Experiments in Modern Dance Mind Control

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The New York Sun

It’s difficult to watch “Telophaza,” the most recent exuberant, generous work by Israeli dance company Batsheva, without thinking of just how little joy will greet the dancers on their return home. The piece, a kind of loose-limbed sequel to 1993’s “Anaphaza” (which the company brought to the Lincoln Center Festival last year) refers to the stage in mitosis in which chromosomes begin to cluster back together after wrenching themselves apart. It’s a nasty shock to realize that in Israel these days, only in modern dance exists any such rapprochement.

Ohad Naharin, the now-matured boy-genius choreographer and leader of Batsheva since 1990, created “Telophaza” long before the current crisis. He must have been feeling hopeful—the drab army green lock step of the beginning eventually turns into a theaterwide experiment in compelled empathy. But though Mr. Naharin never has shied from political engagement or controversy (he has made no secret of his support for Palestinian dialogue), “Telophaza” is no think piece. In fact, heads are little more than props — first a woman perches on her partner’s face, then another fellow crawls on all fives, his skull made just another unthinking appendage.

The combined Batsheva Company and Ensemble (the junior company) is 38 strong, which, even on the stage at the New York State Theater, makes an intimidating array. Several times during the show, the dancers face front en masse, bopping lightly to an electropop beat. Using four huge screens which hang at the back of the stage, Mr. Naharin juxtaposes individuals and crowds — while the bulk of people flock and herd about the stage, with enormous close-ups of a selected few peering suspiciously out of the projections and, therefore, into the audience. The piece itself also moves from unanimity to specialization, from huge soups of identical movement to a section in which dancers show off their solos, like a very muscular version of the strut alley on “Soul Train.”

One of the huge, projected faces has a name, the cool-voiced “Rachel” who greets the audience at the outset and makes the obligatory comments about cell phones. Her voiceover will ask a lot more of the audience in the sequences to come, however, from encouraging the crowd to imagine “someone you miss” to enforcing a bit of boogie. “Connect with pleasure,” she demands, and while it makes many giggle, most of the audience complies. Much like in “Anaphaza,” in which the cast celebrated the birthday of a lucky audience member, the analytical brain screams, “Emotional manipulation!” By demanding a physical response from the audience, Mr. Naharin creates a sympathetic one. But after 70 minutes of technical brilliance, a couple of cheap theatrics seem like a bargain.

The Naharin style (another of his shows was called the “Naharin Virus”) is certainly infectious. His fluid, hyperathletic, gestural vocabulary is bigtent: Mr. Naharin doesn’t squelch his dancers’ creativity; rather, their individual styles fold comfortably into his. So, for that matter, do the martial arts, contact improvisation, and club dancing — almost everything you do with your body can join the signature Batsheva movement. Perhaps this explains why so many got their groove on when they were told to: The Naharin virus masquerades as something relatively common — surely anyone can run about and bounce lightly on their toes — while actually requiring incredible, gymnastic grace.

The overwhelming feeling, at least until a strangely disturbing final moment, is one of celebration. Whether they are toe-heeling across the stage like animated hieroglyphics, or rocking out to Bruce Springsteen, the Batsheva dancers seem like they are about to vibrate out of their shiny unitards (provided in increasingly dizzying profusion by Rakefet Levy). As the leotard designs get brighter and busier, we sense the approaching climax — only Rachel, our commandant, stays in her army-issue drab. The theater atmosphere jumps with audience participation, and there should be nothing menacing about so many people patently enjoying themselves, yet her 12-foot-high face seems suddenly Orwellian. If later we grow uncomfortable with how quickly we leap to do her bidding, we have only ourselves to blame.


The New York Sun

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