INBAL PINTO DANCE COMPANY (ISRAEL)

WHAT: BOOBIES

WHEN: FRI 31 OCT – SAT 1 NOV

WHERE: BARBICAN THEATRE

TICKETS: 0845 120 7500

‘Beautiful and communicative,
Boobies creates an exquisite
stage, populated with bizarre
yet picturesque creatures’

Ora Brafman, Jerusalem Post

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<img src="http://www.criticaldance.com/interviews/2003/images/Inbal_Pinto_Dance_Co-Boobies.jpg" alt="" />

"Boobies" Prized - Interview with Avshalom Pollak
by Donald Hutera

On its third visit to Dance Umbrella, Israel’s Inbal Pinto Dance Company presents eight dancers and two actors in "Boobies". The title alone might lead you to suspect that the tone of this dance-theatre work is comic. But "Boobies" occupies darker, harsher territory than Wrapped and Oyster, the productions by Pinto and director Avshalom Pollak that Umbrella has previously shown. Those works were structured like seamless dreams of motion-led vignettes featuring fabulously freakish characters.While the curiosity and magic factors are still very much present in "Boobies", Pinto and Pollak’s scope seems to have widened beyond the frame of music hall, circus and sad-sack show business that marked their earlier creations.

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<small>[ 23 September 2003, 02:19 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Review from The Guardian.

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Boobies
By Donald Hutera for The Times


ALICE’s cry “Curiouser and curiouser!” could apply to the productions of the Israelis Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak. Pinto choreographs, Pollak directs, and jointly they design sets and costumes, and compile the eclectic soundtracks. Their previous collaborations imported by the London Dance Umbrella festival have exuded a peculiar enchantment, as if they had filtered a vast range of art forms (music hall, circus, commedia dell’arte, film, literature) through their prodigious theatrical imaginations.

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Inbal Pinto Dance Company
Boobies
Brighton Dome, 5th November 2003

In her past works, Israeli choreographer Inbal Pinto has shown a natural flair for comic dance theatre. Hearing the title of her third show to tour the UK, Boobies, you might have assumed that she was continuing in the same vein. But it isn’t what you think.

A boobie is a type of bird, one which is only found in the Galapagos Islands. There may not be any birds on-stage but there’s a definite sense of exotic, unexplored territory. Pinto has created a world of fantastical creatures and characters who dance beneath a huge glowing moon, set in the centre of a deep sienna landscape pricked with thick blades of dry grass.

We’re definitely on the Grimm side of fairytales. While there’s plenty of clowning and good-humoured mime, this world has a dark, sometimes violent side. And Boobies is all the better for it. There’s a 10ft flame haired queen, a pot-bellied hunchback and a beached merman, two four-legged scavengers with feathered spikes on their backs and a man chased by butterflies. But the best parts are when they put the mime aside and concentrate on the dancers.

Our flock of dancers, or is it a pack, or brood? – how do you choose a collective noun for creatures that are yet to be catalogued? – are all of a curious appearance and disposition. Thatches of blue hair are tied in top-knots above yellow faces and expertly tailored bodysuits with jutting elbows and knees. They stand with shoulders hunched and pelvises rocked back, rooted to the ground, making solid but very beautiful shapes. They move as one, with that herd instinct, in a chain of simple rhythmic steps that play out all the possibilities of their new posture.

Four female dancers seem to do most of the work, appearing in various guises. In one section they are dressed in beautiful olive green and antique gold bodices and skullcaps, somewhere between flappers and bathing belles. With attitude and attitudes they are quite reminiscent of Lea Anderson’s Cholmondeleys. They share the same touches of humour and seediness, and they resist being just another set of dancers doing some steps. Instead they create a completely new physical character, a whole species of undiscovered movement.

This is a real visual treat, and at times the cast look like illustrations from a magically skewed imagination. Adding to the atmosphere is a soundtrack of Korean, Chinese and Japanese music, delicate and haunting, percussive and suitably otherworldly.

Boobies is a refreshing, enchanting and endlessly inventive piece of dance theatre. There were plenty of children in the audience who didn’t seem put off by its dark undertones and were spellbound by their journey into an extraordinary world.

Leaps in the dark
While Inbal Pinto’s Boobies charts strange territory, Merce Cunningham’s collages depict wonderful scenes. David Dougill reports

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Reviw from the Independent.

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Birds of a feather
Ellie Carr for The Sunday Herald reports on a migratory dance troupe with a strong nesting instinct


When Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak say theirs is a family show they’re not kidding. The Israeli duo behind the comic dance-theatre production Boobies – based on the mating rituals of a bizarre species of bird native to the Galapagos Islands – are a married couple who happily take their work home with them at night.
Not only that, but on their current UK tour, they’ve brought a third family member – their newborn son. “He’s already been on stage,” declares Pollak gleefully.

“What – he’s in the show?” I say, trying to visualise Pollak junior in the garish wigs and costumes that characterise Inbal Pinto Dance Company’s surreal concoctions.

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A bit of a dodo
Review by Ellie Carr for The Herald on Sunday

Just as extraordinary as the fantasy creatures in Inbal Pinto Dance Company’s new comic dance-theatre piece Boobies, are the events that frame their one-night visit to Glasgow.
Audiences find themselves greeted, not by ushers, but by a police presence of more than 100 officers, who seal off Hope Street with the help of vans, horses and Rock Steady security.

All this for a ragtag band of no more than 40 protesters, whose objection is that Inbal Pinto Dance Company are Israeli. Things grow more farcical when the directors issue a statement pledging support for the Palestinian cause.

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The odd world created by Israeli choreographer Inabal Pinto, and director, Avshallom Pollack was aptly released this Halloween. Eight dancers and two actors portray a weird and fanciful array of characters and creatures, conveying images of Frankenstein, Igor, Petrushka, prowling hyenas and those wheeled men in Return to Oz

There is, apparently a species of large birds native to the Galapagos Islands called Boobies. These are a colourful, if clumsy variety and their strange social rituals are reflected in the relationships between the performers. Scenes are peppered with awkward, yet serene moments where silent movement idioms seem to pass mystery messages between the characters as they creep aimlessly with their shoulders in the air.

The stylised choreography draws the creatures to the ground, producing roundedness in shoulders and backs while facial expressions verge on the gormless. In Pollack’s words, Boobies is the pre-history of Oyster (performed at last year’s festival), and continues the company’s exploration of colour, mystery and curiosity.

A highly accessible work, but too short. The coloured faces, costumes and wigs are fantastic aides to the characterisations. Look out for the surprises tucked away in Igor’s belly and ponder on why those conjured creatures seem so familiar…

Many thanks for your thoughts on Inbal Pinto. I look forward to catching them when they are next in the UK.