Batsheva Dance Company Research Articles

Batsheva dance company

batsheva dance company

The Batsheva Dance Company Archive Project

The article discusses the Batsheva Dance Company Archive Project, conducted by a team I headed in the years 2012–2015. 1 The analysis of this project will assist in understanding both its significance as an archival act of documenting the past, and its influence on the company's present and on Israeli dance. The method of analysis will include a description of the different practices involved in constructing a dance archive; a contextual discussion of archival practices; and a theoretical discussion, principally in the context of changes in current archiving practices and developments in critical thinking about dance as a discipline. The description of the course of events in this article mainly relies on my personal experience and involvement as director of the Batsheva Dance Company Archive Project. The different proceedings, goals, considerations and decisions were documented in monthly reports and in the project's concluding document, and so assisted in tracing the chronicle and details of events. 2

Mr. Gaga: Embodying the Exceptionalism of Ohad Naharin

The life and work of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin are documented in the 2015 film by Tomer Heymann, Mr. Gaga. With nearly a decade of footage from following Naharin’s work with the Batsheva Dance Company, the documentary celebrates Naharin’s life with abundant footage from his choreographic successes. This article explores the ways in which this film, like many dance documentaries, uses dance footage in strategic ways to present dance artists as exceptional. In Mr. Gaga in particular, the national and cultural specificity of the story and footage portrayed in the film require critical analysis to better understand subtle political undertones and bias embedded in the film’s otherwise primarily aesthetic focus.

Batsheva Dance Company: Learning and Dancing the Graham Repertory

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the first decade of existence of Batsheva Dance Company (1964–1975), founded by the baroness Bethsabée de Rothschild as a repertory company under the artistic advisor of the preeminent American choreographer Martha Graham. I examine the ability of Batsheva dancers to internalize Graham's idiosyncratic technique, style, and repertory within a short period of time, without sacrificing individual spirit. After presenting the historical background of Batsheva's founding, I use recent research and theory on the early development of Graham's unique aesthetic and company ethos to frame and illuminate the way Batsheva dancers handled the idiosyncratic Graham style and repertory.

Per un teatro trans (-disciplinare e -culturale)

This article is devoted at first to a book which collects the proceedings of an important Italian symposium concerning the theurapetic implementation of theatre protocols, and then to the Batsheva Dance Company. The ensemble leaded by Ohad Naharin is presented as a combination of singular biographies, and the analysis of its genuine theatre is proposed side by side with Embodied Philosophy in Dance, the essay by Einav Katan that among others inaugurate a new theatrology.

Boycotting Bodies: The Politics of Practice and Performance

Gaga, the movement language developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, is often claimed to be apolitical by marketing materials and participants alike. The Batsheva Dance Company is also led by Naharin and highly influenced by Gaga. Unlike Gaga, however, Batsheva is highly politicized because of frequent protests by pro-Palestinian activists. In this presentation, I explore the many complicated layers of Gaga practice to show the multiple ways in which dancing bodies can be politicized. The case of the cultural boycott movement is used to complicate the relationships between practice and performance and how they are understood as political.

How to Dance After Auschwitz? Ethics and Aesthetics of Representation in John Cranko's Song of My People—Forest People—Sea

John Cranko's only ballet for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, Ami-Yam, Ami-Ya'ar (Song of My People—Forest People—Sea, 1971) is described in a program note as “A Nation and Man Move in Parallel Cycles from Death to Regeneration.” It has remained unique in Cranko's choreographic corpus and in the Batsheva repertoire. Based on recently discovered film evidence, I reread Cranko's largely forgotten project and discuss its problematic and controversial reception in Israel and abroad, in light of Adorno's statement that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.” I situate it as a landmark in tackling the Holocaust in dance in Israel as of 1971. I problematize the ethics and aesthetics of representation in Cranko's ballet on the grounds of Giorgio Agamben's discussion of testimony and in reference to Jacques Derrida's reading of Paul Celan.

Gaga: Moving beyond Technique with Ohad Naharin in the Twenty-First Century

Gaga, the movement language developed by Ohad Naharin in conjunction with his work as artistic director of Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, has in the last decade been introduced as a training option for dancers. Examining Gaga's evolution, structure, and characteristics, this article suggests that Gaga's divergence from conventional models of technique allows it to address many needs of dancers working in the twenty-first century. I consider how Gaga fits into contemporary training paradigms and assert that the freedom to explore concrete directives and creative imagery in classes helps dancers develop the link between their physicality and their artistry.

