From Eva:
Oh, my! Ohad Naharin! Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet! “Decadance!” Don’t go if you don’t want to feel as if someone has roughly grabbed you and dashed you all over the theater and left you winded, fighting for your life. Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound terribly appealing but–trust me on this one–CLCB and Naharin will rock you. The dancers are talented and valiant. They have enormous presence and resilience and a strong touch of the strange–or perhaps that’s what Naharin has brought out in them. They meet this master’s unusual choreography head on. The boundless imagery and energy astound. And there’s a delightful little audience participation segment, too–as fun to watch as it must be to perform.
I must admit that I’ve been avoiding Cedar Lake for a while now because, you know, as a child of a union family, the whole Wal-Mart thing…. But, no more. I’m going to try to ignore all that, the way I’ve had to ignore all the tobacco money in dance, and I certainly won’t hold it against these excellent dancers.
Cedar Lake appears in the two-hour long Decadance now through July 1 in their Chelsea home base. Go here for more info.
[Ed. note: Fellow blogger Tonya Plank aka Swan Lake Samba Girl also raves. For those of you whose only exposure to the Israeli choreographer are his bloated extravaganzas at the Lincoln Center Festival in the past few years, definitely give him another shot. He has a whole other, intimate side to him.]
[For more on Naharin, here’s Apollinaire’s post on his “Three,” performed at BAM by his own Batsheva company, a few months later.]
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
I attended the performance Friday night June 8th, and was one of the audience members who was dragged onto the stage to participate. It was one of the strangest and most exhilirating experiences I have had in many years.
There was no time to think – everything was happening so quickly. All I could do was concentrate with all my might on what my partner was doing and try to keep up. First we were fast dancing. Then I was standing with all the other participants from the audience with the dance company dancing wildly around us. Then my parter came back and led me first in a tango, then he twirled me around several times, and then we were slow dancing. I was concentrating so hard, I had no idea what was happening around the stage. Then he whispered that the dance was about to end and I should walk slowly off the stage. The music stopped and the whole company was sprawled on the floor, and I realized I was the only one standing up on the stage– in the spotlight. “wow”
Apollinaire responds: Thanks for this report, Sharon. Naharin has orchestrated that bit of audience participation so well that it’s actually exhilihirating to watch, too. (I was in the audience on Sunday.) I’m not a fan of audience participation, but Naharin has nearly made me a convert.