Vertigo Dance Company’s Reshimo, choreographed by Noa Wertheim, resonates with a feeling of continuity, a feeling, a movement or action repeated, recurring in time, leaving an invisible, yet palpable trace. Reshimo is like water from the source, flowing transparent, reflecting the sky above and revealing the rocks below. Taking its shape from the land, changing and forming the shape of the earth as it moves, water flows to the sea, where the journey ends to begin anew.
Delicate yet powerful, Reshimo inscribes itself on the stage in a wonderful play of opposing forces coming together to create beauty. It is a dance of light and darkness, sound and silence, woman and man, the individual and the group. Low to the ground, slithering along the stage or leaping, spinning, almost flying – if only for a moment, the physicality of this work creates a mood of hidden forces meeting, clashing, merging.
Reshimo is a work of beauty, yet it is far from serene or simple. A fierce tension emerges in this work: a running movement that does not advance and moves back; hand gestures that speak an inner conflict – rubbing the skin as if to rub out a memory or feeling; hands on the neck or over the eyes, a wordless cry that emerges from deep in the center of the body. Sometimes the same gesture takes on different meaning, pushing and pulling, shifting between serious struggle and playful affection.
Coming together and separating, time and again couples form in this dance, yet each couple is distinct, creating their own dance and mood. The constant is the very act of coming together, as couples, as a group – a chain of dancers moving like a whip, or skipping in familiar steps of a folk dance. There is a strong sense of the individual – with several distinctive solos, the group, and the relationship between the two. The need to take a different direction, to move to a different tempo, to be and move differently, pushes against the need to touch, to hold and to be held, and to belong.
Echoing the themes of the dance, there is wonderful ensemble work by the dancers, yet this does not efface their individuality. Even from a distance, their expression informs the whole body and movement, in this respect both Marija Slavec and Eyal Vizner gave performances that were not only excellent, but deeply expressive.
Reshimo next performances: Thursday, March 13th at 21:00; Friday, March 14th at 22:00. Tickets may be ordered online at the Suzanne Dellal website, or call: 03-5105656.
Reshimo
Choreography: Noa Wertheim; Music: Ran Bagno; Stage & Lighting Design: Dani Fishof – Magenta; Costume Design: Rosie Canaan; Dancers and Co-creators: Yael Cibulski, Micah Amos, Tomer Navot, Sian Olles, Marija Slavec, Eyal Vizner, Emmy Wielunsk, Yuval Lev.
