BATSHEVA COMPANY Press Kit

Table of Contents

1. “Movement That Rides on a Pulse of Its Own,” NEW YORK TIMES, November 15, 2007

2. “Max,” JERUSALEM POST, March 21, 2007

3. “Journey into the roots of movement,” HABAMA

4. “A Treatise of Human Nature – Ohad Naharin’s “Max”,” EINAV KATAN, January 2008

5. “When Childlike Wonder Meets Eroticism,” NEW YORK TIMES, November 15, 2005

6. “Movement Complemented by Immobility and Silence,” NEW YORK TIMES, March 5, 2008

7. “Kaleidoscope on New York Stage,” ALL ABOUT JEWISH THEATRE, March 22, 2008

8. “Batsheva Technique is Ample Reason to go Gaga,” LOS ANGELES TIMES, November 6, 2006

9. “Batsheva Dancers are Fluid, Frisky and, Against all Odds, Human,” SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, October 28, 2006

10. “Divide and Re-form,” VILLAGE VOICE, July 24, 2006

11. “ of 25 Years in ‘Deca Dance’,” THE NEWS-GAZETTE, October 17, 2006

12. “Beethoven Without Clothes and Other Unusual Moves,” NEW YORK TIMES, July 6, 2006

13. “Three Doses of Batsheva,” JERUSALEM POST, February 7, 2005

14. “Batsheva Dance Company,” WASHINGTON POST, February 28, 2004

15. “Deca Dance is an Extraordinary Feast of Movement,” SEATTLE POST- INTELLIGENCER, March 19, 2004

16. “Extravagant Fun with Batsheva,” SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

17. “Batsheva Dance Company, Deca Dance,” VOICE OF DANCE, March 11, 2004

18. “Batsheva Pushes Edges of Expectation,” THE OREGONIAN, March 19, 2004

19. “Choosing Partners: Israel’s Provocative Batsheva Company,” THE STAR-LEDGER, March 2, 2004

20. “Dance on the Wild Side,” SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, March 12, 2004

21. “Batsheva Dance Company, This Celebration Worth Lining up For,” COLUMBUS DISPATCH, March 5, 2004

22. “Ambiguity as Text, a Blackboard as Backdrop,” NEW YORK TIMES, May 2, 2002

23. “An Infectious Virus,” NEWSDAY, May 3, 2002

24. “Strange Partners,” VILLAGE VOICE, May 14, 2002

DANCE REVIEW Movement That Rides on a Pulse of Its Own

Nan Melville for The New York Times A scene from “Three” by Ohad Naharin, performed by the Batsheva Dance Company.

By GIA KOURLAS November 15, 2007

In a discussion for the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum on Monday, Ohad Naharin explained how his movement language, called Gaga, helps dancers focus on the space between the navel and groin: “You can ride on it and discover your power.”

Lately, Gaga has served as a potent tool for Mr. Naharin, the choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, which performed his “Three” on Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His art, which is becoming addictive, creates a similar sort of trip: packed with Mr. Naharin’s entrancing, poetic texture, no matter the music, it rides on a pulse of its own.

At first the dance for 17 performers in three sections appears to be an ensemble work; by the end the stage is bursting with individuals, in sharp contrast to what they are wearing: Rakefet Levy’s generic shirts and cropped pants. They may appear ready for a Gap ad, but “Three” is no Gap-ad dance.

In “Bellus,” set to Bach, 10 dancers gaze boldly at the audience before abruptly abandoning and later rejoining Erez Zohar, who performs an undulating solo culminating in a streak of artlessly exuberant jumps. After a blackout Stefan Ferry walks onto the stage — an action he repeats later — holding a television monitor that shows his head, while a stilted, bored voice ticks off a few points about the next section: “There are short sections and long sections of four minutes.” The Brian Eno music, we are told, will be very quiet. Wittily, Mr. Naharin gets the tedious details over with so the audience can just watch.

But there’s nothing dull about “Humus,” an especially beautiful dance for nine women, who move as one mesmerizing organism. In “Secus,” the final section set to an eclectic mix of songs, the entire group rushes onto the stage, with dancers kicking their legs, sinuously jutting their hips and twisting their torsos like ribbons.

Teasing blackouts continually interrupt a duet for Sharon Eyal and Guy Shomroni. Later, as Avi- Yona Bueno’s lighting, marvelous as usual, gradually fades, the final song — a wholly appropriate one — plays: the Beach Boys’ “You’re Welcome.” Whenever Mr. Naharin’s company comes to town, we have much to be thankful for; in the case of his new dance, it came three times over.

Batsheva Dance Company performs through Saturday at the Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 636-4100, bam.org.

Mar. 21, 2007 | Dance Review: "Max" | By ORA BRAFMAN

"Max" Batsheva Dance Company Suzanne Dellal, March 13

The superb ensemble work of 10 bright dancers makes "Max", Ohad Naharin's latest creation, an evening to remember.

I doubt if Batsheva's dancers ever looked better, with each individual dancer compressing his utmost attention inward, yet concurrently aware of the surrounding space and action. Each dancer's personal manifestation becomes a part of the larger picture. In the first half, one might compare the dance to a group of birds, each a part of a grandiose pattern, yet busy within their own private space. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, the group turns into a flock which swishes swiftly, shifting direction and speed in perfect sync.

Original music composed for "Max" by Maxim Waratt (a name Naharin assumed for himself) contains numerous gibberish lyrics with various accents, all sung in Naharin's deep low voice.

The lexicon of the dancers expands all the time following the GaGa technique, which is geared toward exploring new ways to move the body. It often leads to contrived, exaggerated and distorted motions. But sometimes the results produce truly touching new ways to perceive the body. In "Max", it all comes together. The range of the dance language is impressive in its originality and individuality and the audience enjoys the self-assured maturity of a talented group of dancers.

Journey into the roots of movement

HaBama, By Zvi Goren Modern Classic We are talking in fact about a journey – mine as a spectator – into the roots of movement as an expression of the human condition. released the semiotic expression of classical from its bonds and placed the role on an infinite treasure of movement, free choreographic ideas and the human individualistic expression of the dancers as the starting point, even when we see group . Modern dance evolved from ballet and came and seemingly broke all possible conventions. MAX by Ohad Naharin is the classic, the modern and the contemporary all at once. The two different casts of Batsheva dancers are excellent and give the piece distinct weight, different in the general impression of expression. Both together give to Naharin's ideas great vitality in their capabilities and in the perfection of the movement in a group which is necessary for unison or as a group of individuals, particularly in the solos, duets, trios, quartets and quintets. The clear affinity to classical ballet, which is the solid basis for the entire development of dance, reaches a climax in a solo (in wonderful and very different performances by Gilli Navot in the first cast and Yaara Moses in the second cast) and in the male trio which follows it. Not surprisingly, there was also something very swan-like in them.

