{"id":27701,"date":"2013-10-06T01:18:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T08:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=27701"},"modified":"2013-10-10T10:02:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T17:02:02","slug":"batsheva-2013-2014-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=27701","title":{"rendered":"Batsheva 2013 – 2014 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI never speak about feelings.\u201d Ohad Naharin, artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company turns to his dancers for verification. \u201cWe never speak about feelings, right? We provide room for feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Batsheva<\/a>
Batsheva Dance Company presents the 2013 – 2014 season\/Photo: Gadi Dagon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This can be true and in a little way not quite true at the same time. Dance does not speak in the literal sense, of course; more to the point, Naharin is correct to say that his work is not didactic, but rather open to interpretation, thinking, feeling. Still, judging from last week\u2019s press preview for the forthcoming 2013-14 season, one can\u2019t help but think that there is an attempt to communicate something specific. Maybe not feelings, specifically. Perhaps aspirations?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Batsheva<\/a>
Batsheva Dance Company presents the 2013 – 2014 season\/Photo: Gadi Dagon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2014 is the 50th anniversary of the company, and the programme for the coming year is shaped along the backbone of renewal and rejuvenation. Centerpiece of the season will be Naharin\u2019s Virus – Revisited<\/em>. Premiered in 2001, Naharin\u2019s Virus<\/em> \u2013 created in collaboration with the members of the dance company \u2013 was adapted from the play \u201cOffending the Audience<\/em>\u201d by\u00a0 Austrian playwright (and occasional provocateur), Peter Handke. Featuring original music by Karni Postel, Habib Alla Jamal and Shama Khader, Virus<\/em> \u2013 based on the short preview we were accorded \u2013 allows a strangely seductive synchrony to evolve amidst a cacophony of sound and vision. Virus was conceived and premiered in the context of the darkest days of the Second Intifada (not to say that everything is bright and sunny today, but I\u2019m sure you get the general point), and Handke\u2019s original source material is considered provocative, with lots of conflict, contradiction, participants breaching the fourth wall with the audience and so on. I think it\u2019ll be a bit portentous \u2013 if not pompous \u2013 to suggest that Virus Revisited<\/em> will be presented as a statement on the confusion of contemporary Israel. But it might, as Naharin proposes, present a space for individual feelings.<\/p>\n

Also returning this season is Sadeh 21<\/em>, triumphantly premiered at the Israel Festival in 2011 and reviewed by Midnight East here<\/a>. I saw it preformed at the time, and remember being struck by at first by an ethereal, at times otherworldly sensibility, dancers drifting languidly on and off stage and an enchantingly off-centre soundtrack. A slight aside concerning the language of dance: The piece is dedicated to Noa Eshkol, the doyenne of Israel dance and one of the creators of the Eshkol-Wachman system of dance notation.<\/p>\n

Decal\u2019e<\/em>, premiered last year and performed by members of the Batsheva Ensemble, returns again this year. Consisting of extracts from Naharin\u2019s oeuvre, Decal’e<\/em> is an accessible entry point, suitable for the whole family, to both Batsheva and Naharin\u2019s long association with the company. In similar vein, Kamuyot<\/em> \u2013 specifically choreographed with a younger audience in mind and first premiered in Tel Aviv\u2019s Tichon Hadash High School \u2013 will form an integral part of Batsheva\u2019s community and outreach programme this year, with performances at the Dimona Festival.<\/p>\n

More information about the season\u2019s schedule can be found at www.batsheva.co.il\/en<\/a> .<\/p>\n

\"Batsheva<\/a>
Batsheva Dance Company presents the 2013 – 2014 season\/Photo: Gadi Dagon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI never speak about feelings.\u201d Ohad Naharin, artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company turns to his dancers for verification. \u201cWe never speak about feelings, right? We provide room for feelings.\u201d This can be true and in a little way not quite true at the same time. Dance does not speak in the literal sense, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}