The Guardian, Luke Jennings
‘His use of music is particularly striking, with the soundtrack cutting between loungecore classics, Jewish devotional songs, traditional Arabic music and the baroque. Against this often ironic undertow, Naharin gives us phalanxes of men and women who, whether swaying with goofily fixed grins in bermuda shorts or performing a hurtling kinetic dance while seated in chairs, are bound by ritual, loyalty and common purpose. The dancers are clearly individuals, often flying off at personal tangents, but it’s as a group that they soar.’
Read the full review
British Theatre Guide, Vera Liber
‘Artistic director since 1990, Naharin’s Deca Dance is updated regularly, refreshed, new works added, an organic evolution. For fans of Hofesh Shechter, a Batsheva alumnus, a chip off the old block, the vocabulary will be recognizable. Emotional, essential, formidable.’
Read the full review
Financial Times, Clement Crisp
‘And a finale of egregious camaraderie, where all the performers (in black suits and trilbies) seek female partners from the near-the-stage stalls and behave with utter charm while guiding their new chums through the steps.’
Read the full review
Evening Standard
It makes for a heightened atmosphere but this show is not about politics, it’s about Naharin’s vision. Deca Dance is a compilation of scenes from a decade’s worth of his work and he reaps meaty movement from the elastic-band bodies of the Ensemble, the younger branch of the company. With Batsheva, you don’t just see the choreography, you feel it; the deep urge to move, whether in rolling waves, deep curves or Champagne-cork leaps. This is choreography that rejoices in the body — and not in the sexual way that seems to be the only way modern culture knows how but in a deep and honest and humorous and human way.
Read the full review
The Guardian, Judith Mackrell
Batsheva Ensemble are an international company of young dancers, training under the direction of Ohad Naharin. As a group, they stand out for their technical skills and for the free, exhilarating range of their movement – a particular trademark of Naharin’s choreography. Now this Tel Aviv-based company also need the nerve to dance through political protest. During their current UK tour, there have not only been anti-Israeli demonstrations outside the venues but inside the
At Sadler’s Wells on Monday, the audience were fiercely supportive of the dancers, countering every disruption with their own cheers and applause. Many were showing support for Naharin, a liberal Israeli who has criticised his government’s policies towards Palestine and whose type will surely become essential if and when some conciliation is achieved within this harrowed area. To the demonstrators outside, however, Batsheva were perceived only as a government-supported company and part of Israel’s attempt to whitewash its international image.
In Britain, we rarely see art and politics colliding in this way, and it made for a moving, if troubling, night. The show, Deca Dance, is a collage of extracts from Naharin’s choreography, set to an eclectic range of music, Arabic as well as western. For 90 minutes, we are treated to an exuberant kaleidoscope of colours, dynamics and forms: churning tribal ensembles alternating with slow, sculpted quartets; ripping, slashing, juddering movements that refine into small, polished images.
Naharin’s style is infectious. When members of the audience are coaxed on stage to dance, they comply with a remarkable lack of self-consciousness. It is highly effective, too, having nurtured a number of world-class choreographers, among them Hofesh Shechter. The issue for Israel, however, is that most of these alumni have opted not to remain in that country, but to live and work elsewhere.
Read the review here
The Stage, Neil Norman
‘What they have is a collective enterprise that delivers amazing ensemble works such as the line-up at the front of the stage in which each individual shakes it all about in their own way before snapping into a synchronised fist-shaking gesture; better still, the final sequence, danced on a semi-circle of chairs employs a repeated Mexican wave of movement that forms the spine of the piece, broken only by the last man who keeps flinging himself to the floor.’
Read the full review here
London Dance, Graham Watts
‘Naharin’s choreography is infused by a unique discipline known as gaga that among many idiosyncrasies, includes a regime of never rehearsing in front of mirrors. The style is inventive and absorbing, often electrifying and sometimes poignant. The dancers move in close unison when required to do so and although this group dynamic is strong, their individual characters shine through.’
Read the full reiew
The Public Reviews, Chantelle Guevara
‘While we’ve watched Ohad Naharin’s works previously through NDT2′s performances, and Batsheva Dance Company’s three prior visits to London, this is our first chance to see his works performed by his own dancers in over four years and fittingly, Deca Dance is a medley of Naharin’s past works, an ever-evolving selection which varies according to the current repertoire of the parent company. It’s an excellent way to explore the great diversity of Naharin’s creativity, and the talent of his young dancers.
Even the music ranged from traditional Hebrew songs and the Academy of Ancient Music all the way to Goldfrapp. And throughout the evening, we’re given ample opportunities to marvel at the unique quality of the dancers’ movement, whether of their sheer physical control, whether in tiny movements, or how perfectly in sync they perform, even when all 16 dancers are on stage.’
Read the full review
Dance Tabs, Lynette Halewood
‘The set is a simple black box and lighting effects are minimal. Costumes could pass as ordinary street clothes. What the performance depends on is the energy, commitment and charisma of the young dancers, which they have in abundance…’
Read the full review
The Londonist, Tiffany Pritchard
‘And as it so happens, the second half began with an engaging set where select audience members were brought on stage to shake and shimmy. This was followed by a beautiful arrangement of lifts and split leaps that nearly brought the house down in tears. The finale concluded with more Indian fun – this time with contemporary grooves and a feisty flavour. We were left wanting more, like a child in need of just one more treat.’
Read the full review
Nylon Theatre Blog, Amy
‘And what dancers they were. Sinuous, fluid, explosive, tender, subtle, joyous, animalistic yet essentially human.’
