\u201cI come from my mother, her aesthetic, her language, Inbal,\u201d says choreographer Barak Marshall, whose new work \u201cRooster\u201d will premiere next Thursday, November 12 at the Israeli Opera as the closing event of the Tel Aviv Dance Festival. A co-production of the Suzanne Dellal Centre and the Israeli Opera, \u201cRooster,\u201d commissioned after Marshall\u2019s success with\u00a0 \u201cMonger\u201d in 2008, is a work for 12 dancers, featuring\u00a0iconic dancer \u2013performance artist Margalit Oved (formerly of Inbal Dance Company) and Israeli Opera singer Lilia Gretsova.<\/p>\n
Dance, theatre and opera come together in \u201cRooster,\u201d a work which, according to Marshall, relates artistically to Greek mythology, Beckett\u2019s \u201cWaiting for Godot,\u201d the Bible, and the Y. L. Peretz short story \u201cBontsche the Silent.\u201d According to Marshall, the story describes a man who was \u201cVery kind and silent, no one noticed him in his lifetime and no one paid attention when he died.\u201d Marshall views the story as a \u201cwarning about not asserting yourself,\u201d saying, \u201ctrust your desires and act on them.\u201d The Hebrew word for rooster is \u201cGever\u201d which also means \u201cman,\u201d an association that has resonance for Marshall who describes the rooster as \u201cferocious yet also incredibly vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The literary influences in the work are powerfully balanced with Marshall\u2019s intensely physical choreography, nurtured in a rich cultural context. Marshall states that he is thankful that he \u201cwas able to be raised with an appreciation for the richness and resources of my own Mizrahi culture,\u201d adding that \u201cI am getting my dancers to move ethnic.\u201d<\/p>\n