On Monday night, the Deutsche Oper Berlin was packed for the newest Staatsballett’s evening. For this programme the dancers have literally gone Gaga. With this I mean that to perform these works beside rehearsing, they had to turn their training upside down to integrate Gaga technique. Developed by the choreographer Ohad Naharin for the Batsheva Dance Company, this technique concentrates on internal sensations with the development of specific movement qualities. The opposite in some ways to ballet technique (if with ballet we intend the embodiment of forms), during a Gaga class no mirrors are allowed to promote undisturbed internal research.
Sharon Eyal danced and started her choreographic journey while at the Batsheva Dance Company with Ohad Naharin. Created 2021, Saaba is the fourth work by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar presented by the Staatsballett. On a collage of different music genres by Ori Lichtik, the work contains all the elements characteristic of Eyal’s signature: pulsing techno beats, swarm sequences of swift pulsating movements, and distorted bodies in demi-pointes, exaggerated curvature of the spine and lower ribs protruding from the skin-tight costumes. At once grotesque pin-ups and crucified figures, the 15 dancers seemed to float, as a group of flamingos, on an infinite empty space populated by Alan Cohen’s top lighting that highlighted the human cartography already made clearly visible by Maria Grazia Chiuri’s skin-coloured lace costumes (House Dior).
From my point of view, it is a disparate work, and somehow the different sections did not completely gel together. I could see echoes from previous works such as 2 Chapters Love, also in the Staatsballett’s repertoire, which made me wonder about the overall meaning of the work. After a weaker start – somehow the Indie song Hold You Down (2020) by Rhye could not compete with Eyal’s movement material – the very strong group sequences on techno beat, brought my fluctuating attention back. Different from the corps de ballet, where all swans need to be exactly the same, her sequences are characterised by individualism inside the group. Movements and gestures are performed in a loop, as machines of human flesh, with slight variations because of individual anatomy or for choreographic counterpoint. Eyal’s is a fragile yet strong impulsive body, always on the verge of collapsing yet sustained by a nervous animal-like jerky energy. It is alien and mysterious, yet delicate and sensitive in its humanness with which we can somehow identify.
The second work of the evening is a contemporary classic. Premiered in 1999, the work is composed by excerpts from other of Naharin’s works, particularly the hypnotic “Echad Mi Yodea” (lit. “Who Knows One?”) contained in Anaphaza (1993) and set to a traditional cumulative song on Passover found in the Haggadah text. The hypnotic dance sequence follows the music's cumulative structure: the dancers sit on chairs in a semicircle and are dressed with black suits, white shirts and hats. They scream “She ba-shamaim u va-aretz” (“Who is in the heaven and the earth?”) with each repetition of the song's verses and their cumulative movements going from normal gesturing to increasingly violent and rebellious, culminating in them throwing their clothes in the centre of the stage. The last person in the semicircle remains completely dressed but falls from the chair with each repetition as if not belonging to the group.
The piece continues becoming more personal and featuring the dancers as athletic poets. As they move in a column from one side to the other of the stage, each time a dancer is left behind for a short impromptu on their life. Between narrations of yellow soups, of dreams of opening a restaurant and of family memories expressed in sign language, we start to see the dancers as individuals with their own personal story. The last sequence breaks the divide with the audience as the dancers go looking for dancing partners for among others a furious dance on Marusha’s techno version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It is a refreshing twist as it is impossible not to laugh and not to feel for the audience, more or less embarrassed on stage as they are spurred on by the dancers who also act as guardian angels.
I want to finish with the Staatsballett dancers who are becoming increasingly versatile in their movement repertoire as with each new production they are exposed to very different movement languages. Gaga has become the go to for contemporary dancers. In the introduction, I mentioned that the dancers had to change their training. With these works we, as audience members, have to change the way of ‘seeing’ what's on stage. Gaga sheds a light on the body's internal world of intensities, feelings and sensations. As an audience we are asked more and more to enter into kinesthetic empathy and to feel our way through movement.
Sobre nuestra calificación