With Batsheva, politics inside and outside Joyce Theater

Human rights protesters demonstrated outside Joyce Theater on Tuesday night. The company appeared from Israel – the Batsheva Junior Troop, the Young Ensemble. The subjects of protest were Israel's repression of the Palestinian people and the role of Batsheva, as the Israeli cultural ambbadador, as a front for this repression.

Nevertheless, members of the public could enter the Joyce quite simply. (The main delay was the door security checks, but these were strict for months.). The performance started a few minutes later than usual, to make sure that there would be no problems. And of course, there were no interruptions.

The danced work, "Naharin's Virus" (2002), in no way expresses Israeli politics. Choreographed by Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of Batsheva since 1990 (he will resign in September), it is an essay in modern theater: he adapts the play without Peter Handke's plot "To Offer the Public" (1966). A dancer (Evyatar Omessy), dressed in a suit and standing on a level above the main stage, recites a monologue. "You" are addressed a lot, until, in an accelerated climax, he says "you worked on the gravediggers", "you perfect the sons of bitches", "you fake numbers" and more, up to # He concludes: "You are welcome here." Good night. "

Earlier, he talks about the possibility of giving us" a play in a play ", but really him- even plays a role. It turns out that his costume is just an outer wrap like an armor: It comes out sometimes (it stays vertical, up), showing that he's wearing the same black and white dance clothes as the others artists, that he joins the lower part of the scene.

All that happens there is not dancing. Letters, words and patterns are drawn in chalk on a blackboard. Some of these actions are highly choreographed; some are made in a more naturalistic way. Other times, the dancers speak or shout.

However, the climate on stage is never that of freedom. There is always a feeling that Big Brother is watching. The company performs Gaga, a movement style developed by Mr. Naharin to increase sensation and imagination and to go beyond familiar boundaries. But even when the 16 dancers are the craziest, they seem to drive rather than drive.

Toward the end, all the dancers make unison movement routines that evoke various folkloric forms of the Near East: here a slow turning up, suggesting the movement of the dervishes; there is a two-step number with arms outstretched, reminiscent of the dabke, an Arab folk dance. Yet, the gaze is always one that deprives them of freedom rather than liberating them. Even when earlier three or more subgroups do entirely different, often intense things, the mood is controlled, involuntary, dragged.

To me, they look like citizens of a totalitarian state. Or rather, like in other works of Naharin, they look like pawns in this choreographer's game. There are dances in which this can be added to a powerful drama. In "The Wedding" of Bronislava Nijinska, for example, the company of a Russian village is made to look like a huge machine, with the most pbadive grooms. But here, the overall effect is that of a cumulative pathos. The works of M. Naharin abound in plays and exercises: Despite the fullness of the movement, the drama is intellectual. In some works, artists produce effects; The dancers of Mr. Naharin become effects.

Batsheva, the Young Ensemble
Until July 22 at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org.