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Sharon Eyal’s “Bill” is Back at Batsheva Dance Company

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:40:09 +0000

Video: Sharon Eyal’s Bill

I have a confession to make: I saw Sharon Eyal’s Bill three nights in a row. Besides the obvious draw of seeing Batsheva Dance Company’s latest production in its first performances, I was compelled to watch the dance again and again by the kaleidoscopic complexity of Eyal’s choreography for this twenty-one member group. On each repeat viewing, I got to know Bill better, uncovering even more layers in the ensemble work and noticing the nuances in the movement. The already formidable power of the dance only grew stronger with time.

For other dance enthusiasts who might want to catch Bill again – and for new audience members who have yet to be acquainted with Bill - now is your chance! Batsheva is bringing the work to the Suzanne Dellal Center for a second run from June 13-16.

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post as “Meet Bill.”

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Meet Bill

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

With a strong character, a quirky sense of humor, and a big heart, Bill makes a memorable first impression. But Bill is not a man. Bill is the Batsheva Dance Company’s latest production by house choreographer Sharon Eyal, and it had its first run in May with performances at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv and the Herzliya Performing Arts Center.

When Eyal first transfixed audiences 20 years ago, it was with her own magnetic stage presence as a dancer with Batsheva. But in recent years, she has also generated buzz with her choreography. From her initial compositions presented under the framework of Batsheva Dancers Create to the evening-length, large-scale Bertolina and Makarova Kabisa, Eyal developed her distinctive artistic voice. Last season, local audiences were treated to the Batsheva Ensemble’s revamped version of Eyal’s earlier Love, while foreign crowds flocked to the Norwegian troupe Carte Blanche’s performances of the choreographer’s Killer Pig.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Now with Bill, an hour-long work for Batsheva’s 21 dancers, Eyal picks up where she left off. “I feel I am in an endless process, and the creation Bill continues my latest works, Makarova Kabisa and Killer Pig,” she explains.

The throughline in her creative process is no doubt strengthened by her ongoing collaboration with several artists: co-creator Guy Bachar, musician and soundtrack designer Ori Lichtik, and lighting designer Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi).

Together, this team has fashioned a thoroughly contemporary aesthetic that permeates Eyal’s choreography. Like her other works, Bill is set to a virtually unceasing, throbbing blend of beats and melodies masterfully retooled by Lichtik on a sophisticated DJ system. Styled by Eyal and Bachar, the flesh-toned bodysuits that sheath the dancers like a second skin provide a ready canvas for the rich hues and striking geometry of Bambi’s lighting.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

In Bill, the dancers’ singular look is further enhanced through piercing ice-blue contact lenses and slicked-back hair colored to match the shade of their costumes. Eyal notes, “The idea was to wear a sense of nakedness,” but adds, “Nudity is not interesting enough . . . Nudity is also obvious. On the other hand, it is important to me that they will see the body, that there will be another layer that will present the mechanical side. When everyone is dressed and appears almost the same, I feel more that the individual in each one of them breaks out.”

Though seemingly paradoxical, this is a fitting attitude for a choreographer who has frequently displayed a talent for marshaling large numbers of dancers across the stage, playing on the tensions between the individual and the group. A similar dynamic pervades Bill. Sometimes working as single unit and at other times clustered in small packs juxtaposed with one another, the dancers travel in a dizzying kaleidoscope of constantly changing formations. Occasionally soloists break through the mass’s movement, but ultimately it is a united group pulse that drives the work forward.

Sharon Eyal’s Bill. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Eyal remarks, “I love the dancers, especially when I see them in the duplication of the entire group as one,” and her skillful arrangement of the dancers along with the identical costumes successfully produce this desired effect.

Yet part of Bill’s impact lies in the nuanced workings of each individual body. Even the most basic stepping patterns are layered with subtle isolations, while more intricate phrases display the performers’ virtuosity, capitalizing on their extreme flexibility and gravity-defying leaps. Batsheva’s dancers are just as comfortable in slinky, undulating slow motion as they are in hard-hitting, superhuman movements executed at warp speed, and they can morph from one dynamic to the next in the blink of an eye. Equipping every dancer with an intense physicality and multiplying them together, Eyal finds a winning formula for Bill.

