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Choreography
Ohad Naharin
Music
Peter Zegveld
Thijs
van der Poll
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The
Barbican
3
- 6 October 2001 |
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Contemporary
dance is the present day's greatest
art form. All over the world work of
stunning originality and power is pouring
out of choreographers and the marvellously
skilful dance groups who interpret their
work. There is no room for poseurs and
flaneurs in dance; as a contrast, the
thousands of 'artists' who pour out
of art colleges with their installations,
videos, concepts and abstractions conceal
many among their number whose doings
have as much interest and value as the
(often indistinguishable) daubs of a
kindergarten class. But in dance the
starting point is high skill born of
natural talent and long training, infused
by energy, commitment, grace, intelligence
– and from there it is all upward.
This is exemplified
to perfection by the Batsheva Dance
Company in its exhilarating performance
of Ohad Naharin's 'Sabotage Baby.' The
company itself is stupendous. They interact
with the kind of instinctive synchronicity
which comes from fine mutual awareness
and understanding, as if they danced
with one mind, and could sense one another's
movements without the need to see one
another. The dancers are so fit that
towards the end of an hour of high-voltage
whirlwind activity they still have enough
breath to sing. Add the complex, witty,
menacing, sexy, funny, constantly surprising
choreography of Ohad Naharin, costumes
to match, and the fantastic mechanical
music of Peter Zegveld and Thijs van
der Poll, and you have an evening of
consummate delight.
The event opens
quietly, and builds into a crescendo
of sound and movement, passing through
phases of the most terrifying surreality.
To begin with the women of the ensemble
move as if doing tai chi in a factory,
using the soft but accumulating rhythms
of the machinery ranked along the back
of the stage to co-ordinate their movements.
As the pulses and levels of sound intensify,
so the dance evolves into a strange,
gripping story of interactions, sufferings,
communications of sympathy and threat,
witty and sometimes very funny episodes.
At one point the women return in flamenco
dress to take the masculine part in
supporting and lifting their male counterparts;
every detail speaks at an intellectual
as well as emotional and physical level.
The performance
is described by Naharin as a 'gesamerkunstwerk'
– a total art work, in which the
sound, the dance, the use of backdrop
slides, singing, mime and costume combine
to weave a large, complex effect. It
is a wonderful achievement. The Heath
Robinson array of machines from which
Peter Zegveld and Thijs van der Poll
produce their 'industrial music' is
itself a visual delight, and it works
magnificently. At one point the two
musicians begin strumming ukeles; the
machines suddenly stop, and their duet
floats out across the dancers. Later,
to open the second act, they sing a
folksong in a jumble of European languages;
the introduction heralds the increasing
prominence of song, with a dancer appearing
on stilts in night-club array to sing
a sexy number in front of the curtain,
and the whole company joining the indefatigable
machine orchestra to sing in the final
ensemble routine.
It comes as
no surprise to find that a shorter version
of 'Sabotage Baby' was first devised
for the Nederlands Dance Company in
1997. That brilliant company –
seen by this reviewer performing work
by its outstanding choreographer Jiri
Kylian in Prague in the summer of 2001
– would have done justice to Ohad
Naharin's conception; but it is especially
pleasing to see Naharin's own dancers
performing it, because the match between
what Naharin asks and the dancers offer
appears perfect.
AC
Grayling |
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