A Primal expression of pain and happiness This piece is constructed with classical meticulousness based on the affinity between the individual and the group, solo expressions or small group structures, return to the whole group and again de-construction and construction, creation of structures in space and in time. Deliberately, throughout the piece we have a precise count via a hidden sound score which is transmitted to the ears of the dancers, in parallel to the sound score which is broadcast through the sound system to the audience. The sense of structural precision is amplified by the spectacular lighting design of Bambi (Avi Yona Bueno), who painted the stage and the dancers with intense or soft strokes, with obscure and dark hues and with bright colors. The fascinating musical production of Ohad Fishoff and the complex sound design of Moshe Shasho have a particularly important role in the music of MAX, composed by Maxim Warrat, who is no other than Naharin himself. The music includes verbal segments (usually voiced by Naharin, or his alter-ego, Warrat), in supposedly "ethnic" languages or gibberish. One of the significant elements in the music is the repeated count from one to three or from one to ten, creating a climax of some 15 minutes towards the end of the performance. In this part the count from one to ten is performed progressively, time after time, while each count accompanies a different set of ten movements, in solos, duos, trios, quartets, quintets and of the whole group, and again in changing sets, counted in precise rhythmic unity, while the nature of movement in each set creates the sense of escalating rhythm. And after all this, the question is what this piece is all about. The answer is as complex as the complexity of each spectator. Not as commentators of a story but as the ones who create it together with the choreography. For Naharin this is a journey into human essence and he does it through his journey into the roots of movement - movement which is a primal expression of pain and happiness, of the solitude of the individual, the essence of the couple, the essence of a team and the essence of society as a whole. And this is the purpose of this art – on stage and in the audience together.

A Treatise of Human Nature – Ohad Naharin’s “MAX” Music by: Maxim Waratt. Einav Katan, January 2008

A choreographer dreams a musician who composes choreographies. In MAX, Ohad Naharin has joined the composer Maxim Waratt for the first time. Waratt is a unique musician; he creates his compositions behind bars, running away from freedom into strict borders, while he himself has got no limits. Usually, his pieces are vocal, since he has unfair conditions. Never the less, his compositions are plentiful. His music reverberates to variant cultures and creates a seemingly impossible mixture. Waratt transcends beyond the ordinary, abandoning common determinations of identity; Ceremonial and cultural elements clash into each other, while subversive inclinational whispers rustle behind. The universal ground of any language of man becomes music. This music sounds like folklore that doesn’t belong to any distinguished folk- This is the private language he shares with the dancers on stage.

This ambiguity can also describe Naharin’s language of movement; the motions are universal and private at the same time. They are context-reliant yet stand for themselves. The dancers research the limits of movement: Every motion is an object for study and a subject which controls their bodies and souls. Each motion exists on its own, and encounters other movements which define it all over, again and again. The definition of each motion changes from body to body, from one researcher to the next, from one creation to another.

The English philosopher David Hume argued that there is no such thing as personal identity. In “Treatise of human nature” he writes about mankind: “they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement”. A simple and continued principle which one may call “oneself”, does not exist. Who are we without connections and encounters? All we have is a continued indefinable float.

And MAX – What is MAX? Who is MAX? His connections are variants. His identity is wide and flexible. Every time we stop him we will find something else. From the front he is the Maximum, from behind he is a Scum. He is harmonically composed from contradictions and confrontations. He is diverse and varied. He is a whole.

What the viewer sees in MAX reveals the viewer's situation right now; the sight immanently includes the one who sees. This creation is one of its kind, a result of a unique gathering between the choreographer, the musician, the dancers and an audience. Any new factor will create another MAX.

And yet, we can notice MAX; MAX is the flux and the movement. It is a search zone, where vocal and physical ranges connect in time and space. It is an unlimited stream which invites you to get caught-up by the moment, and to imagine a creation of your own.

DANCE REVIEW; When Childlike Wonder Meets Eroticism

By JOHN ROCKWELL November 15, 2005

Ohad Naharin is 53 now, and long since established as Israel's leading choreographer. But he's been through a lot lately, and his new piece, ''Mamootot,'' in its spare, reserved, sexual and literally touching way, reflects all that.

''Mamootot'' (pronounced mah-MOO-tote) means mammoth in Hebrew, but Mr. Naharin has said he just likes the sound of the word. The 2003 piece is the first he did after his wife died in 2001; he thanks her in the program. After that he took a year and a half off from his post as artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, Israel's finest. Now he's back, apparently rejuvenated, and showing us this hourlong work. It's pretty thrilling.

Mr. Naharin's pieces have often involved large-scale spectacle. ''Mamootot,'' presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in the top-floor studio of the nearby Mark Morris Dance Center, is for nine dancers in a small space with the audience of about 100 seated on all four sides. The light is overhead, unchanging and bright. (After a power failure as the audience was seating itself on Tuesday, it became more muted, but the fixed idea remained.)

So what, one might wonder. In New York we're used to spare abstraction and intimate surroundings. But for Mr. Naharin, this way of working was apparently a revelation in its restrictiveness. And it's not quite so abstract as you might first think.

Some choreographers have a way of winning your complicity right away: you're gripped, drawn in, and then most anything takes on a charge of added meaning. So it is, or at least so it was for me, with ''Mamootot.''

What's unchanged about Mr. Naharin's way of working is his fascination with ritual, sensuality, repetition and mystery. His nine Batsheva dancers, mostly in their mid-20's but looking almost brazenly young, are all superb, and what Mr. Naharin asks of them brings out their inner, individual gifts. But those gifts remain focused by a seductive overall vision.

A lone woman emerges at the outset in a pastel jump suit, cut off at the knees and elbows, with white trim along the bottoms of the legs and arms and around the neck. They're all dressed like that. Along with pale body makeup on the lower legs and arms and neck, the costuming (Rakefet Levy) makes them look like they're lost in a fairy tale, Pierrots or puppets, with arched backs and splayed fingers and twisting falls.

For the first three-quarters of an hour they dance in their own spaces, in strict patterns or solo. When that spell is broken, when they appear in duos and actually touch, the contrast is shocking. One man zips off his jump suit and, naked, performs a lascivious non- touching duet with a woman who suddenly leaps onto his side as he turns, leering. Two women do a sensuous , their contact seeming to trigger sparky electronic sounds.

What's fascinating -- actually, it's all pretty fascinating -- is the blend of childlike wonder and eroticism (a writhing traversal of the diagonal by one woman on her back, stretching and arching, for instance), formality and quirky personality. At the end, all nine walk around the perimeter of the space, right next to the audience, holding strangers' hands and staring into their eyes with an inexplicable cocktail of emotions.

This is all augmented by the peculiar, and quite wonderful, soundtrack, consisting of hushed ambient sounds and cheesy loud punk-pop, all from records purchased almost at random by Mr. Naharin on shopping sprees in Japan; he chose them, he says, because he liked their covers.

Go if you can, though you probably can't. All 13 performances were sold out before the run began. But you can always hope for returns.