Interview with Barak Marshall: Dancing between Israel and America (Podcast) (Part 1)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:16:03 +0000

Barak Marshall in Aunt Leah. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

(You can subscribe to this podcast using the iTunes software by clicking this link to the podcast feed.)

When we sat down to talk in January 2009, I discovered that a conversation with Barak Marshall is very similar to his choreography: fast-paced, peppered with diverse cultural references, and chock-full of attention-grabbing details. These qualities had captured my eye when I saw the premiere of Monger, and when I saw a rare restaging of Barak’s first work, Aunt Leah, I realized these were hallmarks of his craft since the day he stepped into the studio.

As we cafe-hopped in bustling central Tel Aviv during a Friday afternoon, Barak and I delved into a deep, lively discussion covering both his own choreography and the larger context of contemporary dance. Join us for the first part of our interview as Barak talks about his background, his connection to Inbal Dance Theater and Yemenite dance, and the trajectory of his early career from the making of Aunt Leah to his appointment as the house choreographer for Batsheva Dance Company in 1999. Barak, who splits his time between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, also reflects on the development of Israeli contemporary dance and differences between the dance scenes in Israel and the U.S.

Barak Marshall’s Emma Goldman’s Wedding. Photo courtesy of Barak Marshall.

From left: Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s The Land of Sad Oranges (photo courtesy of Barak Marshall); Margalit Oved in Barak Marshall’s Rooster (photo by Adi Mazan)

In our interview, Barak explained that his mother, Inbal Dance Theater star Margalit Oved, often served as a Greek chorus in his works. Now Margalit is reprising this role in Barak’s new Rooster, which premieres on November 12-13 as part of Tel Aviv Dance 2009. Check out the excerpt below and head over to Tel Aviv’s Opera House to see the full work!

Video: Barak Marshall’s Rooster

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

“MAX” – Connecting to Ohad Naharin’s Choreography

Deborah Friedes Galili — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:00:24 +0000

(Video: A trailer for BAM’s presentation of Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s MAX)

This is an excerpt from “Two Views of Batsheva: Ohad Naharin’s Furo and MAX,” which was published on The Winger on May 17, 2008. The Batsheva Dance Company will perform MAX in Santa Barbara (Feb. 24), San Diego (Feb. 26), Los Angeles (Feb. 28 – Mar. 1), and Brooklyn, NY (Mar. 4-7).

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During the brief blackouts in Ohad Naharin’s MAX, I quickly tore my eyes away from the stage to steal glances at my friend Nitzan. Each time I caught variations of the same expression on his face: eyes wide with amazement and mouth stretched into an even wider grin.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a “dance dork” (a few of my friends and I threw around this term frequently during graduate school). With my penchant for dance history and analysis, I’m probably not the typical audience member. Give me a brilliantly-crafted piece and I will fall in love, counting the ways in which the choreography captures my attention and my affection.

Love at first sight is possible in the arena of dance, but sometimes even the most excellent work takes a bit of time to win over my heart fully. Such was the case with Ohad Naharin’s MAX. I first saw MAX in December, and due to fatigue, I didn’t take in the dance with the freshest eyes. When I re-read my files before this second viewing, I saw that I had taken only a few hasty notes which focused on extremely satisfying sections marked by fine compositional structure. But after tonight’s performance of MAX, I’m in love. At least in my eyes, the work as a whole is indeed brilliant.

Photo: Ohad Naharin’s MAX. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

MAX’s movement is mesmerizing and wide-ranging, from tightly gestural to gloriously full-bodied, from slow and steady to sudden and speedy. At times the dancers work with a meticulous sense of control, while at other points they perform with breathtaking abandon.

