have to say it’s a big open question for me: if I’m going to raise my kids here, because of this cultural gap and because of this support and love that I would like them to receive from my parents and my partner’s parents. Family. So the question of raising them in America is still hovering. Am I going back to Israel in a couple of years? The problem is Israel is such a challenging place to go back to. There’s no future there. It’s a country with very limited options. Everything has so much weight now with kids. It’s not only me. I don’t want them to become soldiers at the age of 18, which is another thing that could happen if we raised them in Israel. My husband is also Israeli, so that’s why we speak Hebrew at home. My older son speaks Hebrew perfectly. He’s a little late in shifting when speaking between the two languages. I try to always open his perspective or his understanding of my values. For example, I’m not afraid of germs, I’m not freaking out about germs. I don’t want him to wear a mask anymore in daycare, because I believe in his smile more than I believe in him getting anything, *knocks on wood*. It’s going to be a constant battle, whether I stay here or if I stay in any other country/culture, to accept the culture I'm in. There’s no war here, so I chose to live here.
It is also important to pass on the values of friendship and relationship more than success as an individual journey, or success as money, or success as a career. All of this culture with competition, it’s everywhere…it’s already a question. It’s an equation I’m trying to understand. It’s a sunrise and sunset, and I’m trying to find out where the horizon is.
Anabella: That’s good, so you’re both in the same culture and you can pass on your values together. It’s not just you.
Mor: That’s why the option to go back to Israel is relevant. He’s Israeli and we moved here together.
Anabella: When did you move here, to the United States?
Mor: 2012, last Friday was 10 years.
Anabella: You came to study?
Mor: Yes, I have an American passport because I was born here and then we went back to Israel. After my army service, I came here for a year, escaping as we do –– everybody finishes their army service, and then we run away. It was always on my mind that I wanted to come back. So I returned to get my Masters Degree in Dance, and now it’s 10 years later.
Anabella: So, my project is called “Listen to Your Mother,” and we were talking earlier about the mother. What are some of the things that you’ve listened to and haven’t listened to from your own mother? What are the things that you say to your kids that you want them to listen to?
Mor: I notice now that I can’t and I don't want to separate from my mother, I can’t even aim for separation. What I need to aim for is boundaries and some sort of very strong anchor in me that knows anything she says to me is for my best benefit as far as she understands it. My mother doesn’t want me to return to Israel because she is pessimistic about the future of this place. She believes she knows what’s best for me sometimes more than she actually sees me, but she is doing everything out of love.nShe’s a very smart person in the sense that she is very human. Her understanding of humanness is very wide and deep. In the last couple of years, her anxiety and worry levels are way higher, so I’m listening to her knowledge about relationships: the give and take, the fine balance of how we should be with each other. I’m really trying to step away from digging into my head for all the things I didn’t do and how careful I should be all the time which is something that she is very much doing. Also, regret. I notice in myself that there’s a lot of playing with regret, so I’m trying to step away not to follow her on those tendencies..
With my sons, I want them to listen when they’re on the scooter, always stopping before the crosswalk! I feel I can talk more about my 4-year-old. I want him to listen to me when I ask him to listen to himself and to me. He gets very jealous of his little brother, so I want him to listen to me when I ask him not to hit his brother, but they’re small so it’s a lot about setting boundaries. I want him to trust in hugs and touch and feel safe in the world.
Anabella: Yes, limits. You were talking about limits with your mom too.
Mor: Yeah, it’s very different how I see my father aging compared to my mom. They have different personalities. There’s just something different now with a mother-daughter relationship. When I was pregnant, I didn’t know the gender and I was sure it was a girl. I thought I had a mother’s intuition that it was a girl. People would tell me “It’s a girl, it’s a girl,” and then I had a boy. I lingered with feeling bad about it for a little bit too long because I was expecting a girl. I had guilty feelings.
Anabella: But that’s part of our religion –– all Jews and Catholics, La Mea culpa. It’s part of the thing that we have to deal with, and how do we deal with it in a culture where the Mea culpa people laugh?
Mor: Something that happens here, the Mediterranean mother –– I don’t feel that way. It was very harmonious with my older son, it was very easy between us. It was such a beautiful bond right from the beginning, and it was a very different experience for me with my second boy. I’m not sure how it was for you. I feel like I have more needs for myself and it’s only growing. I think priorities in the USA are very different, in so many aspects of life. Even the fact that I need to reapply for them to go to school every year. In Israel, I made my best friends starting at the age of 3, because it’s actually a good thing to grow with the same classmates, in the same community in order to build a connection. Here I need to reapply until they’re the age of 6!