Mamootot Batsheva Dance Company ''Mamootot'' runs through Nov. 27 at the Mark Morris Dance Center, 3 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100 or www.bam.org.

Movement Complemented by Immobility and Silence DANCE REVIEW By ROSLYN SULCAS Published: March 5, 2008

A reasonable amount of fanfare usually greets the arrival in New York of a piece by Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company of Israel and one of the most fascinating dancemakers on the planet. But “Kamuyot,” which he choreographed in 2003 for the Batsheva Ensemble, the company’s junior troupe, slipped quietly into the city over the weekend as part of the Israel Non-Stop Arts Festival at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. That’s a pity. Although “Kamuyot” was apparently created with children and adolescents in mind (“For adults and kids ages 6 and up,” the program states), it is as inventive and complex as anything Mr. Naharin has ever conceived. It is also very like other pieces he has made; the program credits his “Mamootot” and “Moshe” as sources. But “Kamuyot” is no less powerful for including the elements characteristic of Mr. Naharin’s work. There are periods of immobility and silence. There are moments of intimate between the dancers and those watching. There are the blank-faced performers, whose movement becomes, over time, a source of profound emotional content. And there is the movement itself, sharply delineated, dislocated, explosive, liquid — an improbable blend of geometric lines and calligraphic curves, propulsive dynamics and mysterious gesture that is all Mr. Naharin’s own. “Kamuyot” is intended to be shown in the round, without lighting or artifice, in settings like the gymnasium of the Jewish Community Center. The 15 dancers sit among the audience when they are not dancing to music that ranges from reggae to Japanese pop to Bach. Midway through the work they slowly file past the front rows, occasionally taking an audience member’s hand and gazing into that person’s eyes. Like the sequence in which the dancers lead audience members into the center to copy their poses (I can testify that at the second performance on Sunday this was a lot of fun), the hand- holding and eye contact miraculously bypass contrivance and lead the spectator straight through the theater’s fourth wall and into a mysterious region of shared experience. “Kamuyot" declines to condescend in any way; both the dancing and the demands it makes on its audience are consistently complex. But it’s clear that the immediacy of this contact exerts a particularly powerful appeal upon its younger audiences. Mr. Naharin’s skill at economically weaving these affecting moments into his dance text is remarkable. So is his ability to construct dances that deftly counterpoint groups and individuals. But due credit should go to the youthful members of the Batsheva Ensemble, who dance like demons and offer an honesty of response, to one another and to the audience, that is both moving and memorable.

March 22, 2008

Kaleidoscope on New York Stage: The JCC in Manhattan and Consulate General of Israel kick off Israel’s 60th birthday with the Israel non-stop arts festival By Miri Ben-Shalom

Since the opening of its new home on Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street in 2002, the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Manhattan brings high quality and diverse programs that are rooted in Jewish values to New York residents. As part of its mission, the JCC in Manhattan seeks to fulfill its responsibility to the people of Israel by embracing a strong connection with the Israeli arts community. For the past 6 years, The JCC has held the ISRAEL NON-STOP annual arts festival, which presents seven days of Israeli film, music, theater, dance, food, photographs and literature. Over the years some of the most prominent and promising Israeli artists were invited to participate in this salute to Israel: writers such as Etgar Keret (2003), choreographers like Emanuel Gat (2004), musicians such as Idan Raichl (2004) or film makers like Shemi Zarchin (2008), to name a few.

Israeli artists are making their mark in the states. This year, from February 28th through March 6th, Israel Non-Stop kicked off Israel's 60th birthday by presenting back-to-back performances and events that exemplify the exciting, moving and fearless artistic efforts that continue to come out of Israel. Dance, theater, music, art, film, food and wine; a week long stream of interesting, thought-provoking and moving events and programs that signify the individuality of Israel's artistic expression. Among the 2008 participants was Shalom Hanoch, one of the most significant artists in Israeli rock, and one of the most fascinating and prolific forces in all of Israeli music, as well as the dynamic Hip Hop-Funk fusion of Coolooloosh. The popular author Galila Ron-Feder shared her stories from Israel with an enthusiastic audience of children and their parents. Also featured were the renowned actor Moti Katz with his one-man show Actor's Kitchen, the play Black Rain, the films Aviva My Love and Dear Mr. Waldman, Ohad Naharin’s dance Kamuyot, and the list goes on. The JCC opened the festival with Black Rain, directed by Ofira Henig and presented by the Herzliya Theater Ensemble and Haifa Theater. The play, which premiered at the Israel Festival in 2007, explores the issues of dropping the atomic bomb upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and, indirectly, the implications for modern day Israel and the rest of the world.

No doubt, the “star” of the festival and the audience draw was Ohad Naharin and his Batsheva Ensemble, the company’s junior troupe, performing Kamuyot. Based on two of his other works, Mamootot and Moshe, this piece was created for young audiences. Since it is often performed in schools, it is staged in the square, with no particular lighting design. But make no mistake, this fact in no way means that Naharin’s composition is any less complex, less demanding, or his vision diluted. The imagery, the intensity, the humor, the music, the audience inclusion in the piece, all make it appealing to adults as much as to kids. No less powerful and remarkable are the young dancers themselves. Their execution of the complexity of the movements, the contortions, the liquidity, the gestures and expressions, all contributed to a thrilling performance. Regretful that the piece “slipped quietly into the city as part as the Israel Non-Stop Arts Festival,” The New York Times, calling Ohad Naharin “one of the most fascinating dancemakers on the planet” writes: “Although kamuyot was apparently created with children and adolescents in mind, it is as inventive and complex as anything Mr. Naharin has ever conceived.”

DANCE REVIEW Batsheva technique is ample reason to go Gaga By Lewis Segal Times Staff Writer

November 6, 2006

Modern dance is modern again. Israeli choreographer and company leader Ohad Naharin has developed a millennial training system for his Batsheva Dance Company that frees dancers to move any which way with unprecedented control. He calls that system Gaga, and it's rooted in unblocking the body, releasing untapped reserves of agility and metaphysical connection.

At Royce Hall on Saturday, you gaped as if you'd never seen contemporary dance when Batsheva presented "Three" on the UCLA Live series, even though the 70-minute work often seemed as much an infomercial for Naharin's futuristic system as a conventional piece of plotless showpiece choreography.

After a company lineup in street clothes, a solo for Matan David displayed many of the new freedoms and possibilities. Any point on his body could initiate movement, and that body could also collapse into itself at any point. Complete relaxation could instantly change to extreme tension. Balance issues were in a constant process of renegotiation. And as David's dancing effortlessly grew elegant or contorted, delicate or forceful, supple or disjointed, intricate or bold — but always unpredictable — you assumed that he was some yogic phenomenon, fabulously in tune but way above the crowd.

