Here are reviews from Batsheva's U.S. tour in Portland and Seattle.

In The Oregonian, Catherine Thomas reviews the Tuesday, March 16 performance at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall:

http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/107961458398050.xml?oregonian?alap

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Alice Kaderlan reviews the Wednesday, March 17 performance at the Paramount Theatre:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/classical/165376_bathsheva19q.html

And Mary Murfin Bayley reviews the March 17 performance in the Seattle Times:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?c=18&slug=batsheva19&date=20040319

I saw Batsheva Dance Company tonight at UCLA, and we got Deca Dance as well, in what appears to be the same order as Mehunt saw. The most impressive thing about the dancers is their attack, and how quickly they can do it. There's also a kind of scruffy-looking quality (but not in a bad way) to their dancing that I can't quite explain --- perhaps related to this, Naharin commented at the Q-and-A session afterwards that mirrors are verboten in their studios because they "spoil the soul".

The choreography was fun, accessible, and had the audience won over from the beginning. I really like his eclectic and intelligent use of music. I'd seen parts of it with Hubbard Street's performance of Minus 16 a couple of years ago, which include the audience participation number, and the chair dance. I believe the intermission improv act may be part of it, too, because Hubbard did that too, and it transitioned into Minus 16 after the intermission, but with Naharin's choreography being so flexible and fluid, he could have done something especially for Hubbard.

--Andre

It is a fun piece, isn't it? And also what a great and international company. These dancers wear Naharin's choreogaphy like a glove and are the best interpreters of his work, especially as you say, Andre, in the "attack." There is just so much energy and they give it their all!

Ouch.

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Segal must have had a bad day...

I don't know, he said it more boldly, but almost all of the Bay Area writers agreed. From the excerpt you quoted, he's railing against the programming, not the choreography itself. And personally I'm inclined to agree. The show had the feel of a Superbowl halftime to me. I'd rather see at least one full work (with the piece to Arvo Part being my leading candidate for that slot).

Press release:

Batsheva Dance Company

Naharin's Virus

Barbican Theatre | 28 Apr - 1 May

Batsheva, Israel's foremost dance company return to BITE, the Barbican's year round performing arts programme. Batsheva take to the stage for 4 performances only with choreographer Ohad Naharin's strikingly sensual new work, Naharin's Virus. Based on Peter Handke's absurdist play Offending the Audience and set to an achingly beautiful score by Arab-Israeli composer Habib Alla Jamal, the company of 16 dancers punctuate moments of stillness with frenetic energy. These contradictory changes in style and attitude draw you into Naharin's unique world which the New York Times have so perfectly summed up as 'the calligraphy of the body.'

'Naharin carves out a world where madness waltzes with grace'
The Washington Post

Thu 29 April Post show talk with Ohad Naharin

Book Now!
Tickets £7 12 16 21 26 + Superseat (pay £4 more for a Superseat).
Online booking www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing | Box Office 0845 120 7517

Discounts

Families Up to three under 16's come at half price with each full paying adult.
Students Half price tickets for all Wednesday evenings booked in advance.
Groups 10 or more bookings save 20%. Call the groups line on 020 7382 7211.

For further details visit www.barbican.org.uk/bite

<small>[ 09 April 2004, 09:39 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

“Naharin’s Virus” opened at the Barbican on Wednesday Night and I was eager to go and see it. Many years ago I worked with William Louther who was the company’s artistic director back in the 1970’s and have followed the fortunes of the Batsheva Company with interest ever since. The work is based on Peter Handke’s play “Offending the Audience” and what I take to be extracts are performed throughout.

A white wind sock stands centre stage as you enter the auditorium swaying and buckling like a ghostly scarecrow: it is a strangely mesmerising entity. A female dancer enters in front of a wall and she draws a line across it before chalking out her own outline. Above the wall is a suited dancer who warns us that, “nothing is as it seems”. He then steps to one side to join the other dancers leaving his suit standing alone like a headless man.

The dancers perform singly and together and at intervals each of them approaches the wall to add some more graffiti. The dancers tell us something about themselves. One girl recalls how she awoke one morning to the realization that God was an invention “just like pizza”. She tells her mother and her mother beats her, but she finds she enjoyed the pain.

The wall at the back fills up with random words and drawings, but some letters scrawled large predominate: P-A-S-T-E-L-I-N-A, almost an anagram of Palestine. Walls are of great significance in Israel, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and now a wall dividing Israelis and Palestinians and it is clear from the programme notes that Naharin despises that which separates people and seeks to find that which draws them together. For this reason much of the music is by the Arab composer Habib Alla Jamal, a collaboration that has clearly benefited both sides of the divide they seek to breach.

Near to the end the original dancer/actor resumes his position behind the suit to warn the audience that he is about to insult us. He also tells us what we will do next: getting up; leaving the theatre; resuming our lives. The insults are mostly tame (turtle doves - an insult?) but “dirty Jews” did sound seriously abusive. This was political dance. It was dance to make you think.

more in the second half of the linked article

Virus
By David Dougill from The Sunday Times.

Another troupe making a one-off British appearance was Batsheva Dance Company, from Tel Aviv, at the Barbican for the Bite season, in the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin’s production titled Naharin’s Virus. (The “virus” is perhaps a political allusion.) We took our seats to the sight of a brilliant-white, cruciform air sock, fluttering in the gusts like a scarecrow. It seemed oddly poignant, hypnotic — much more so than the rest of the work.

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