While inventive and well-executed movement alone can captivate me, MAX also offers plenty of compositional excitement (I told you I was a dance dork!). The pacing of this work was for me, in a word, perfect. Naharin often indulges in one compositional mechanism for longer than many other dancemakers, but the choreographic technique never overstays its welcome – it just blossoms fully.

Here’s one example: a dancer tilts wildly out of kilter in a virtuoso solo and then is swept into an explosion of movement from the company, which is scattered across the stage in small groups, each of which has its own phrase; together, the ensemble paints the space with their bodies, arms and legs leaving traces of motion behind them. Out of this grows another solo, which again dissolves into the company’s grouped dancing. After only a few cycles I know what to expect, but my mind still delights in searching for the start of each solo and enjoys the wash of movement from the group.

Here and elsewhere, Naharin senses the right moment for a shift and recharges my attention. Sometimes blackouts clear the slate, but more often my eyes are refreshed by extreme juxtapositions: stillness and motion; unison and organized chaos; slow and fast; small and large; smooth and sharp; full ensemble sections and trios or solos.

MAX excited me but in a different way than some of Naharin’s more overtly theatrical productions like Deca Dance, Zachacha, and Anaphase. Deca Dance, for one, is absolute fun – I’ve seen it win over several audiences easily. But MAX is in another category. It doesn’t have the theatrical elements which can engage less-seasoned audience members. There is no set, no narrative, and no characters (though for me the gestural motifs, repeated tableaux, and chanting create a sense of a tribe with its own unique rituals). There are no displays of emotion despite one usage of a smile. The dancers are dressed in simple shorts and tanks rather than more elaborate costumes.

Furthermore, MAX itself is not an “easy” work. The sound score is challenging. Melodious music played by traditional, recognizable instruments is replaced by low unidentifiable sounds, grating industrial noises, deep eerie male voices speaking in an invented language and droning in counting sections, and long periods of silence. Some people might consider the movement aesthetic challenging as well; there is no attempt at the prettiness of ballet or of some modern techniques despite the inclusion of recognizable classical positions. And in a work that centers so much on composition, the choice of choreographic tools might also prove taxing to certain audience members. The frequent usage of movement accumulations, with repeated movements building into longer and longer phrases, may wear on some viewers’ eyes.

So I while I loved the structure and was moved by MAX, I found myself wondering on what level Nitzan (or any non-dance dork) was connecting to the work. Were less seasoned dance viewers enjoying the work’s formal elements? Would they too be moved by the dance?

The answer: yes. The audience clapped enthusiastically for several sets of bows. And as Nitzan’s animated facial expressions suggested, he did indeed enjoy the concert. We talked excitedly about the choreography and the performance of it as we meandered back towards our neighborhood, and without my even asking, he talked poetically about how he connected to the work. MAX was, he said, “Food for the soul.” You can’t get much better than that!

Articles on MAX from the Dance Blogosphere

“Batsheva’s MAX” – Tonya Plank at Swan Lake Samba Girl
“Batsheva Performs MAX at BAM” – Evan at Dancing Perfectly Free
“Batsheva Didn’t Blow My Mind this Time” – Wendy Perron’s blog at Dance Magazine

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak: An Interview on Imagination (Podcast)

Deborah Friedes Galili — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:29:29 +0000

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Shaker completes its U.S. tour at New York City’s Joyce Theater this week. Photo by Eyal Landesman.

This is the first in a series of podcasted interviews with dance professionals in Israel.

You can listen via the player embedded in this post or subscribe to this podcast for free by visiting our podcast feed and using the iTunes software ((You can subscribe to the podcast feed by searching the iTunes directory for “Dance In Israel”)). This podcast was initially produced for Israel Seen, and the text below was written for The Winger.

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The very first work I saw at the Suzanne Dellal Center last year was Shaker, by Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak. Despite my jet lag, I realized that Inbal and Avshalom’s visually stunning work was special – and when I later saw the Inbal Pinto Dance Company in Oyster (twice!) and Hydra, I knew that my initial assessment of these creators was correct. Want more proof of this couple’s exceptional talent and ability to win over audiences with their artistry? Several hundred performances after its premiere, Oyster still fills the house at Suzanne Dellal, and the Israel Festival had to add a third performance of Hydra this June because of the demand for tickets.

