This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on July 14, 2006.
July 14 (Bloomberg) –The Israeli dancer-choreographer Emanuel Gat brings his small troupe to the Lincoln Center Festival in a pair of works set to dangerously challenging scores.
“Winter Voyage” uses three songs from Schubert’s bleak, poignant “Die Winterreise.” Two big guys wearing long tunics engage in close encounters of a hostile-bonding kind. Look- alikes, they might be dual aspects of the same soul.
Their movement is fierce, fluid and maybe a little too gorgeous to be emotionally convincing.
In “The Rite of Spring” Gat gives Stravinsky’s over- familiar score a new look. He transfers the theme of primitive ritual sacrifice, originally choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, to a salsa dance floor.
Two men and three women work themselves up to a syncopated frenzy. When they form couples, constantly changing partners, there’s always an odd woman out.
The Chosen One is finally designated, brutalized, stripped and left alone to die. Civilization, Gat suggests, has done little to tame our basic instincts.
Emanuel Gat Dance is at LaGuardia Concert Hall, Amsterdam Avenue at 65th Street, today and tomorrow. See http://www.lincolncenter.org .
© 2006 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.