The High Priest: Face - Inner Face: A Dance Essay

The images in the following pages are drawn from a video dance comprising two films, each about five minutes long, shown simultaneously on adjacent screens. They were filmed in November 2002 in the caverns of the Bell Cave in Beit Govrin, Israel. As the performer and choreographer of the dance and the creator of the costumes and the sound track, I would like to share my sources of inspiration. One screen shows the figure of the High Priest, dressed in a rough linen garment, engaged in his internal work: the preparation of the “inner Temple” to encompass the spiritual and psychic powers demanded by his role. The second screen shows the figure of the High Priest in his purified state. He stands in the center of the gateway to the Holy of Holies, dressed in layers of white, mediating between external and internal realms and between heaven and earth. The High Priest is identified with the sanctity of the House of God. The cloth of his garments was identical to that of the curtains in the inner sanctum and the parokhet, which were made of forbidden blends of fabric. The garment is the home, the dwelling—this is the concept that guided me to an understanding of the dress of the High Priest. In the left-hand screen, the High Priest’s clothes are made of a combination of delicate, transparent fabrics, over which he wears a vest of woolly fur. Upon the vest lies a breastplate made of white handmade paper, branded by twelve burnt holes symbolizing the twelve stones described in the biblical account. The white figure of the High Priest stands in the center of twelve large golden circles (mounds of gold-colored cornmeal), symbolizing the breastplate. This dazzling figure, identified with the cave’s light-colored