In Avignon, Emanuel Gat gets tangled up with "Story Water"

Choreography in the first part and Dance in conclusion. Pierre Boulez for the entrance and big folk cry for dessert. On the monumental wall of the walls of the Court of Honor of Avignon, the information is written in white – in French and in English – history to give clues to the action that takes place below on the set. History also to highlight the progress of the topic already chanted to the second by a digital chrono. Are you lost? Read! And here is a topo loaded on the situation of Gaza that fires like a grenade that we did not see coming into the smooth climb of the show.

This funny war machine is called Story Water . It is driven by the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat, 49 years old, who has been living in France since 2007. The Avignon Festival premieres for the first time and is also responsible for investing the six hundred square meters of the Honor, he obviously needed to load his file. Next to Boulez, two other musical compositions support his company: one of Rebecca Sanders, a contemporary composer, and the third co-signed by Gat himself with Ensemble Modern and his thirteen musicians. Ten dancers occupy the ground valiantly. But is it the dense disparity of the menu, the apparent disjunction between the band and the orchestra that seem to operate each on its own, the sensation of an impetus constantly blocked? Story Water, contrary to its title, is laborious and perplexing.

From a Sufi poem

This opus detonates at all levels in the course of Emanuel Gat, regularly scheduled since 2008 at the Montpellier Danse festival. And that's still great news. Bravely, if he says in the program that he has been making the same piece for twenty-five years – which is far from being false! – he seriously disrupted his habits. Since its first appearance in France in the early 2000s, …