BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY

TELOPHAZA

BATSHEVA - 'TELOPHAZA'
atsheva, Israeli’s premier modern dance company, has a long, important history in the development of modern dance. Ohad Naharin, Artistic Director, choreographer and former dancer, has headed the company since 1990. The Batsheva dancers are without a doubt powerful, earthy, and exuberant movers committed to the mastery of Gaga, a movement technique designed by Naharin. The shared technique plus the fact that the dancers are for the most part in their mid- 20’s gives the company a look of homogeneity.

The company offered the U.S. premiere of “Telophaza” (2005) at the Lincoln Center Festival. “Telophaza” had a large cast of dancers: 20 company members and 18 Batsheva apprentices. Only half the dancers are Israeli-born. Although it ran for only 65 minutes, the piece was packed with movement and high energy and so actually seemed much longer. The large number of uniformly strong, athletic dancers onstage almost all the time, the four visually striking costume changes, each charged with explosive colors, and the state-of-the-art video technology placed this piece in the realm of the spectacular. And yet, as I watched it, I was fully aware that I was not succumbing to its seduction. In retrospect, “Telophaza” was indeed a spectacle, and if it was about anything, it was about the power of spectacle to seduce.

Naharin is a master at controlling the stage, and with “Telophaza,” he has chosen spectacle as his vehicle. The piece had a clear structural framework with sections done in unison separated by overlapping episodic sequences. During the more uniform sections, the large cast executed one repetitive movement en masse, such as a bent-over shaking motif, or a pendulating knee series which allowed the dancers sitting on the floor to methodically inch their way downstage while moving from a semi-circle formation into a straight line. The perfectly-rehearsed dancers never missed their spacings or formations. In these sections, Naharin chose to focus his audience on the mass, thereby giving his viewers a unified visual experience. When he broke from unison, he provided multiple choreographic combinations, from numerous differing solos going on all at once, to wave-like patterns, which splayed out from a single line of dancers. In these sections, Naharin no longer focused his audience narrowly but allowed a wider girth: now one could choose what one wanted to focus on. But, despite this interplay between variety and uniformity, which would seem to offer at least the nuance of polarity, the audience was still reined in. The continuous swift pacing and the propulsion of energy of dancers making their way on, off, and across the stage to the brief, but pulsating contemporary musical selections, all reintroduced a sense of spectacular closure. Nothing could stand in the way of the mechanical drive toward spectacular power. For me, that driving, perpetual singular rhythm had a numbing effect, which was underscored by the uniformity of the style and its execution, along with the homogeneity of the dancers. Though all were excellent, none stood out.

Would I have been seduced or at least more drawn into the piece had I been given a window into the souls of some of these excellent dancers? In “Telophaza,” Naharin was equipped with the perfect means to do this. Using video, individual dancers took turns looking into cameras that projected their faces onto four equidistant screens mounted upstage. After staring out at us, they entered into the concurrent dancing, making room for the next face to emerge. This sequence was patterned and methodical as dancer by dancer stopped to look into the camera, and then moved on. We became aware of the underlying sequence well before this section ended. But these magnified faces were not there to reveal themselves in any intimate way. They were telophazed in and out. Their effect was more like photographic hyper-reality portraiture than the fleeting vulnerability nascent only in live performance. Whether we were looking at 38 bodies moving in unison, or a single face in a highly magnified close-up, the effect was the same: the persistent attention to surfaces that was distancing.

This sense of distance and control was accentuated in different terms by the amplified voice of “Rachel,” the same voice that had asked the audience to turn off their cell phones before the show started. “Rachel” returned as a disembodied protagonist, or perhaps an audible master of ceremonies. She asked us to do simple tasks and we complied. We were taught to exult in the simple rotation of the wrist, punctuated by the forming of a fist. Ultimately, watching the flowing sea of moving arms from the balcony was intriguing. I was watching people follow these instructions so they could feel what it was like to be a dancer learning choreography. But instead of opening up a dialogue of trust that must be operative in a rehearsal or any true learning experience, “Rachel” reminded me more of the pre-recorded relaxation videos served up to airplane passengers during international flights when they begin to go stiff. The ultimate effect was passive participation. When “Rachel” returned with a second round of tasks for the audience, my suspicions were confirmed. This time in between being asked to close our eyes or touch our stomachs, we were asked to think about our money in the bank and then told to think we were enjoying ourselves. I found this condescending, and certainly manipulative, because it seemed to conjure up the old stereotype of the dancer’s purity versus the businessman’s materialism. Rachel’s final command, “Let’s dance,” appeared to give the audience full license to become dancers, though they had nowhere to move. And then “real” dancers started up, wowing us once again. Spectacle does the work for us. Was Naharin tapping into the audience’s fascination with the body and the dancer’s athletic prowess? He certainly used the fetishistic interest in the notion of the dancer to keep people interested in the spectacle. However, he ended abruptly with a dark moment: a couple lying naked in a corner whose faces were captured on the screen projected an unexpectedly sinister image.

