Batsheva Dance Company (ISR)
Venezuela
12-14 February 2019
Programme
Experience one of the best companies in the world!
Tickets12 Feb
19:00
13 Feb
19:00
14 Feb
19:00
Venezuela consists of two parts, or rather one part danced twice.
With its usual trademark of repetitive movements, wild intensity, total presence and technical brilliance, the programme offers Bathsheva Dance Company for a fascinating evening that raises many questions, but provides few answers.
Ohad Naharin (artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company) describes himself Venezuela as a performance in which he and the dancers explore issues of dialogue versus conflict in movement and, by extension, the meaning of movement.
True to his eclectic tastes, Ohad Naharin has commissioned music designer Maxim Waratt go wild with genres and styles - the show includes music tracks from both The Notorious B.I.G., Rage Against the Machine and old Gregorian chants.
The dancers' abrupt shifts between softness and frenzy, the intensity of the movements - all create the sense that Venezuela is indeed a work with a message. For Ohad Naharin, the stage is a place of proclamation; an arena where dance and movement bring the audience and performers together as one.
About the choreographer
Ohad Naharin
choreographer
For 25 years, Ohad Naharin has led the legendary Batsheva Dance Company. Alongside his work as a choreographer, Naharin has developed what is known as Gaga, an innovative movement language designed to heal and strengthen the body. The method was created after he himself suffered an injury. Gaga can be used by anyone - the dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company practice it daily and it has defined the company's characteristic movement patterns. All over the world, popular Gaga classes are given by certified teachers.
Ohad Naharin was born on a kibbutz in Israel in 1952. After serving in the army, he was encouraged by his mother, a dance teacher, to audition for the Batsheva Dance Company founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild in the 1960s. The rest is history... He danced with the company for a few years and was then invited to New York by Martha Graham, after a period as a dancer and choreographer he returned to Israel and became the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company in 1990. Under Ohad Naharin's leadership, the company has gained a worldwide reputation since the 1990s for choreographies that are based both on the possibilities of the dancing body and - more or less clearly - on the political situation in the region. He has choreographed over 30 works for the company.
In 2018, after almost 30 years as artistic director, Naharin stepped down. He now continues as a house choreographer.
But the Batsheva Dance Company will continue to be the 'home' for Ohad's research, development and teaching of Gaga.