Four Questions with Idan Cohen

Idan Cohen premiered his Swan Lake in New York last Wednesday, and I got to sit down with him beforehand to ask him the “Four Questions.”

What has been your most pivotal experience in the last 10 years?

Can it be from the last 20 years? At 14 I stopped playing the piano, which I had done for many years, and decided to leave the kibbutz where I lived in northern Israel and go study visual art and theatre in the Negev. I left the kibbutz because it was confining, and because I wanted to find my own voice and person at an age when most teenagers are living with their parents.

What is on your IPod and why?

A lot of Kate Bush, Björk, Amy Winehouse, The Beatles, Tanya Tagaq, Leonard Cohen—he’s a Cohen, I’m a Cohen, so we have to support each other—and Nick Cave.

If you had not become a dancer and choreographer, what would you be doing?

I would probably be a visual artist or a psychotherapist. Probably a visual artist because psychology is too hard; I’d rather discover my own problems and create out of that than digest other people’s problems. Maybe I would be a musician. I have worn many different hats. First I was a piano player and composer, then I was admitted to the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and I didn’t start dancing until I was 19.

What’s next for you?

Actually, quite a lot. I am starting a new project in four months. It will be a very intense project, but I can’t say anything else. I am also going to go to India, Greece, and Brazil with Swan Lake, and will be setting a new piece for a dance company in Poland. First, though, I am going to go to Las Vegas with my sister, whom I haven’t seen in four months and miss very much, to visit my uncle.