Avshalom Pollak and Inbal Pinto. Photo by Asaf Ashkenazyn.

In between rehearsals for their new production and tours of their existing repertory, I caught up with Inbal and Avshalom in the spring of 2008 to learn how this imaginative couple concocts such unique creations. You can learn more too if you tune in to our podcast!

For more pictures, videos, and links, read the rest of my post below:

Hydra, the newest work by Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak. Photo by Seto Hidemi.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Oyster. Photo by Elazar Harel

Video: A clip from Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Shaker.

I’ll leave you with one more treat:

Video: Excerpts from Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s What Good Would the Moon Be.

Other Podcasts on Dance In Israel

Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder

Deborah Friedes Galili — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:30:46 +0000

Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation will be performed in New Haven, CT as part of Yale University’s World Performance Project Festival on November 11-12. Photo by Tamar Lamm. See our Events page for the listing.

Throughout my time in Israel, I have had the privilege of speaking with a number of choreographers and dancers about their art. Here on Dance In Israel, I will be sharing these conversations with you in a series of “Close Encounters” articles and in a series of podcasted audio interviews. This “Close Encounters” article on Yasmeen Godder was first published on The Winger in June of 2008.

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Yasmeen Godder. Photo by Natan Dvir.

If you’re part of the New York dance scene, you’ve probably stepped through some of the same doors as Yasmeen Godder. Born in Israel and raised in Jerusalem until age 11, Yasmeen moved to the U.S. with her family, attended the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City, studied at Movement Research and the Klein School, and received her undergraduate degree from NYU’s Tisch School. The Kitchen, DTW, and Dancing in the Streets have all commissioned work from her, and she was awarded a Bessie in 2001 for I Feel Funny Today.

If you’re part of the Israeli dance scene, you’ve undoubtedly felt Yasmeen’s influence and quite possibly crossed paths with her. I had heard of Yasmeen prior to arriving in Israel because of her activities in the U.S. and the acclaim which has greeted her works both in the states and Europe, and as soon as I arrived in Israel, I began to realize the impact she has made in her home country. Her name frequently came up in conversations about both choreographers and teachers, and many people urged me to see her work and take her class. So it was that I ventured down to Yafo (Jaffa) to take technique at her studio, attended a performance there of Sudden Birds (see the video above), and went to a performance of I’m Mean, I Am at the Suzanne Dellal Center.

Months later, I’m not surprised that I heard so much buzz about Yasmeen. I found Yasmeen’s classes to be quite challenging and enormously helpful in their specificity, especially as I attempt to widen my body’s range and move with less muscular effort. She welcomes students’ reflections in class and presents her own ideas with clarity and details that enable me to adjust my mindset and body to a more unfamiliar technical framework.

I also found Yasmeen’s choreography to be as challenging as her classes, and refreshingly so. Since my earliest research on the socially conscious New Dance Group, I have always been attracted to choreographers who examine social issues, but while many choreographers try to touch such subject matter, it is all too easy for their investigations to remain superficial and cursory. Not so with Yasmeen. She doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, and regardless of the subject at hand, she isn’t afraid to display even the most disturbing findings from her creative process onstage.

It’s a tribute to Yasmeen’s artistic integrity that at the second performance of Singular Sensation at Suzanne Dellal on Friday, the packed audience was peppered with dancers, choreographers, artists in other disciplines, and committed dance enthusiasts who were eager to see her latest work. The five dancers’ exploration of sensation was surreal at times – with green slime oozing down dancers’ bodies and a nightmarish section in which four dancers covered the fifth performer’s head in pantyhose and saran wrap, shoved oranges into his hands for squeezing, and pulled him into splits over a jello mold – but the applause filling the theater at the work’s conclusion was very, very real.

