(Heading to the BK.)

At almost exactly the same time I started “Ranting Details”, I became obsessed with a certain man in the dance world known as Ohad Naharin.  His name was as foreign to me as his movement and with the first performance I saw by Hubbard Street, I knew I was hooked on his work.  Ever since then I’ve devoured anything of his I’ve been able to see, first by his company Batsheva at Lincoln Center Festival (the absolutely brilliant “Telophaza”) and most recently with Cedar Lake Ensemble’s showcase of the Israeli choreographer (the fantastic and exhilarating “Decadance.”)

Explaining his work is always a challenge for me because the excitement it provokes from my body while I’m sitting in my seat is unlike any other art I’ve seen.  At moments it transcends dance into absolute euphoria and I’m constantly in awe of his unique movement and the way he fits it to his bizarre choices of music.

It was with a bit of hesitation that I brought along Carson, Jackie, Blaine and Isabella with me to BAM last night for Batsheva’s performance of “Three.”  All of my friends are “Ohad Newbies” and my descriptions, peppered with gasps of excitement, had built up the evening before it even began.

From the moment I walked in and saw the completely bare stage at the Howard Gilman Opera House, with boxes on the side for wings and a single line of illuminated light at the edge of the stage, I was excited.  The dancers filed out during a blackout and with a jarring change of lighting they were revealed, scattered about the stage staring at the audience; it was a typical Ohad moment.

There was a tameness to the beginning of the evening that seemed almost comatose compared to the previous works I’ve seen.  After a few minutes of adjusting to the change of pace I was again riveted by the type of movement that he creates.

(The much debated Robert Wilson Baryshnikov installation.)
His technique, known as “Gaga,” is all about a personal exploration of movement within each dancer’s body. (During a master class that I took of his, he covered all of the mirrors which to a ballet dancer seems as severe as amputating a foot.)  This is evident in the incredible unison sections that Naharin creates, where each individual dancer interprets it in their own way, sometimes hitting an ever so slightly different pose that never deviates from the group. Instead it makes it like a large firework where the whole image is created by individually colored explosions all aiming for the same final product.  This allows for each dancer’s personality to come through and to a corp dancer in a ballet company, it’s a rather startling thing to witness.

There is a tribal quality to his group movement that fascinates me.  On top of doing unexpected things physically, I started to realize that part of what I like about his work is how unpredictable it is in every way.  This was most evident in a section that I refer to as the “blackout” movement, a duet that is periodically interrupted by eight counts of darkness.  Just as the dancer’s image fades from our view, my mind would try to predict what the next illumination would reveal; I was always wrong.  During the larger group sections, he starts to create choreographic rhythms with the bodies on stage and the moment you think you’ve caught on the pattern, he changes it up.  It’s a brilliant way of keeping the audience invested in the piece.  In a way it reminded me of viewing a Jackson Pollack painting where every time you think you’ve found your focus point it’s interrupted by a new string of color that you hadn’t noticed before.

Most of the evening consisted of smaller duets and group sections, and while the piece was technically separated into three sections, there wasn’t much difference between them.  The first had the company dancing to Bach, the second to Brian Eno, and the third everything from Israeli techno to the Beach Boys (who accompanied the euphoric finale that found the dancers chugging and scattering wildly around the stage as the curtain came down.)  Between each movement, a man would march out to center stage hugging a television screen underneath his arm displaying a head that narrated to the audience what was about to happen.  This was the clearest sense of the type of humor that Naharin usually brings to his pieces, although it was evident (more subtle than usual) throughout.

When the curtain made its way down, I could hear my “Ohad Newbies” gasping out hoping that they could see just a few minutes more.  While I wasn’t as blown away by this performance as the other ones I’ve seen, I was excited to see that it elicited such passionate responses from my friends.   There is so much of the evening that I find impossible to describe.  The evening, a short hour and ten minutes, runs through the weekend at BAM.  Check it out!