‘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.