Anabella: Yes, in the same community. It’s going to be like that all your life, even after age 6!
Mor: Exactly, and I need to start saving money for college if I choose to stay here.
Anabella: This is another thing, we’re in New York City which is not America. In another part of the United States, they stay in one school. Here it’s tough because there are so many people living in this city. You mentioned gain and loss earlier, that you don’t want your children in Israel in the army, so you came to the United States. But here in the United States, everyone is exposed to guns more than people in Israel.
Mor: I feel 100% sure that the childhood I can offer my kids in Israel is a better one because it’s going to be so rooted, and I know it so well. They would be loved by so many friends and family. I know that the childhood I can offer my boys in Israel will benefit from so many meaningful things. They would have a feeling of community in a way that I can never create here because there’s a lot of conversation about community and it’s a good title. But I don’t know the practice of community here. I gave birth during COVID and no one entered my home, no one came. In Israel, COVID or no COVID, I know I would have received the support that I really needed.
Anabella: How did you feel having the kids alone like that?
Mor: I’m still going to therapy. It was a really rough beginning. I gave birth alone, it was February 1st and there was a snowstorm. I had just moved into from an apartment that I didn’t really like. Anyway, time passed by and I went back to Israel in the summer and I realized that I was in 100 different pieces, I wasn’t put together. I only realized it and could feel it when I went to Israel and I received a hug from people who knew me and came to see me all the time to check in on me. Then I started the process of rebuilding. Finding my center again.
Anabella: Where does dance fall into place and art-making for you? I’m sure you redefined your practices before the kids and after.
Mor: It’s funny because, on the one hand, I need to dance more and perform more. I want to, it’s something I enjoy doing. On the other hand, there are so many mixed feelings –– pain, guilt, and hardship –– around the issue of how Ihow am I am making a living and how I contribute to the household. There’s a friction flash there with my artistic life and just structuring time for dance is almost impossible. I have a residency right now and I had to cancel the last two weeks because my son was sick. I had to move apartments all of a sudden –– oh I’m all over the place! All I do is run to take them somewhere and bring them back home.
So dance, I miss it in a big way. I’m trying to find more ways to bring it into my life –– dance therapy or more teaching. Unfortunately, studying dance therapy in New York is all through private programs. I’m teaching dance to people with Parkinson's disease, but as I mentioned, I think the gap is also there between how I am actually manifesting this love for dance, and being with my body and creative life. I don’t go to shows anymore. I don’t meet people anymore. I’m not being invited to work with people at the last second. Anyway, it’s out of balance. The choreography is different again. I have two little kids.
Anabella: Do you feel like your dance practice got stronger after you became a mom? Let’s talk a bit about that, your relationship with your body.
Mor: Again, very different experiences from birth to birth. I’m running a lot more and there’s something about my dance that is less apologetic. I think I can be a bit wild now –– the lioness roaring. Since I heard her roar through birthing, let’s roar dancing. That’s just the last couple of years. There’s a level of confidence, comfort, and pleasure. And trust. I’m not in my head anymore when I’m dancing –– creative process, yes, but not when I’m dancing. I feel like I stand up more for my kids than I stand up for myself. Courage is a good one, there’s a little more courage around everything that matters to you.
Anabella: As you said earlier, this duality between being so sad and so happy and being so worried because of the responsibility…the weight of being responsible for another individual, it’s a lot.
Mor: Their happiness is another obsession. Their happiness and their health. When my son was sick, I didn’t sleep for a week. I’m still shaking, because he didn’t leave my arms. I feel there’s a need for someone to come and hold me. I don’t want to say “poor me,” but that’s another empty space –– how much you give and then how much you receive and from who and from where. Also, my partner is crazy around the clock. And I’m an immigrant, so I don’t have my closest friends here for support. The few friends I do have, I see them so little and I need to schedule it in advance. Unless they’re Israeli, or if they know me from Israel, there’s a different culture there. I don’t want to sound like Americans are bad, but this is my experience. There’s something about the Mediterranean that’s really important to me. I think that even if I don’t go back to Israel, I have a German passport, so maybe Europe, Portugal…I don’t know.