The Unmaking of Israel by Gershom Gorenberg (review)

Reviewed by: The Unmaking of Israel by Gershom Gorenberg Evan Kent (bio) The Unmaking of Israel, by Gershom Gorenberg. New York: Harper, 2011. I often have trouble sleeping. Some nights, it takes me hours to fall asleep and on those nights when I do fall asleep quickly and without effort, I often wake up with a jolt at about three or four in the morning with my mind racing. In these early-morning attacks of insomnia, to-do lists clutter my mind and the never-ending “monkey chatter” (as a yoga-teacher friend calls it) denies me my much needed sleep. After reading Gershom Gorenberg’s most recent book, The Unmaking of Israel, I didn’t sleep well for a number of weeks. And on those nights when I would fall asleep, that mental chatter (now with a strong Israeli accent) woke me up. Gorenberg initially presents a pessimistic picture of Israel: a society deeply fractured having lost its Jewish foundation and soul. Gorenberg’s prophet-like and almost apocalyptic warnings are not to be taken lightly. His admonitions have real and timely significance for me, as next year at this time I will have made aliyah (along with my husband and Merlin the Cat) and will have become a citizen of Israel. Gorenberg’s message is certainly not directed toward Israelis alone; his words should be read as a timely and important message for all Jews—for all who care deeply about Eretz Yisrael and the country’s future. We did not need Gorenberg’s book to inform us that Israel has a variety of tzuris, both internally and external to the country’s borders. As I write this, the citizens of Jerusalem are trying to comprehend the attack on an Arab teenager in Zion Square; performances of the Batsheva Dance company, one of Israel’s premier arts institutions, are being boycotted at the Edinburgh Festival; the madman in Iran is again denying the Holocaust and making threats to destroy the “Zionist entity”; and the [End Page 127] European Union has declared that the city of Modi’in is not really a part of Israel. All these issues stem from similar challenges and it is Gorenberg’s thesis that in order for Israel to survive as a democratic, Jewish state, and not to be seen as an outcast nation, the country must change. He writes: What will Israel be in five years, or twenty? Will it be the Second Israeli Republic, a thriving democracy within smaller borders? Or a pariah state where one ethnic group rules over another? Or a territory marked on the map, between the river and the sea, where the state has been replaced by two warring communities? Will it be the hub of the Jewish world, or a place that most Jews abroad prefer not to think about? The answers depend on what Israel does now (pp. 221–222). In this well researched, thoughtful, and highly provocative volume, Gorenberg proposes three solutions necessary to guide Israel back on course in order to re-establish itself as a liberal democracy. Israel must: (1) leave the settlements and end the occupation; (2) create a separation between the religious establishment and the state, including the dissolution of religious hesder yeshivot designed for army inductees and the cessation of financial funding of all religious institutions; and (3) “graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality” (p. 222). Although aspects of Gorenberg’s solutions may seem like sheer fantasy to both those in Israel and outside the country, the author is realistic and acknowledges his proposals are fraught with difficulty and would certainly face multiple objections. Throughout his book, the author acknowledges and responds to possible objections: just as a reader might be formulating a protest to Gorenberg’s thinking and beginning to mentally challenge him with “But what about . . .” or “Have you really considered . . .”, the author successfully parries the objections and continues to build and develop a well-investigated defense. Gorenberg’s solutions are so deftly presented and provide such outstanding rhetoric that they are imminently useful when discussing or debating Israel. On a proposed one-state or two-state...

Anna Sokolow: A Seminal Force in the Development of Theatrical Dance in Israel

This essay offers a historical framework for examining Anna Sokolow's contribution to the development of theatrical dance in Israel from the middle of the 1950s to the end of the 1980s. The sociopolitical and artistic conditions in Israel at the time of Sokolow's first encounter with its dance scene serve as a backdrop for investigating the contribution of her Lyric Theatre (1962–64) and examining why, despite the company's short life, Sokolow is still heralded as a profound influence on contemporary dance in Israel. The essay will further investigate how Sokolow wove her aesthetic into the dance scene through her work with Inbal Dance Theatre, her staging of works from her repertory along with new dances for companies like Batsheva Dance Company, and the effects of her technique and composition classes on generations of dancers.

The Borders of Contemporary Israeli Dance: “Invisible Unless in Final Pain”

When Vertigo, an Israeli dance company, performed in collaboration with the English Ricochet dancers, there was one dance on the stage—one choreography—but the audience saw two different modes of movement. The English dancers were learned, elegant, arms and feet drawing long lines in space, the feet articulate. The Israelis danced with a powerful thrust, extremities loose, with total commitment and daring, their movements leaving in space traces of explosions too fast to recollect rather than spirals of continuity. How did this mode of movement develop? What is “Israeli” about Israeli dance?In this essay I offer a brief history of concert dance in Israel, then a largely descriptive account of choreographic and motional themes that distinguish contemporary Israeli dance. My descriptions of works by contemporary Israeli choreographers Jasmine Goder, Ronit Ziv, Anat Danielli, Shlomi Bitton, and Noa Dar are drawn mostly from observation of performances held during yearly Curtain Up festivals at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater in Tel Aviv. I also discuss works by Inbal Pinto, Rami Be'er, Nir Ben-Gal and Liât Dror, and finally, Ohad Naharin, artistic director and choreographer of the Batsheva Dance Company.