Photo: Gadi Dagon
Created by the company’s remarkable artistic director and choreographer Ohad Naharin, Last Work demands a great deal from its dancers and not a little from its audiences.
The single track running through the entire performance is a rhythmic runner at the back of the stage, a man dressed as if headed to a respectable job who takes step after step without moving a centimetre. Apart from the sheer athletic feat of this unflinching human beat, the runner provides an expressive motif in a work that is highly abstract but worthy of considerable interrogation.
In front of him the work begins with an extended sequence of soliloquies, each dancer fighting their own demons, stretching for their own impossible goals, pushing their own individual body with a highly individualised choreographic language.
Each dancer comes to the stage with a new language, an orginality of movement that is expressive but utterly devoid of a sense of connection that is more conventionally the language of dance. Like the runner, each is on their own path, and perhaps also going nowhere.
Maxim Warratt’s soundscape and the repetitive music of Grischa Lichtenberger, give the dancers little direction. This is the kind of world in which each of us exists plugged in to our own thoughts, navigating the world with our own unique burden, doing our own balancing acts.
Eventually the dancers coalesce into a perfect but short-lived group movement. Soon an individual is isolated again and so it continues – groups and individuals, oppositions and rebellions in which the individual always triumphs until a final scene in which we come to understand the desperate measures needed to surrender to the sense of connection with the other.
Whether this is a political statement – a conclusion that is perhaps inevitable given the part of the world we are dealing with – or merely a comment on the universal human condition, the impact is considerable. Last Work considers what it means to be an individual and what is required to maintain connection with others.
But it is not so much the message as the kinaesthetic language which makes this work extraordinary. Naharin has invented his own choreographic language called Gaga, based on listening to the rhythm of the dancer’s own body rather than imposing on the dancer the requirements of music or choreographer’s imaginings.
The result is a company in which every dancer is a star, each as strong, expressive and balanced as the next. The postures are mind-boggling but never mindlessly gymnastic.
This is not an easy work to watch. With no narrative, a slow, deliberate pace and incremental development, it demands some investment from the audience.
But it is deeply rewarding for those who are looking for powerful expressive work in new forms.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Last Work
Batsheva Dance Company
Choreographer and Artistic Director: Ohad Naharin
Lighting Design Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi)
Soundtrack Design and Edit Maxim Warratt
Original Music Grischa Lichtenberger
Stage Design Zohar Shoef
Costume Design Eri Nakamura
Assistants to Ohad Naharin and Maxim Warratt Ariel Cohen and Guy Shomroni
Production Hila Razon
Running Trainer Mark Or
With Batsheva Dance Company dancers, season 2014/15: Olivia Ancona, William Barry, Mario Bermudez Gil, Omri Drumlevich, Bret Easterling, Iyar Elezra, Hsin-Yi Hsiang, Rani Lebzelter, Ori Moshe Ofri, Rachael Osborne, Shamel Pitts, Oscar Ramos, Nitzan Ressler, Ian Robinson, Or Meir Schraiber, Maayan Sheinfeld, Zina (Natalya) Zinchenko and Adi Zlatin.
Arts Centre Melbourne, State Theatre
17-18 October
Melbourne Festival
www.festival.melbourne
8-25 October 2015