What is the hold spectacle has on us? “Telophaza” entertains and seduces its audience. But once we reflect on how it entertains, we become aware of a political factor. What is he saying with this spectacle and with our reaction to it, both of which he so skillfully guides and maneuvers? Is he saying something about the state of the public today as a metaphor for the republic? There is an aspect to the enjoyment of this piece that is disturbingly empty; it both panders to and demeans its audience, perhaps intentionally. What it wants us to see is an open question.
Juliet Neidish and Mark Franko ballet dance magazine Sept 2006

DIVIDE AND RE-FORM
Ohad Naharin's stunning Anaphaza, performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2003, took its name from a stage in mitosis in which daughter chromosomes move to opposite sides of a cell. In that piece, the dancers of Batsheva, the Israeli company Naharin directs, implied separation and bonding in diverse and imaginative ways. At one point they selected partners from the audience, brought them onstage and performed for and with them.

Naharin's most recent company work Telophaza, also presented by the LCF, refers to the final stage of mitosis in which new nuclei are formed. Compared to Anaphaza and the beautiful small-scale Mamootot (2003)—shown last year in the Mark Morris Dance Center's intimate performance space—Telophaza focuses more on groups than on individuals. Naharin brilliantly deploys a playful army of performers who group and regroup into squadrons that only occasionally thrust individuals into prominence.

We, the spectator platoon, interact with the dancers as a unit and at a distance. At one point, Rachel Osborne's calm, taped voice urges us to copy gestures she mutely executes in a close-up projected video along with the onstage dancers, becoming more and more energetic. Toward the end of the piece, the 20 company members sit facing us on chairs, and, again guided by Osborne, we're invited to touch parts of our bodies while pondering certain questions, like "Touch your chin and think that you're enjoying yourself." When she gets us on our feet and says, "Now dance," the performers rise and walk away while the audience—although studded with the shy and the squeamish—cuts loose. For a minute, the State Theater rocks. These two audience participation interludes also serve in lieu of intermissions, like the exercises you're supposed to do on airplanes to keep your feet from dropping off.

Four video screens with live feed, set up at the back, introduce us to company members' close-up faces; they're scrutinizing the scene. As, one by one, they leave the camera stations and feed into an ongoing dance that Yaniv Abraham has begun, others enter via openings at the rear and replace them. So we know these people, yet don't know them, since they so quickly engage as a squad in the powerful movement—limber but precise—that travels over the stage. So this is what they were preparing for at the outset when they dropped down, set their hands on the floor, and bounced for a long time to music that sounded like a funereally slow hora.

In addition to the company dancers, the cast includes 18 members of the Batsheva Ensemble, Naharin's junior company. As Telophaza unfolds, I begin to feel as if I'm watching a colorful, marvelously organized but utterly crazy parade celebrating who knows what. The playlist includes unfamiliar examples of Near and Far-Eastern pop groups, such as the Bollywood Brass Band, along with Bruce Springsteen. Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi) contributes vivid lighting, and Rakefet Levy's superb costumes are a crucial part of the work. The performers have several versions of the basic outfit—a sleekly fitting leotard cum gym suit—in different colors and in white (with white bathing caps for the younger group). Muted blues, greens, and grays give way to sparkly metallics, then to bright red, orange, pink, or chartreuse (worn with smiles). In the most festive display, everyone wears a unitard in a different bold print.
Major Auto

The dancers are remarkable, whether they're marching shoulder to shoulder, gesturing in unison, or exploding into a pointillist sea of squiggles. Their steps dig into the ground, expand over space. They can shoot into the air, fall, and rise without apparent effort. Their legs twist and fling so freely that their hip joints look oiled. In one interlude, we get to see just how individually marvelous they can be. The cameras are set in a circle framed by a pool of light. While performers walk the perimeter, various ones spell each other in the center. Sharon Eyal, Matan David, Stefan Ferry, Danielle Agami, Mami Shimazaki, Adi Zlatin! Leo Larus is a master at moving from fierce, on-a-dime stops to sinuous melts. Caroline Broussard, left alone while the cameras are moved to their original positions, struggles with her own recalcitrant body. The taped cheering voices and musical rave-ups seem almost redundant. We know champs when we see them.

As my eye scans some of the dense passages, I notice curious events—trial and error moments. A man exits laboriously, crawling on one foot, one hand, head, other foot, and so on. A woman sits placidly on the face of a supine man. A woman bites another's raised elbow. But intimacy is rare, which may be why the last few moments are so startling. The company members, lined up with their backs to us, are looking down at something. The camera shows it to us: the closeup faces of Yoshifumi and Kristin Inao, who are almost naked and making love. In the final seconds of the work, her face remains on the screen, staring at us, while he dances violently in a strobe light, and the only other person on the flickering stage, a woman, makes her way along a row of chairs, stepping carefully from one seat to another. Unification can be a temporary state. Cells divide, governments topple. We might as well embrace whatever we have, joyfully, while we still can.
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice July 24th, 2006

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