Nope. All 10 dancers in the opening section moved that way, and by setting it to a Glenn Gould recording of music by Bach, Naharin suggested that we were looking at the culmination of a whole epoch in Western culture. Certainly Gould and the Batsheva dancers shared the same ultimate refinement of technical capabilities, the same state-of-the-art mastery, in their disciplines. And as this section (titled "Bellus") continued, Naharin introduced more wonders, including a high-speed duet for Gabriel Spitzer and Noa Zouk that provided a dazzling array of lifts and other sudden, in-and-out displacements of weight.

If "Bellus" offered a string of surprises, "Humus" used music by Brian Eno to underscore tightly structured group activities for the company women. Marching in formation — slapping their chests every five steps — or running in place at fearsome velocity or executing tiny shoulder articulations, they showed how individual bodies trained in Naharin's system could make powerful unison statements: corps effects, though nobody would mistake these Israeli valkyries for swans.

Structuralism turned whimsical in "Secus," with passages of follow-the-leader nudity for the 17 dancers along with sudden bursts of Slavic squat kicks, martial-arts maneuvers and enough unisex muscle flexing to make you assume that Naharin intended to satirize what people want from dance à la Pina Bausch. He's played that game before, adapting for dance the accusatory "Offending the Audience" by Austrian playwright Peter Handke. "Three" even featured supercilious program notes delivered via a hand-held TV monitor.

But "Secus" didn't stay satiric for long, instead exploring a number of gambits to a range of accompaniments, some merely fragments. Punctuated with blackouts, a duet for Guy Shomroni and Sharon Eyal ended in aggression, but when David and Spitzer teamed up, their fusion of folk and ballroom steps — plus wild gymnastic eruptions — not only went beyond the comprehensive amalgamation of disciplines on which Twyla Tharp founded her groundbreaking style but had a deep tenderness otherwise absent in the evening.

You don't go to a piece by Ohad Naharin anticipating thematic consistency, but you do expect that he will use one of the world's great modern dance ensembles to the fullest. "Three" trumped those expectations by reconceiving Batsheva technique, not lessening the company's justly celebrated hunger for movement but making the company's style supremely articulate.

If this particular work amounted to little more than a test drive, the sense of witnessing an advance in artistic potential was reason enough to drive the Royce Hall audience completely gaga.

Batsheva dancers are fluid, frisky and, against all odds, human

Janice Berman, Special to The Chronicle Saturday, October 28, 2006

You know how it is. You're driving home from a dance concert, listening to rock on the radio, and your body starts bopping to the beat. Shoulders lift, arms flail, neck stretches, foot taps. It's a waker-upper, a refresher and, best of all, a self-expresser.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. After seeing Batsheva Dance Company's show, "Three," at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, your correspondent and once intrepid car-dancer felt utterly inadequate, physically inarticulate. Choreographer and artistic director Ohad Naharin's Israel-based crew were Fred and Ginger, Fred and Fred, Martha Graham acolytes (like Naharin himself), acrobats of God. They shrugged shoulders, retracted legs, flailed arms, stretched necks. They shimmied, did tangos and splits, made odd noises deep in their throats, poked their faces with their fingers, navigated the stage on their butts, quivered hands and extended tongues. Oh yeah, and dropped trou. A few did, anyway.

What Naharin creates for Batsheva goes way beyond obeying an impulse generated by a beat. In fact, rarely if ever did the casually clad, barefoot troupe of 17 dance on the beat of the music, which ranged from Bach to Eno to a pop collage mixed by Batsheva dancer Stefan Ferry. And though the program notes were notably unenlightening -- with a line about the three dances exploring beauty, nature and existence, and that was it -- the subject, in truth, was human-ness. Whether individually or in duets, this topic went forward most unpretentiously, if you can call such virtuosity, off-center elegance, physical daring and trust unpretentious.

The first piece threw the dancers onto their backs, legs splayed toward the audience as if to show that when they're not in motion they're just like the rest of us. Hah. One dancer struck impeccable balances, extremities a-ripple. Having finished, though, she walked flat-footed off the stage, a mere mortal again. In rhythmic chorales and in frisky circle dances, the dancers seemed as low-key and flourish-free as their clothing. The choreography was the star. The final dance provided the lone opportunity for each dancer to face the audience and do something unique, whether it was presenting his or her hands, doing something weird with the face, balancing improbably through a plie, or showing some skin.

Between the dances, a deadpan dancer toted out a video monitor and held it up so the audience could see Naharin's talking head on it, explaining what to watch for. But Naharin's cuing was unnecessary, for the dancers' understated splendor made it impossible to look away.

Three: Batsheva Dance Company. 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Sunday. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St., San Francisco. Tickets: $27 and $44. www.ybca.org or (415) 978-2787.

Divide and Re-form Ohad Naharin redefines spectacle by Deborah Jowitt July 24th, 2006 6:52 PM Ohad Naharin's stunning Anaphaza, performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2003, took its name from a stage in mitosis in which daughter chromosomes move to opposite sides of a cell. In that piece, the dancers of Batsheva, the Israeli company Naharin directs, implied separation and bonding in diverse and imaginative ways. At one point they selected partners from the audience, brought them onstage and performed for and with them.

Naharin's most recent company work Telophaza, also Telophaza presented by the LCF, refers to the final stage of photo: Gadi Dagon Batsheva Dance Company mitosis in which new nuclei are formed. Compared to New York State Theater Anaphaza and the beautiful small-scale Mamootot July 20 through 22 (2003)—shown last year in the Mark Morris Dance Center's intimate performance space—Telophaza focuses more on groups than on individuals. Naharin brilliantly deploys a playful army of performers who group and regroup into squadrons that only occasionally thrust individuals into prominence.

We, the spectator platoon, interact with the dancers as a unit and at a distance. At one point, Rachel Osborne's calm, taped voice urges us to copy gestures she mutely executes in a close-up projected video along with the onstage dancers, becoming more and more energetic. Toward the end of the piece, the 20 company members sit facing us on chairs, and, again guided by Osborne, we're invited to touch parts of our bodies while pondering certain questions, like "Touch your chin and think that you're enjoying yourself." When she gets us on our feet and says, "Now dance," the performers rise and walk away while the audience—although studded with the shy and the squeamish—cuts loose. For a minute, the State Theater rocks. These two audience participation interludes also serve in lieu of intermissions, like the exercises you're supposed to do on airplanes to keep your feet from dropping off.

Four video screens with live feed, set up at the back, introduce us to company members' close-up faces; they're scrutinizing the scene. As, one by one, they leave the camera stations and feed into an ongoing dance that Yaniv Abraham has begun, others enter via openings at the rear and replace them. So we know these people, yet don't know them, since they so quickly engage as a squad in the powerful movement—limber but precise— that travels over the stage. So this is what they were preparing for at the outset when they dropped down, set their hands on the floor, and bounced for a long time to music that sounded like a funereally slow hora. In addition to the company dancers, the cast includes 18 members of the Batsheva Ensemble, Naharin's junior company. As Telophaza unfolds, I begin to feel as if I'm watching a colorful, marvelously organized but utterly crazy parade celebrating who knows what. The playlist includes unfamiliar examples of Near and Far-Eastern pop groups, such as the Bollywood Brass Band, along with Bruce Springsteen. Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi) contributes vivid lighting, and Rakefet Levy's superb costumes are a crucial part of the work. The performers have several versions of the basic outfit—a sleekly fitting leotard cum gym suit—in different colors and in white (with white bathing caps for the younger group). Muted blues, greens, and grays give way to sparkly metallics, then to bright red, orange, pink, or chartreuse (worn with smiles). In the most festive display, everyone wears a unitard in a different bold print.