Read the full review
The Times, Donald Hutera
‘Ignore’ is one of the first, and few, words you hear in a voiceover during this sometimes excoriating performance by the Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Ensemble. Ironic, that, given impossible it was to ignore the anti-Israeli protesters before they were carried out by security guards to the applause of many in the audience.
Emotions ran high in Brighton, as they have done everywhere on this tour sponsored by the Dance Consortium. It’s exciting and disconcerting to watch dance in such circumstances. It also calls into question the notion that art should transcend politics, but I’ll stick by that idea based on what happened on stage.
The aesthetic impact of Deca Dance shouldn’t be ignored, no matter what the context. It’s a collage of work by Ohad Naharin, Batsheva’s artistic director, who is also the founder of its junior company, the Ensemble. These avid young dancers (average age 20, and most of them Israeli) thrust their way into his juicy, visceral chunks of repertory, all of it originally created via Naharin’s ‘gaga’ training system. This is less a style of movement than a methodology but, however it’s achieved, it yields gut-bustingly vivid yet sensitively nuanced choreography.
The Ensemble’s members are sharp shape-shifters, quick and strong in a primal, tribal fashion that doesn’t negate individuality. Comprised mainly of excerpts from longer pieces, and set to an eclectic soundtrack (from Goldfrapp to Vivaldi to cha-cha), this edition of Deca Dance features marching women whose physical attitudes express grotesque power or shoulder-shimmying seduction, a mysterious initiation rite for five muddied men in trouser-skirts, and one of the most joyous pieces of audience participation ever, before the evening reaches an explosive finale. Proof that dance at its best can unite rather than divide.
Birmingham Post, Richard Edmonds
‘With calm eventually restored the audience resumed its apparent delight in the wonderful, hypnotic movement unfolding on stage which never failed to engage both the heart and the imagination.’
Full review available in Thursday 15th edition of the Birmingham Post
The Scotsman 30.10.12
‘Aged just 18-23, the ensemble’s dancers are still learning their craft, but they’re already technically strong, sharply synchronised and more than capable of injecting a vast well of emotion into their performance.
What grabs you most about Batsheva, however (both the main company and its funky little ensemble sister), is the way these dancers move. Naharin has devised an entirely unique dance style called Gaga, and it is this that marks his companies out as different. Fluid, dynamic, expansive yet delicate, animalistic yet profoundly human, Gaga gives his dancers a whole other vocabulary with which to speak to us. And, despite the vain attempts to block it, their voices came through loud and clear.’
Read the full review
The Herald, Mary Brennan, 1.11.12
‘Deca Dance, the quirky sampler-collage of his choreography, showcases the chameleon-like nature of Gaga, and its enviably open-ended versatility that responds just as readily to a bossa nova beat as to an elegantly baroque cadence or romping folk tune. And because Gaga also encourages individuals to express themselves within the work, the dancers – from 18 to 23 years – were saucy, seductive, stonkingly wacky or delicately nuanced.’
Read the full review
The Arts Desk
‘Naharin’s choreography is inventive, funny, self-interrogative, extrovert: like his country. He is neither especially political nor especially experimental. His dance is lithe and shimmering, always easy to watch, rarely teleological.’
Read the full review here
The Latest, Enna Andrews
‘Deca Dance manifests as a well crafted and constantly evolving choreographic collage.
Explosively energetic at times, introspective and intimate at others but always uninhibited, vibrant and moving. The subtler commentaries and political landscape of the contemporary dance were matched and occasionally overwritten by a more overt political activism of disruption which has followed this tour internationally.
As one dancer expressed, for better or worse it is part of the dance now. Lest this usurp the stage from the dance itself, a bigger spectacle was generated when a gaggle of colourfully dressed women were plucked from the audience to share in a joyous and sexy dance number which had the audience laughing with glee. How wonderful!’
Cloud Dance Festival
‘While we’ve watched Ohad Naharin’s works previously through NDT2’s performances, and Batsheva Dance Company’s three prior visits to London, this is our first chance to see his works performed by his own dancers in over four years and fittingly, Deca Dance is a medley of Naharin’s past works, an ever-evolving selection which varies according to the current repertoire of the parent company. It’s an excellent way to explore the great diversity of Naharin’s creativity, and the talent of his young dancers. Even the music ranged from traditional Hebrew songs and the Academy of Ancient Music all the way to Goldfrapp. And throughout the evening, we’re given ample opportunities to marvel at the unique quality of the dancers’ movement, whether of their sheer physical control, whether in tiny movements, or how perfectly in sync they perform, even when all 16 dancers are on stage.’
Read the full review here
Behind the Arras, Laura Ginesi
‘The pieces ranged from robotic and finely controlled ripples of movement through fluid and emotional expression in Black Milk, to a hauntingly beautiful, sensual duet (Mabul). Some might wish for more narrative or theme through the work, but a performance such as this seems to draw threads together so that a thrilling, cohesive whole emerges.’
Read the full review
What’s On Stage, Dave Cunningham 3.11.12
‘Get there early. While the house lights are still up and the theatre not yet full a solo dancer, looking like Charlie Chaplin reincarnated, is performing a gentle soft shoe on stage.
This is typical of the positive attitude of the Batsheva Ensemble – why wait for the show to start when you want to dance? One dance opens with the company making tight minimal movements wearing forced artificial smiles before they tumble across the stage like kids at playtime.’
Read the full review
