Dancers at Play

A man and woman collide, slapping into each other without rancor. There is a blackout. When light returns, the two dancers are still there, the woman cheerfully unfolding a long leg, the man bouncing, straight-legged as a pogo stick. This is pair-work without drama, and theatrics without weight. It’s also an energizing way to spend 100 minutes.The three sections of Ohad Naharin’s work, “Three,” currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, are organized only loosely into principles. The first seems to be a celebration of transition; the second, a paean to group solidarity, and the third, a retreat into showing off. Considering their brightly colored tops and capri trousers, the company could be a gaggle of children — they even show a similar penchant for yanking down their pants.There’s something comforting about Batsheva’s many visits to New York. Every year or so, artistic director Mr. Naharin’s company comes to town to display its viewer-friendly, modern sensibility. Its work tends to feel young and bright, and it has a simple, exciting attention to rhythm that makes even the most erudite sections incredibly accessible.On a stage baking under dry, white lights (designer Avi-Yona Bueno cranks them up higher at random intervals), the company stares at us in silence. Surrounded by a series of short black walls, pierced with wing entrances, the company seems to be standing in the cleared center of a giant maze. There the dancers have the freedom to work in Mr. Naharin’s chosen style, an informal mix of casual movement and presentational flair. This poaching from everyday life lends the whole a sense of recent discovery — even flailing looks such as a person discovering the sheer joy of movement.At its best, as in the opening solo, a man segues easily from a flowing pop-and-lock move into a silly mime and back again. A man seems to dribble his partner’s face like a basketball, a woman burps a nonsense syllable, people poke their faces with amazement. The movement vocabulary, however, isn’t all baby talk — sudden reminders of dance styles will emerge, only to disappear again. A man kicking up with flexed feet is a Hindu mystic one moment; then he turns, and he’s an Irish clogger.Mr. Naharin’s training language, Gaga, feels like a determining force throughout. Gaga aims to deconstruct classical forms and discover the pleasure of movement. The jolly everyman ethic helps us tolerate his other signature — the military lockstep. Mr. Naharin loves to orient his dancers in simple lines or phalanxes, staring straight out, working in stomping, slightly disturbing unison.By the end, though, Mr. Naharin’s well of invention peters out. In the last of the three sections, one chopped up by its series of uncertain, pop-and-rock music choices, the dancers organize into three lines. At the head of each line, a dancer will burst into a quick gesture — shuffling around like a crab, mooning us in the midst of a vertical leap — and then peel off to return to the back. Mr. Naharin keeps us here several beats too long, allowing the heretofore vague sense that we are watching “exercises,” as much as “dance,” to sharpen.Until November 10 (30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).

Dancers at Play

Dancers at Play

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