The dancers are remarkable, whether they're marching shoulder to shoulder, gesturing in unison, or exploding into a pointillist sea of squiggles. Their steps dig into the ground, expand over space. They can shoot into the air, fall, and rise without apparent effort. Their legs twist and fling so freely that their hip joints look oiled. In one interlude, we get to see just how individually marvelous they can be. The cameras are set in a circle framed by a pool of light. While performers walk the perimeter, various ones spell each other in the center. Sharon Eyal, Matan David, Stefan Ferry, Danielle Agami, Mami Shimazaki, Adi Zlatin! Leo Larus is a master at moving from fierce, on-a-dime stops to sinuous melts. Caroline Broussard, left alone while the cameras are moved to their original positions, struggles with her own recalcitrant body. The taped cheering voices and musical rave-ups seem almost redundant. We know champs when we see them.

As my eye scans some of the dense passages, I notice curious events—trial and error moments. A man exits laboriously, crawling on one foot, one hand, head, other foot, and so on. A woman sits placidly on the face of a supine man. A woman bites another's raised elbow. But intimacy is rare, which may be why the last few moments are so startling. The company members, lined up with their backs to us, are looking down at something. The camera shows it to us: the closeup faces of Yoshifumi and Kristin Inao, who are almost naked and making love. In the final seconds of the work, her face remains on the screen, staring at us, while he dances violently in a strobe light, and the only other person on the flickering stage, a woman, makes her way along a row of chairs, stepping carefully from one seat to another. Unification can be a temporary state. Cells divide, governments topple. We might as well embrace whatever we have, joyfully, while we still can.

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'Three' doses of Batsheva

ATIRA WINCHESTER, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 7, 2005

Ohad Naharin's return to Batsheva as artistic director will be marked this week with the premiere of his new piece, Shalosh (Three). Challenging and distinctive, it is as loaded as any dance piece that has preceded it.

The evening divides into three parts: "Bellus" (beauty), "Humus" (earth), and "Secus," which, according to Naharin, translates as both "this" and "not this." The Latin title is amusingly apt for a choreographer who is notoriously evasive about the meaning of his work.

"There are three parts to the piece... Any further explanation is okay, but...," said Naharin at a recent press conference, reluctant to continue. "The best place for me to be in my work is with my feelings. And I wish for you to be in that place, too."

"Bellus" forms the first piece of the evening. Ten dancers - five male, five female - enter the stage. With carefully coordinated movements they partner off and mirror one another's actions. There is a puppet-like quality to their frontal, almost mechanically simple movements, hands rising and falling as if orchestrated from above. Accompanying them is Glen Gould's interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations: stark, unified and haunting.

"Humus" follows. A ginger-haired male walks onto the stage with a television under his arm. The screen shows his own face, grinning. The flesh version, meanwhile, is silent.

"Humus," says the TV head. "Hummus. HUUUUUMUS with a HAAAY."

Acting as postmodern Greek chorus and compere, the talking head reveals various details of the performance to follow: its length, lighting source and music. Rather than providing answers to our assumed levels of sophistication, Naharin seems to be suggesting this is what we really want to know.

The head and person retreat, and five female dancers enter the stage. They dance to Brian Eno's ethereal, barely-there music like fish in the sea, in possession of an aquatic, but arrested liquidity.

"Like racing cars travelling at 30 kilometers per hour," describes Naharin.

"Secus" is the final number, and by far the most energetic of the three pieces.

All 17 members of the Batsheva company perform, criss-crossing and giving the audience a visual rush. There are solos and duets, a rich explosion of movement all happening seemingly simultaneously.

"It's the pure pleasure of a moment," says Naharin. "Like a small taste of food."

Like the TV man in Humus who ridicules the their banal questions, Secus also succeeds in taunting the audience. The dancers line up, stepping forward, revealing their torsos slowly and deliberately to a voyeuristic, flesh-hungry crowd.

Naharin states that each of the three pieces stands independently: "There is no relation between them other than the fact that they are performed in the same time frame."

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Despite this, there is no break between the pieces, and the audience sees the piece as a whole.

The man behind Three's soundtrack - which in "Secus" provides 20-40 second snippets of music by everyone from the Beach Boys through to Kid 606, Seefeel and Chari Chari - is dancer, musician and choreographer Ohad Fishof.

Fishof met Naharin in 1992 and have been promising to work together since. The promise came good last year when Fishof - formerly a member of rock-group Nosei Hamigba'at - composed the soundtrack for Naharin's primarily musical performance, Playback.

"We worked really, really hard on Playback," recalls Naharin.

"Fishof was the person I saw most in the world in that period, and I think the music for Three became much easier to compile as a result of that work."

Says Naharin about Three: "I'm always connected to my sadness, although I think that the piece finds a way to laugh at itself, too."

In answer to whether the laughter is cold or warm, whether it mocks or comforts, Naharin answers: "Both. The warmth is always there. You have to reach out to find the cold."

The world premiere of Three takes place at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Performing Arts on February 12. Performances in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem continue through the month.

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PERFORMING ARTS

Saturday, February 28, 2004; Page C08 Batsheva Dance Company

Ohad Naharin has never met a corner he couldn't turn into a curve. His Israeli Batsheva Dance Company dancers constantly snaked around themselves and each other in "Deca Dance" on Thursday night at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater.

The work puts a collage of excerpts from nine Naharin pieces in conversation with each other. A woman performed a solo from "Naharin's Virus" in a costume from another piece and a thong-wearing stilt walker strutted onstage as other dancers finished "Black Milk." "Deca Dance's" montage-like quality made the sum of the evening's parts difficult to judge, though the parts and the transitions the choreographer built between them were engaging and beautiful.

Batsheva's audience was a spirited one, especially after a number in which company members with deadpan faces, dressed in boxy black suits and wide-brimmed black hats, moved into the audience, each dancer inviting one person onstage.

A social experiment ensued as the Batsheva dancers waltzed, then slam-danced around their new partners, finally falling to the floor as one audience member stood alone center stage.

In another, less gimmicky section, Naharin created one of the most ingenious chair dances ever -- the chair dance being a cliche in the dance world.

Dancers sit in a semi-circle of chairs and, as a loud musical countdown plays, each arches into the air in a wave that ends with the last dancer falling to the floor as though he has been shot

The order of "Deca Dance," according to the program, is "subject to change," so last night's performance, the closer of the company's two-night stay, might have been different than Thursday's.

