For the Waters Had Abated
Video, 2025 (5 minutes)

Concept, choreography and performance | Joy Bernard and Tzipi Nir
Artistic accompaniment | Dr. Emma Gashinsky and Noam Carmeli
Videography and editing | Itamar Skalka

For the Waters Had Abated is a site-specific work combining dance, performance, and video, created in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Tzipi Nir. Developed for a section of Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa – the route from sentencing to crucifixion at Calvary – the work reclaims a path historically marked by a Western male archetype, reimagining it through feminine symbolic, performative, and physical layers.

Two women move along the Via Dolorosa – the Way of Suffering, where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus walked to his death. They crawl on their bellies, pushing, leaning, and supporting one another as they connect to the weight of women’s suffering across history, alongside their own.

At a certain point, they transform the road to death into a path of life, performing a ritual in which Nir prepares Bernard to enter the gates of womanhood – to give birth and to be born.

Drawing on elements from both Christian and Jewish traditions, they undergo ceremonies that are at once painful and purifying. Moving between sisterhood and violence, they ask whether it is possible to articulate a new femininity and a renewed faith in life.