Anabella: Regarding immigration and the possibilities you may have with traveling, we are always out of place. That is something as an immigrant that we transfer to our kids. When you talked about your choreographic project about your roots, perhaps that is how you want to pass your roots down through your art and to your kids.
Mor: Yeah, I was playing around with the word “exile” lately. Is exile where I’m always going to be? Even in Israel, there’s a good chance of feeling out of place because of the culture, and because I’ve lived here, in the United States, for so many years. It’s a heartbeat, it’s the space in between heartbeats that’s always misplaced. When I was talking about roots, your childhood landscape is something that defines you.
Anabella: Your kids don’t have that landscape, so how do you transfer this gap to them? You mentioned language, bringing your mom, but it’s still not the same.
Mor: We actually just went to Israel for a month, so now I have jet lag which is another headache with kids. It’s really been a week of living hell, it got really complicated, but then you know it turns from that to everything being really meaningful in ways they weren’t before.
Anabella: Can you imagine yourself without kids now that you’re a mom?
Mor: No. I don’t know what people do between 4:00 PM until they go to sleep. I try to think about what I did before and I can’t remember. Now it’s all go, go, go, go.
I can’t imagine myself without kids. For example, I celebrated a big birthday recently and I went with a friend to Madrid for a few days. I was so worried I was going to miss them, but I didn’t think about them for 4 days. I was surprised. But then of course I came back and there’s nothing like their hugs. There’s nothing like their love. I don’t want to imagine, because the most important thing is them –– this happiness, the togetherness.
Anabella: You said you always miss your space. I remember my space used to be in the shower. I used to take long showers so that I can think to myself, that I can focus on my body because it was the only place they didn’t bother me. Even if you’re in the bathroom, they still come in, “Can you help me with this?!” There are no boundaries like you mentioned. As you said, it’s how to “regain this balance.” It’s always this duality between, “Oh I didn’t think about them for a few days! Should I feel guilty about that? Or is this my time, my space to myself to gain my own sanity?”
Mor: Yeah, I didn’t feel guilty. I think the balance is taking the time. I want to take more time, it’s not available for me. I don’t have enough money to pay for all the childcare and that’s another thing that is not great about living in America away from my family.
I’ve never felt so challenged by life since my second child arrived –– also in my relationship with my partner. Yesterday, my mom was here so we went for a drink. I drank two drinks and I almost fainted; back in the day, it was nothing. Now two drinks…it's crazy! I think it’s important to shift the focus a little bit when you have young kids and you become a mom. I’m trying to anchor myself in the understanding that this is it, they’re going to be kids right now and I’ll have time later. I have time, and art is art. If I think about it, this relationship with my kids and being a mother is way more meaningful than creating any dance. That is the dance of my life, this relationship, this quartet. There is time, and I think it’s nice not to think all about me. Even though I need more of myself, it’s okay. Art is in the details, it’s in the little details.
Mor Mendel is a dance-based performance artist, choreographer, improviser, and educator. Based in Brooklyn NY, she grew up in Israel and earned her BA in Dance Theater in Tel Aviv in 2009, and a Masters in Dance and Choreography from Sarah Lawrence College New York in 2014. Throughout she has participated in different workshops and courses around dance, Improvisation, and other somatics fields as well as taken university courses in psychology and creative therapies. Over the last few years, Mendel has been working with Parkinson's patients, and her teaching focuses on dance as an individual pathway to freedom, self-expression, and joy. Her work was performed at Tel Aviv galleries, Acco of Alternative Israeli Theater (Israel), Gowanus Arts Center, the 14Y, Fridman Gallery, Brooklyn Studios For Dance, BAAD!, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Pioneer Works, Collezione Maramotti (Italy), BigParadise, MOtiVE, Center for Performance Research. She is grateful to have worked with artists such as Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, Hadar Ahuvia, Patricia Hoffbauer, Tamar Ettun, Stephanie Nelson, Yehuda Hayman, Rebbeca Medina, Mariangela Lopez, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, Nikima Jagudajev among others. Mendel was a 2022 Movement Research Parent Artist in Residency.
Anabella Lenzu: Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, scholar & educator with over 30 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA. Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama (ALDD), which since 2006 has presented 400 performances, created 15 choreographic works, and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought-provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC. As a choreographer, she has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies. She has produced and directed several award-winning short dance films and screened her work in over 200 festivals both nationally and internationally.