-- Clare Croft

Batsheva Dance Company, 6 Yechieli Street, Tel Aviv 65149 Tel: +972 3 5171471 / Fax: +972 3 516 0231

Friday, March 19, 2004

'Deca Dance' is an extraordinary feast of movement

By ALICE KADERLAN SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Watching "Deca Dance" by choreographer Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company, is like enjoying the tasting menu at France's finest restaurant. Virtually every morsel is different, and wonderful.

"Deca Dance" is a pieced-together creation of sections from eight different Naharin works and seeing the selections in this way provides an opportunity to appreciate the full range of his extraordinary talent.

The most memorable section comes from "Anaphaza." Set to a hard-driving rendition of a simple Passover song, it features a group of dancers in black suits seated in a semi-circle. As the music pounds away, the dancers flail about, fall off their chairs and gradually shed their clothes as though at an interrogation. It's a harrowing piece, even in the sole section showcased here, and not surprisingly occasioned the first question at Wednesday night's post-performance discussion with Naharin.

Almost as powerful, and with much of the same intensity, is a section from "Naharin's Virus." A line of dancers in white high-neck leotards and black tights gyrate frenetically to the sounds of traditional Middle Eastern songs. Like much of Naharin's choreography, the movement features deep contractions, arms and legs at sharp angles, and there is great passion and remarkable uniformity among the dancers.

As this program demonstrates, Naharin can choreograph in many different styles and for many different groupings. But the works that stand out the most are his ensemble pieces, and especially those done in a line or something close to it, like the semi-circle of "Anaphaza."

In the section from "Sabotage Baby," women in tuxedos parody the words to a popular love song and though their movement is more mime than dance, the effect is riveting.

In a section from "Moshe," the company does a kind of electronic jive dance in which, at one level, it seems that each member is going in a different direction. Yet there is a remarkable coherence to the ensemble and a distinct pattern to the physical relationships among the rotating dancers.

And then there is "Zachacha," always an audience favorite because it literally reaches out to the audience. Each time it's performed, the Israeli dance company somehow manages to bring up on stage some funny, some fabulous, some flaky and some just plain folks who help turn "Zachacha" into an actual work of art.

Extravagant fun with Batsheva, from surf-guitar hora to politics Israeli troupe makes first S.F. visit in Naharin's 'Deca Dance'

Janice Berman, Special to The Chronicle

"I'm glad I'm learning Hebrew," my friend Dana strength from a feminine ideal, and agility and Dubinsky said. She'd just come back to her seat grace for all to admire. after being kidnapped by a Batsheva dancer and "Sabotage Baby" is a goof on dominatrixes and hustled onto the Yerba Buena Center for the ballerinas; red boots come to a point for a Arts Theater stage, where she and another dozen screeching soloist on stilts, lip-synching Yma or so audience members spent 10 minutes in Sumac into a microphone. "Zachacha," one of artistic director Ohad "Black Milk" is a marvelously strong men-in- Naharin's best works for the Israeli . skirts piece for five, who dip into a bucket to Dubinsky, from Berkeley, didn't need to know daub faces and bare chests with mud, then Hebrew to take part in "Zachacha," set to launch into glorious space-devouring movement. wonderfully seedy lounge-lizard music. Far Another fragment of "Zachacha" uses a better that she wasn't afraid when her partner -- traditional Passover counting song as the basis she didn't catch his name -- picked her up and for a that begins with everyone whirled her around, and didn't collapse with seated on chairs, in black suits and hats and laughter when the men collapsed swooningly. white shirts. It feels a little rabbinical and a little "Zachacha" was one of eight dance excerpts in bit like a seder, and one dancer keeps standing the San Francisco Performances program on his chair and sitting again. He might be the Wednesday night that Naharin titled "Deca One, the Mighty God. Or it might be the only Dance," a survey of his last 10 years at dancer who keeps his jacket on, a figure who Batsheva's helm. The company, founded in 1964 falls to the floor after every verse. The by Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild and Martha movement is intense and rhythmic, the dancers Graham, has been directed by Naharin since swerving from side to side in something that's 1990 and is making its first visit to San part folk, part folks and solidly Naharin. Francisco as part of a national tour. The company members, from all over the world, Naharin knocks the pins out from under Serious are superb dancers. The intensity of the dancers' Modern Dance, at least of the type that you devotion is particularly evident in the closer, might think a major Graham disciple would "Anaphaza," which combines weird narrative espouse. Naharin, Israel-born and a U.S. citizen, and post-punk costuming with hard- charging draws his material from a wide and not movement. untroubled world. You can trace Pina Bausch's Excerpt shows are a tricky business. People who German expressionism in the glittery black have never seen the artist's work whole have no cocktail dresses, bare feet and lashing idea what's missing -- if they like it, it's a great extremities of one fragment, Dick Dale's coming attraction, but if they don't, it may be California surfing guitars underscoring the that they haven't seen the part that would make Israeli hora dance in another, and the music of them want to return. Fans sometimes feel Palestinian composer Habib Alla Jamal in the shortchanged on favorite works. opener, "Naharin's Virus." Naharin's pieces were not intended to be seen as Politically, Naharin is a dove on the Mideast, but fragments nor to be assembled randomly, unlike the virus relates to movement more than politics. the work of another former Graham dancer, Naharin has a contagious affection for strange, Merce Cunningham, whose events have become extravagant choreography in motion and at rest. a major part of his company's repertory. The The excerpt titled "Queens of Golub," a series of next time Batsheva comes to town -- hopefully solos for goddesses in weirdly elaborate bathing soon -- it would be good to see Naharin's pieces suits, puts them on tiptoe as if on some as he imagined them, for clearly, his imagination imaginary balance beam, then sets them into is unstoppable. poses and movements demanding uncommon

VOICE OF DANCE

Dance Review: Batsheva Dance Company, Deca Dance Batsheva Dance Company, Deca Dance Mar 11, 2004

By ALLAN ULRICH

Batsheva Dance Company Ohad Naharin's Anaphaza. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

The Bay Area has not always been fitted into every international dance company’s American touring itinerary; and the Bay Area is paying the price - which is pumped-up incomprehension - this week. Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company is making its debut visit to San Francisco in a five-day engagement that opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater Wednesday (March 10). The bill of fare throughout the week is Deca Dance, a survey of 16 years of choreography by Ohad Naharin, who last year vacated the post of Batsheva’s artistic director, which he has held since 1990.

It is something of an understatement to observe that Naharin altered the direction of the organization. For the first 25 years of its history, Tel Aviv-based Batsheva was a Martha Graham-oriented company, having secured exclusive rights, outside the Graham troupe itself, to dance that priceless legacy. Naharin’s work owes little to Graham and a lot to the confrontational, conceptual character of much contemporary European dance theater. Alert dancegoers might have previously caught a few of his works (or parts of them) in this area, imported by Hubbard Chicago, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Lyon Opera Ballet.

