Israeli Contemporary Dance Week at La MaMa Moves!
June 13, 2011
new festival affirms La MaMa's inclusive mission
La MaMa recently lost director Ellen Stewart, but not her interest in Israeli dance. La Mama Moves! added Contemporary Israeli Dance Week to this year's burgeoning festival. It was an unmatched opportunity to see companies supported and working in Israel, amidst unrest and division.
dog's life
At La MaMa June 11, 2011 Ran Ben-Dror began Cohen’s earlier (2007) solo My Sweet Little Fur in a sculpted standing pose. His head, dropped between his knees, is a dark hole encircled by beige street clothes. His raised rump moves at eye-level as if seeking purpose. Ben-Dror’s incredible contortionist poses suggest dog. He sits scratching his head with his foot. He howls in pain and then, possibly rabid (not your cute lap pup), he lays down as if he’s given up his life of pain and excessive devotion— to the sound of a howling pack. This fan hopes Cohen calls off the dogs and returns with a work on the scale of the rich postmodern Swan Lake he presented last year at CPR. It had a backdrop of tomato cans instead of the customary lakeside scene. The dancers slid across the floor, awash in slippery tomato.
Dinner (2008) is dancemakers and dancers Maya Stern and Tomer Sharabi’s duet. They start in an expectant but hardly romantic social dance. Then he grabs her hair and torso and they whirl too close for comfort. Cannibalism and creative sex come to mind (her toe is in his mouth, his foot is jammed between her legs). Roaming the deep black box performing area, the two suggest a lifetime of aggressive coupling. Alas, they end in co-dependent impasse, arms stretched out in a cantilevered tug-of-war tableau. Gut-wrenching and senseless.
screen gems strung
Of-the-moment videodance compositions created at D for Dimensions, a Tel Aviv art lab, nicely bracketed the program’s intermission (passed with klezmer music and brownies). The shorts include still photography and animation. In rich black and white, one or two dance in abandoned locations—distressed architecture that poignantly situates us in Israel. Middle-Eastern instrumental and sampled sounds accompany Michael Getman’s dances. Choreographer Gaya Be’er Gorovich solos to an aria from Verdi’s La Traviata. Even broken by the pleasant intermission, the pieces mesmerize as one episodic work.
Ladies
After Dinner, dessert; the second half of the program is lighter fare. The trio Red Ladies (2009) by Maya Brinner, has Shany Ben-Haim, Mor Nardimon, and Brinner as workers moving in unison, wagging their heads and turning in a line. The patterns engage. Best is their use of denim jumper costumes by Marina Shmujlian. In one passage the costume-props are turned over head and manipulated like small puppet girls dancing in front of them. With several false endings, their tight constructs intentionally unravel. They tumble out of a final close-pack formation into blackout. United we stand, divided we fall...
Heroes
Yossi Berg and Oded Graf finish the program with Heroes part 2 (2006) to music by David Bowie. Like Dinner and Red Ladies, Heroes could do with some trimming. In this duet one character laughs and the other, the butt of his jokes, cries. Their innovative physical theater has bits of dark humor and rough play, yet, the (male) relationship story amuses and entertains.
With more or less interiority, the choreographers surely reflect and resist conditions in their homeland with their dancer's vociferous moves.