Making and showing a dance live requires nerves of steel. It’s not the nurturing of the piece to fruition, but the resolve to endure the critical reception. Maybe we love it, or maybe we don’t. The reality, though, is our opinions matter less than whether audiences will see it again and again. When a work is revived, whether years or even decades later, showgoers bring contemporary sensibilities to draw the same things exactly or something entirely new from what the original viewers received. So, to survive, to thrive, after death, an artist must get their work into the canon.
I wonder if this is on the mind of Ohad Naharin, pre-eminent dance-maker and in-house choreographer of Batsheva Dance Company, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Now seventy years old, perhaps he’s motivated to secure his legacy, his way.
That might explain why his Hora has a two-week run at the Joyce Theater. Premiering at the Jerusalem Theatre in 2009, it was co-produced by Montpellier Danse 2010 and Lincoln Center Festival. I caught it in 2012 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A lot has changed since then, like a global pandemic and unsustainable climate change, yet here we are, still showing up for it again, using art to make sense of the world around us.
Barely a teenaged dance piece, Hora hasn’t been in existence long enough to be considered canonical, yet it swaggers with the tenacity and confidence to be just that. But should it?
In Hora’s favor is its sleek, uncanny stylishness. It opens with eleven dancers sitting on a long bench placed upstage. They’re attired in skimpy black getups, hair slicked away from their face. Their expressions are deadpan. Three walls painted mouthwash green surround them and a blank marley floor unspools in front of them.
The message is stark, immediate. No one can leave and no one will enter. When the longing for other stimuli becomes acute, cast members saunter downstage and peer into the dark abyss of the house, like they’re gazing from the window of a prison or a spaceship. The outside world has receded indeterminably, and all the dancers can do is commit to living within their perimeters. (Insert your own pandemic-related observation here.)
Soon, a score of eerie, electronically reimagined classical standards by Isao Tomita wafts throughout the theater. Excitement sparks. Something is going to happen - it has to.
Well, lots of somethings happen. Expect quoting of other choreographers, a display of Naharin’s luscious Gaga technique, visual puns and a thousand other choreographic gimmicks. Yet, for all the thrilling busyness stippled with moments of absolute stillness, the work never coalesces into a sum that exceeds its parts.
Although we all see the same Hora, the motifs that move past your eye and into your brain will differ from mine. You might enjoy the random frogwheels (cartwheels with bent knees) while I zoom in on the crazy torquing of the arches and ankles. Will you, like my friend did, notice the cupping of buttocks, which includes a pair of dudes who jiggle-shuffle about, one hand on a derriere?
We all note the obvious, oft-repeated themes, such as when performers stand in a line, their feet in an under-crossed 5th position, an arm lifted, the wrist flopped over. If you’re acquainted with George Balanchine’s Serenade, this visual (mis)quote might give you a jolt of recognition. And if you’re not, so what? Maybe the dancers evoke a strip of lonely highway lights or barren trees. The point is that it’s personal. Since no grand meaning emerges, what you see matters less than how you see it.
I spent much of Hora staring longingly at the stage, wishing I could join in. Naharin’s Gaga technique is this delicious, ooey-gooey, melting morass where sensation rather than skill guides the phrases. An arabesque that stretches like a strand of caramel snaps into a hump-backed contraction. Spines ripple, hips shimmy and fingers wiggle. Beauty dissolves into awkwardness before reforming into beauty. In Gaga, all the body’s disparate, chaotic impulses are honored.
Tomita’s shrieky, other-worldly score often made me want to cover my ears. Bring earmuffs if the following descriptions make you wince: Count Dracula playing an organ, the proficient use of a dog whistle, a baby getting their toes stepped on. Although the tunes are recognizable, including Star Wars, Main Title and Peer Gynt/Solveig’s Song, their reworkings via synthesizer into alien-esque hymns seem more for effect than to reveal hidden layers. Clair de Lune, however, provides a crystalline, sonic backdrop for a duet that toggles between love and hate.
The hour passes so fast it’s a surprise when the stage lights dim. The dancers, all eleven of them in a line downstage, clap their hands. The sharp crack startles us into dutiful applause and, more importantly, the resolution of our opinion.
Here’s mine. The time was pleasant, the performers were accomplished and Naharin’s choreography was captivating. Yet I felt head-scratching bemusement. So much had happened, but I was the same person at the end that I was at the beginning, which may be the point. I guess I’ll have to catch Hora the next time it drops down into New York to see if that changes.