What Naharin has done in Deca Dance is to juxtapose episodes from nine of his works, evidently rearranging the sequence from performance to performance and even repeating a few of these excerpts within a single evening. This is fare both for people familiar with his work and passionate about it. Going for a highlights evening yields a string of striking moments, all of which reveal Naharin’s strengths and weaknesses. But it is the other episodes, the ones we don’t witness, that might have provided a more reliable indication of his artistry. Robbed of context, audiences have no choice but to respond only to what they see before them. Yet, after Wednesday’s opening, we do not know how all these bits fit into a unity and some of us do care about such matters. Deca Dance cannot be compared to a Merce Cunningham Event, because Cunningham’s genius resides in non-sequential movement phrases; and it also cannot be compared to the "Ailey Classics" program currently in the Ailey company’s repertoire at UC-Berkeley.

What Naharin does well, he does exceptionally well. He is a master of spacing large groups (Batsheva’s dancers number 16), an expert at emotionally charged unisons and an adept at tortured, athletic duets that have virtually nothing to do with the recorded music, which is often amplified at ear-splitting volume. Naharin also loves those accusatory stares, talking dancers and the stark black and white color scheme and transgender corsets familiar from European dance theater. The deployment of music is promiscuous; 20 credits are listed in the program, everything from Beethoven’s "Kreutzer" Sonata to "Over the Rainbow." For the record, Deca Dance includes parts of Black Milk, Passomezzo, Queens of Golub, Mabul, Anaphaza, Sabotage Baby, Zachacha, Moshe and Naharin’s Virus.

On the basis of Wednesday’s two-hour serving, which began with an empty stage and a breeze blowing through a windsock, coherence is a sometime quality. To an incendiary Arabic pop score by Habib Alla Jamal, the dancers line up at the stage apron, stare you down and occasionally twitch. You’ve probably seen that before under another name. A duet (from Mabul) yields a pair of earthy bodies flipping and wrestling to a countertenor singing a Vivaldi aria. You’ve probably encountered that one, too. Absurdist non-sequiturs fall flat: an extract from Sabotage Baby offers a chanteuse on stilts toting a giant pitchfork and crooning into a microphone; and it scarcely registers. An audience participation number, in which patrons are invited to join the dancers on stage in a cha-cha (to the theme song from television’s Hawaii Five-O), might have made more of an effect, if it had ended the evening. The familiar chairs number from Anaphaza features dancers seated in a semi-circle singing a patriotic Israeli anthem, while arching and crumpling like dominoes, then executing a partial striptease. At the end, they all jump into the pile of clothes. Eventually, all this bravura display is enervating.

The more intimate sequences are more persuasive. Black Milk (1985) is an absorbing initiation ceremony for five men, for whom unquestioning conformity to the group (symbolized by smearing their breasts and faces with a black substance) is the key to survival (Naharin has frequently been at odds with the Israeli political establishment). Batsheva’s men dispatched the piece with muted eloquence Wednesday, but last year, when the men from Ailey attempted Black Milk, it resonated even more. Queens of Golub offered a sinewy quintet for five women, clad in red (one of the few moments when Naharin allows a bit of color to seep onto the stage). In all, however, Deca Dance is an occasionally thrilling, but generally bewildering experience. There’s nothing wrong with Naharin’s saying goodbye in a grand manner. I only wish he had said hello first.

Batsheva Dance Company performs at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, San Francisco, through Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call (415) 398-6449 or online www.performances.org.

Batsheva pushes edges of expectation

03/19/04 CATHERINE THOMAS

Ask a random sampling of audience members what impressions they took away from Batsheva Dance Company's Portland debut Tuesday evening, and it's unlikely you'll hear the same answer twice.

Of course, some of those audience members may have been among the group enticed onstage at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall by choreographer Ohad Naharin's astonishing troupe of 16 dancers, who hurled themselves into his extreme choreography as if they'd willingly succumbed to a riptide. Naharin's dancers rode a flood of manic movement ideas, from zealous ritual to giddy delirium.

Subverting audience expectations seems to be Naharin's credo. Even the program for "Deca Dance" is a cipher, simply listing the titles of nine Naharin crafted over the same number of years.

And so "Black Milk," an intense ceremony of five monklike dancers who smear their bodies with black paint and grapple in a stark display of acrobatic ritual, eroticism and warrior attack, is interrupted by an excerpt from "Sabotage Baby," an aria-singing, boa-wearing dancer on stilts.

If there's a current running through these surreal fragments, it's that in Naharin's vision of the human condition, the elegant and the profane arm in arm. Violence and camp stud the program in equal measures. The moving sculpture that opens "Deca Dance" -- a large white tube-with-arms that buckles and flails with blasts of air -- segues to an ensemble scene rife with aggression. A cadre of dancers skirts the edge of the stage, lunging and shaking fists in unison, breaking off into frenzied solos.

Naharin has insisted his dances don't carry a political message, but a subtext of protest is hard to escape. For all their unison beauty, Naharin's compositions favor the odd duck, out of step with the ensemble.

Even the audience-participation dance -- an ode to inclusion -- leaves some as outsiders, standing perplexed and unsure as the company swirls around them or drops to the floor en masse.

Revolt against the social order infuses Naharin's dances, and nowhere is that tension more searingly embodied than in "Anaphaza," a work that builds to an almost unbearably high-pressure pitch from a simple movement repetition. Hunched on folding chairs arrayed in a semicircle, 16 dancers in fedoras and suits lash their bodies backward in waves as if raked by gunfire. With each revolution, one dancer sprawls face-first to the floor while another springs to his chair. The tension increases with each repetition, and Naharin's dancers inhabit each round with vehemence, finally shedding their clothes in the dance's climax as if wracked by a bodily cry. The sharpness of their attack reverberates, even through the camp.

Choosing partners: Israel's provocative Batsheva company gets audience members into its act

