“I come from my mother, her aesthetic, her language, Inbal,” says choreographer Barak Marshall, whose new work “Rooster” will premiere next Thursday, November 12 at the Israeli Opera as the closing event of the Tel Aviv Dance Festival. A co-production of the Suzanne Dellal Centre and the Israeli Opera, “Rooster,” commissioned after Marshall’s success with “Monger” in 2008, is a work for 12 dancers, featuring iconic dancer –performance artist Margalit Oved (formerly of Inbal Dance Company) and Israeli Opera singer Lilia Gretsova.
Dance, theatre and opera come together in “Rooster,” a work which, according to Marshall, relates artistically to Greek mythology, Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” the Bible, and the Y. L. Peretz short story “Bontsche the Silent.” According to Marshall, the story describes a man who was “Very kind and silent, no one noticed him in his lifetime and no one paid attention when he died.” Marshall views the story as a “warning about not asserting yourself,” saying, “trust your desires and act on them.” The Hebrew word for rooster is “Gever” which also means “man,” an association that has resonance for Marshall who describes the rooster as “ferocious yet also incredibly vulnerable.”
The literary influences in the work are powerfully balanced with Marshall’s intensely physical choreography, nurtured in a rich cultural context. Marshall states that he is thankful that he “was able to be raised with an appreciation for the richness and resources of my own Mizrahi culture,” adding that “I am getting my dancers to move ethnic.”
“Rooster” by Barak Marshall
Performances:
November 12 at 21:00, November 13 at 13:00
Israeli Opera House, 19 Shaul Hamelech Blvd.
Tickets: 03-6927777, www.israel-opera.co.il
Image credit: Scene from”Rooster”/Photo: Kfir Bolotin
[…] myths and stories about the Middle East experience. According to Marshall in an interview with Ayelet Dekel, the literary influences in the work are powerfully balanced with his intensely physical […]
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