Back in April, Yasmeen sat down with me after a rehearsal so that we could chat a bit about her work. As in most of these conversations, we started at the beginning, talking about Yasmeen’s pathway from ballet and Graham technique through to her investigations of Klein technique, more broadly labeled release classes, improvisation, and yoga.

Yasmeen had prefaced some of her classes with a disclaimer that she did not teach a particular technique, and so we talked at length about the various influences on her approach to movement. Klein features prominently in this array of influences, with its emphasis on releasing the exterior muscles and finding the bones; from Yasmeen’s exposure to this and other classes in the release spectrum, she also developed her strong connection to the floor, deep trust in space, and ability to use less effort. Yet Yasmeen also incorporates approaches that are, in some ways, at odds with the typical release practice and aesthetic. She can be shape-based at times, and through both her own process of questioning and her collaboration with a dramaturge, she ventures into a world which is more emotional and (for lack of a better word – this is admittedly inexact) theatrical.

Yasmeen also discussed yoga’s impact on her training, which is evident in her use of particular sequences and stretches in the classes she teaches, and she further noted that the combination of physical, mental, and emotional aspects within yoga meshes with her own creative process and development of movement for choreographic works.

Godder’s Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder. Photo by Tamar Lamm.

Speaking of choreographic works, we spent some time discussing one of Yasmeen’s dances which had a particularly powerful impact on me. Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder was made during the second intifada, and when I screened it on DVD in the autumn, it kept me up all night thinking and writing. I had wondered if I would see any dances here which tackled the Israeli-Arab conflict head-on, and I have found remarkably few either on stage this season or on video from previous years. Thus Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder stood out for me not only because of the strength of the choreography and its performance but also because of the subject matter.

Surrounded by images in the news media in 2004, Yasmeen felt that she simply had to deal with what was happening in her country, and she assembled a series of photographs – a “catalog” of images – as a starting point. Dancers were instructed to “be” the photograph, without political or emotional comment, and each artist worked with a few photographs so that they switched roles: male, female, young, old, wounded, able, civilian, soldier. In this way, the boundaries between “victim” and “perpetrator” become blurred, just as these roles aren’t always clear or constant in the actual events of the situation here. I had recognized this particular blurring upon watching the piece, but listening to Yasmeen recount the choreographic process, my mind reached beyond the dancers’ appearances – their genders and ages – and I realized even more how complex and intense this exploration must have been.

Yasmeen continued to talk about images of war and images of heroes, raising questions both about how these subjects are photographed and how people look at and identify with these pictures; Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, she said, delved into many of the issues which were at the heart of Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder. We also discussed the response of audiences, which varied based on geographical location (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and cities abroad) as well as performance space (more intimate settings versus traditional proscenium stages which create a stronger division between the action onstage and the spectators in the house).

Some Israelis didn’t perceive Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder as being about the situation here, whereas outside of the country – of course billed as a work by an Israeli choreographer – the dance was almost uniformly viewed as a piece concerning the Israeli-Palestinian situation. While audience members in any country are subject to the flood of war images these days, though, the Israeli crowds contained people who were directly connected to the dance’s source material including survivors of suicide bombings. As Yasmeen recounted one Israeli woman’s emotional response to the work, I couldn’t help thinking of how a woman mourning her young son tearfully approached Martha Graham after a performance of her signature solo, Lamentation. Like Graham before her, Yasmeen Godder knows that she may move members of the audience with her dances – and in my experience, she moves many viewers with her honest, probing work.

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Want to see some of Yasmeen’s choreography, but can’t make it to Yale next week? Here is a clip of her work Sudden Birds:

Dance In Israel » Featured Posts

Sharon Eyal’s “Bill” is Back at Batsheva Dance Company

Meet Bill

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Interview with Barak Marshall: Dancing between Israel and America (Podcast) (Part 1)

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“MAX” – Connecting to Ohad Naharin’s Choreography

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*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak: An Interview on Imagination (Podcast)

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*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

Close Encounters Series: Yasmeen Godder

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*This post was made possible thanks to a Fulbright student grant funded by the U.S.-Israel Educational Foundation and hosted by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.