Tuesday, March 02, 2004 BY ROBERT JOHNSON, Star-Ledger Staff

For anyone who's ever dreamed of dancing these dancers, knocking them off-center and with the Batsheva Dance Company, tonight making their limbs flail. may be your big chance. In comparison, Graham's work looks The provocative Israeli company, directed hieroglyphic. But what Naharin has most by Ohad Naharin, appears this evening at certainly taken from Graham are her the McCarter Theatre, in Princeton, passion, an interest in psychology, and the repeating "Deca Dance," which the troupe vision of a heretical soloist who opposes performed Sunday at the New Jersey group conformity. Performing Arts Center. The eccentricity of Naharin's characters can One segment of "Deca Dance," a wildly appear comic, when they dance with normal eclectic spectacle that combines excerpts audience members, for instance. Yet it also from various Naharin works, features marks them as different, and exposes them audience participation. So wear bright to risks. In a powerful excerpt from clothing, look relaxed, and maybe one of the "Anaphaza," a community of dancers seated black-suited performers who slither into the in a semi-circle responds enthusiastically to crowd, their faces hidden beneath dark a Passover song performed to a crashing fedoras, will choose you as a partner. rhythm. What will be the fate of the poor soul who tries but fails to rise and imitate his brethren, and who, instead, crashes If you are chosen, be prepared to go with the flow. To the delighted howls of those repeatedly to the floor? remaining safely in their seats, your Batsheva date will dance with you and Naharin's characters seem always caught around you, shimmying suggestively and between extremes of order and chaos; dropping unexpectedly to the floor. He or between ritualistic behavior and a nervous she may seize you, and never want to let breakdown. Often, their movement seems to you go. reflect a desperate need to release pent-up tensions. This is, in fact, the relationship that your parents most feared when you were a "Deca Dance" can be gimmicky. teenager--the rebel or the misfit who comes to collect their offspring, looking sullen or Although the appearance of a lip-synching exhibiting nervous tics as he waits in the stilt walker fits into Naharin's larger scheme living room before taking their child on an of surprise and nonconformity, let's face it -- open-ended spree that is sure to conclude in a stilt walker is a cheap effect. disaster. Yet the unconventionality that would terrify your parents is vital to Far more profound is the line of dancers Naharin's work, which is designed to lose (dressed in sharply divided, black-and-white control. costumes), who erupt suddenly in emotional spasms, while Arabic music plays in the Naharin's artistic apprenticeship took place background. In this masterful excerpt from within the structured framework of the "Naharin's Virus," a work that reflects the Martha Graham Dance Company, yet to his Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the great credit he has forged an independent choreographer says a great deal with his style, demanding both strength and dancers' subtly contorted body language, looseness from his performers, and evolving even while they are standing still. a highly articulated language that fragments the body. Powerful emotions surge within

Dance on the wild side

FUNNY BUT DISJOINTED ISRAELI COMPANY BREAKS DOWN WALL WITH AUDIENCE

By Anita Amirrezvani - Fri, Mar. 12, 2004

Dance critics normally stay safely out of Francke and I danced a mock salsa the limelight, scribbling in the dark. Our together. The music was by Dean Martin. performance is on the printed page. But on Need I say more? When the audience Wednesday, when a charming Norwegian laughed, I laughed too. dancer named Kristin Francke extended her That unexpected turn of events summed up hand to me, I found myself making an the evening, which consisted of many unexpected debut on the Yerba Buena surprising, funny but often disjointed Center for the Arts stage. moments as the dancers performed bits of Francke is a member of the Batsheva eight works set to music, ranging from Dance Company, a bold modern dance ``Que Será, Será'' to Vivaldi. group from Israel making its first Bay Area ``Black Milk'' is a powerful dance for a appearances this week with a show called group of men (it was performed by the ``Deca-Dance.'' It's a potpourri of excerpts Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in from resident choreographer Ohad Berkeley last year). The Batsheva dancers Naharin's last decade of work, and much of attack it in a fascinating way, showing off it is funny. the rougher, harsher edges of movement. Naharin, who once performed with Martha They slather their faces and bodies with a Graham's company, has a flair for the black substance, which gives them energy unexpected. The 16 Batsheva dancers do and makes them crazy. It could stand for surprising, confrontational things. They drugs, or even something like gold or oil. strip down to their underwear while Whatever it is, it makes people miserable. chanting important texts. They yell at the The dance is interrupted by the appearance audience and freak out one by one in a row, of a woman in a black corset on tall red shaking their fists at the sky. They're stilts, who grabs a microphone and lip- young, lively and energetic. And on syncs to operatic music. That's what this Wednesday, they broke the invisible wall show is like: It veers from the serious to the between audience and performer. hilarious with virtually no transitions. After appearing in black suits and black Also, considering that Naharin is a well- hats in ``Zachacha,'' the dancers suddenly known choreographer whose work pops up descended into the audience and swept in dance companies all over the world, it's a down the aisles. That's when Francke shame that this sampler program, which offered me her hand. I accepted it and, to continues through Sunday, doesn't present my surprise, was whisked onto the stage any one piece in its entirety. along with other members of the audience. Batsheva's talented, athletic dancers are fun Francke began jumping up and down, to watch, and Naharin's work is bold and rocking out to the music, and I jumped with theatrical. Presenting complete pieces her. would have given us more insight into his She and the other dancers expertly unusual vision, especially on this first visit. continued with their choreography, using us The upshot: A vivacious group of dancers as props. From time to time, Francke presents a lively but choppy evening of grabbed me and led me around the stage. excerpts. All of us formed a line in front of the audience and wiggled our hips, and

Columbus Dispatch (Ohio) March 5, 2004 Friday, Home Final Edition

DANCE REVIEW BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY;THIS CELEBRATION WORTH LINING UP FOR

Barbara Zuck, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The Batsheva Dance Company, one of Israel's most-treasured cultural exports, returned last night to the Wexner Center for the Arts' Mershon Auditorium. The 16-member troupe last appeared here in 1998.

Batsheva's current tour celebrates the first 10 years of artistic direction by Ohad Naharin, and what a celebration it is.

In Deca Dance, this groundbreaking choreographer has assembled a highly theatrical evening-length work by reshaping sections from nine of his previous ballets.

Some movements might have looked familiar to the local crowd. Black Milk, in which five men dance what may be a vigorous initiation ritual, and Passomezzo, in which a line of dancers sways gently to soft music, were performed here six years ago.

Though Batsheva, founded in 1964, is a contemporary ensemble of international artists, it is an Israeli company. Its dances can have either a national or a universal perspective, sometimes both. Many Americans will not be able to put everything the company does, such as the opening movement of the second half, in a deeper cultural context.

What is easy to grasp and to admire, however, is the power in Naharin's choreographic statements and the strength and resilience of his company. He likes to line his dancers up across the front of the stage, facing the audience. Placed at equal distances from one another, the dancers create an impressive single pattern yet can still be appreciated as individuals. This design becomes a running theme in Deca Dance, used in many different ways.

Naharin's choreography has other consistent elements one could almost call classical: the regularity of placement of the dancers onstage; the use of motivic sequence, sometimes -- as in Black Milk -- at rapid-fire pace; the balance achieved by combining gestures in opposing directions; the uniformity in costumes. These give his work an elegant, stylish "design" look.

Yet the movement vocabulary within this context is all to the contrary. His dancers are asked again and again to go from stasis to huge, weighted, explosive gestures -- like 0 to 100 in 10 seconds. They often teeter on their toes to keep their balance. They look like they are at war with some imaginary or unseen force, trying to free themselves from something unpleasant.

But Naharin is not above injections of humor, like the camp nightclub singer on stilts. Nor experimenting with audience participation. Near the end of the first half the company went offstage and into the audience. Each dancer selected a volunteer to take onstage, where they all joined in an impromptu ballet.

Not only did Batsheva spread the joy of their decade celebration, they might have won some converts to the art of dance.