The Irish poet W. B. Yeats asked “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Beginning on January 14th, Ohad Naharin will give audiences an opportunity to think about that one again, as Project 5 – Boys, originally performed by 5 female dancers from the Batsheva Dance Company, will premiere with a cast of all male dancers at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv. Whether you see the Girls or Boys, it’s an amazing evening consisting of four short dance selections and a video – see both and compare!
B/olero is a duet created in 2008, which marks Naharin’s first encounter with the Japanese synthesizer artist Isao Tomita. Searching for a version of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, Naharin discovered that this synthesized version was the one he preferred, and has even gone so far as to say that he thinks Ravel would like it too. Hypnotic and enticing, the dance moves from minimalism to ecstacy, tension rising beneath the steady rhythm.
In the trio “Park” the visceral meets the eternal with humor as the dancers chant into microphones, merging text and movement. “George and Zalman” is set to a text from Charles Bukowski, in a repetitive pattern performed in unison by five dancers, then takes off in an entirely different direction with solos that begin in movement drawn from the structure of the dance, but take it somewhere deeper. Where the unison is cynical and humorous, the individual solos have an ethereal beauty, conjuring the air to create form and meaning.
The evening closes with “Black Milk,” originally created in 1985 for a male cast, with costumes by Rakefet Levi. It is a timeless piece that evokes an ancestral past, a ceremony of an ancient brotherhood. It is a beautiful and powerful work in which the connection between the dancers is palpable.
Project 5 – Boys & Girls – December 22 & 23, 2010
Suzanne Dellal Centre, 5 Yehieli Street, Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv
Further details and special offers on the Batsheva site in English, tickets: 03-5104037.
AYELET DEKEL
