(Video: The Noa Dar Dance Group in Tetris, a collaboration between Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher)

I first wrote about Noa Dar’s Tetris (טטריס) in “From Studios to Stages” on my own blog and have edited an excerpt of that article for this post.

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It’s no wonder that Tetris (2006) premiered at the Acco Festival for Alternative Theater, or that it won a prize there.  This collaboration between choreographer Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher shapes the performance space into the most alternative set-up that I have ever witnessed, and it left its mark on my mind when I saw it last year.

I heard about Tetris soon after arriving in Israel and eagerly looked forward to seeing a staging in Tel Aviv at the Noa Dar Studio.  I was familiar with the the chosen location because I had taken several contemporary technique classes there – but when I arrived for the performance November 10, 2007, I found the studio cleverly transformed.  Tetris‘s treatment of the spectator-performer relationship in this redesigned space is so unique that I would like to describe a bit of it below:

As Tetris begins, each audience member enters the studio individually, stepping onto a stool surrounded by a small booth and sticking his or her head through hole in the top; it is as if each person is a block about to be dropped into the classic video game called “Tetris.”  Next, spectators receive their own stools, join a line of other viewers, and then – once the line is complete – they are ushered by dancers to move their stools to a grid underneath a large wooden hut with rows of holes in the roof.  All the while, two dancers maneuver underneath and on top of the structure.  Once the entire audience is seated underneath the hut, we are instructed to stand on our stools and poke our heads through the holes.  This action is accompanied by a lot of twittering: all of a sudden we are disembodied, with our necks surrounded by the cut-out holes and our heads protected by wire domes.  It is strange indeed to look around and only see heads!

Standing in the midst of the structure, with our heads poking up into what is now the “stage,” we are the ultimate spectators even as we become the objects of other audience members’ gazes.  Our role in the event grows more complex with the entrance of the performers.  The six dancers begin slowly, prowling on top of the hut, looking intently at us, sliding across the space on their bellies, and occasionally drawing so close that their body parts are directly in our faces.  We watch, and we are watched.  With our own disembodiment – and from this perspective, with our spectating eyes mere inches above the floor – the performers’ bodies assume an extraordinary power.  To see moments of intimacy, desire, and violence from this angle is something else altogether . . .

Here’s another glimpse of Noa Dar’s Tetris, performed in Acco:

(Video: The Noa Dar Dance Group in Tetris, a collaboration between Noa Dar and visual artist Nati Shamia-Opher)

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For More Information

Visit Noa Dar’s website and learn more about Tetris.  Tetris will be performed at the Noa Dar Studio in Tel Aviv on January 20, 22, and 24.  Check details on Noa Dar’s performance calendar and Dance In Israel’s Events page.  Call  03-6954440 for tickets.

Related Posts on Dance In Israel

For more about choreography which re-frames the relationship between dancers and audience members, read “Mamootot – Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide.”

*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.

(Video: Batsheva Dance Company in Ohad Naharin’s Mamootot)

Last year, I viewed excerpts from Mamootot on DVD, but I suspected that nothing could compare to attending a live performance of the dance.

I finally got to see Batsheva Dance Company in Mamootot today – and I was correct in my assumption.

Created in 2003 by Ohad Naharin with the participation of Sharon Eyal and the company’s dancers, Mamootot trades the comfort zone of the proscenium for the four-sided square of the studio.  Like Naharin’s other choreography, the dance is filled with inventive movement, but here it is the exploration of this unusual space – and the interplay of the performers and spectators within it – which assumes center stage.  Indeed, as the dancers sit motionless among audience members to the song “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together,” it’s clear that what will follow is not the typical concert experience.

Throughout Mamootot, I wondered what the other people seated around the studio’s four sides were seeing and thinking.  How does each movement look from different vantage points?  How might someone else, sitting opposite me, interpret the dance differently simply because of the angle?  Sometimes this issue is resolved as dancers rush from side to side, executing the same phrase again and again so that each section of audience members assumes the designation of “front.”   But for most of the performance, we viewers are left to grapple with performers who sometimes turn their back on us.

Yet at other moments, the dancers are next to us, scattered in reserved seats and observing their fellow dancers.  They also face us, walking slowly around the perimeter and scanning the crowd.  This grows into an even greater transgression of the fourth wall as the dancers extend their hands to viewers.  As they touch and gaze into people’s eyes, they remove the usual barrier between performer and spectator.

This is just one of many intimate moments in Mamootot.   We are privileged with this proximity to the dancers; we hear their breathing, feel them as they sit next to us, and see just how alive every bit of their bodies is in this space where nothing is hidden.  We even watch one dancer disrobe completely, displaying his sculpted body without ceremony.

This moment, like the breaking of the fourth wall, might also be perceived by some as a provocation.  So too might the silences followed by sudden bursts of loud music, the long stillnesses juxtaposed with prolonged unison sections, and the slow pacing.  The challenges to the audience keep coming, but so too do the moments of what my eyes view as honesty and unusual beauty.  I wish I could see Mamootot again – and again, and again, so that my eyes could take in this experience from all sides.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Getting to Know the Batsheva Ensemble”
• “MAX – Connecting to Ohad Naharin’s Choreography”
• “Mamootot – Challenging the Performer-Spectator Divide”
• “Ohad Naharin’s Deca Dance in Israel: A Cycle Completed”
• “Ohad Naharin to Receive 2009 Scripps/ADF Award”
• “Ohad Naharin in America: Out of Focus Documentary”
• “Batsheva Dance Company Premieres Ohad Naharin’s Hora“
• “The Batsheva Ensemble on Tour at Home and Abroad”
• “Batsheva Dance Company: From Graham to Gaga”