Prana, boogaloo, flamenco & Les Beaux dormants

Delightful format, isn't it? The Suzanne Dellal Centre starts the International Dance Season, where you are invited not only to look, but to feel and, above all, be

The Suzanne Dellal Centre will host a number of international dance companies during the International Season (July – October 2018). Cruising between the different moods, emotions and styles of this colorful and fascinating festival featuring contemporary artists from all over the world, you can to see and feel what the future of dance would bring.

The season begins in late July with the Navdhara India Dance Theater: the Indian-Australian choreographer Ashley Lobo returns to the Suzanne Dellal Center and presents his new work Agni (the Vedic God of Fire) in which the dancers explore the concept of “body,” or rather the body and death, in its various expressions. According to Lobo's Prana Paint technique, the NIDT dancers have to listen to the body rather than tell it, to allow rather than to create. The movement explored through connectivity, yoga, breath, and touch to help the dancer go deeper within. Fire ignites passion, passion demands change through purification and destruction, Ashley Lobo says; in creating we destroy and in destroying we create, we create to destroy and we destroy to create.

The Salsa Viva Dance Company from Colombia would fill the Suzanne Dellal space with a rhythmic performance of salsa, mambo, boogaloo, cha cha, bolero, bachata, milonga, samba, and Colombian folk fusion. The highly talented dancers with unbelievably fast feet look sumptuous – they wear ornate costumes, covering themselves head to toe in vibrant color and sparkle; each dance is full of explosive salsa sensation.

Spain’s most dynamic flamenco duo Rojas and Rodríguez will be coming on the last day of Yuly with the world premiere of Azul Vida (Blue Life). The new work of exclusively gifted artists takes happiness as its starting point – something so simple and yet so complicated. Azul Vida is a new color that illuminates this great journey with live musicians, where you are invited not only to look, but to feel and, above all, be.

The famous flamenco dancer, choreographer, and director Manuel Liñán will perform the fantasy Baile de Autor in which the separation between choreographer and dancer is erased. A director that dreams of a dancer dancing, Liñan presents a space in which the author breathes life into each element: light, sound, song, guitar, music, and dance. One person, two dueling roles, resulting in a world divided into different choreographies, having nothing to do with one another. It is a show that lives in the mind of the artist. A dream which he alone imagines and which we witness an awakening and the void.

Nova Galega De Danza, a Spanish troupe of male dancers perform a hybrid of choreographic languages SON, including traditional Galician dance, stylized Spanish dance, contemporary dance, and flamenco. In this sensual and riveting work are blending the old with the new, the masculine with the feminine, folk dance with the contemporary. Jaime Pablo Díaz, the company’s choreographer, says that SON is “to be” and SON is beyond definitions.

Emilio Ochando y Compañía will perform the show SIROCO is dedicated to the dry, warm windstorm that sweeps from North Africa towards the center of the Mediterranean, reaching hurricane speeds. This ebb and flow of wind, change and movement are pushing the limit of traditional dance and challenging labels and stereotypes. SIROCO features four male dancers dressed in traditional women’s flamenco garb, the long-tailed dress. Four pure flamenco elements are present: the shawl, the fan, long-tailed dress, and castanets. In all climates, these key elements come to life through the changing temperament of the wind.

“Black bird, white dove, it is not fear that lives in the wind. Don’t stray from your nest and return to the font and quench your thirst.” All Ways by Compañía Sharon Fridman explores the utopia of permanent harmony, a state reached after the resolution of personal conflicts and the discovery of our rightful place on this Earth. We all have before us multiple roads, but only one leads us to ourselves. Without a path we feel lost, we are filled with darkness and confusion, directionless, flying blind with no compass or stars to guide us on dark nights. In All Ways, the seven dancers are pilgrims, tracing out multiple paths that intertwine in the pursuit of harmony. The road they travel crosses five tortuous emotional landscapes: loss, searching, dreaming, falling in love, and the construction of conscience.

Kor’sia, a dance group under the leadership of Spanish-based Italian choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo, was founded by young talented dancers coming from Compañía Nacional de Danza de España (CND) with a need to use the body to communicate. They exude an inner urgency to exploit a language which transcends the limits of verbal communication. Their work Cul de Sac incorporates elements from film, photography, literature, and sculpture as references for new forms of expression within a unique and often strange movement style. Cul de Sac presents us with a community of strange beings confined within four walls, bound to a social pact and to unearthing the freedom in their hearts. Inspired by the universe of Juan Muñoz, the Spanish artist and winner of the prestigious Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Cul de Sac exports the sculptor’s imagination. Infusing Muñoz’s lead-gray, monochromatic figures with life, and imbuing the tensions between individuality and society suggested by his installations with movement, Cul de Sac references its conceptual universe: the physical and mental limits that constrain the desire for fulfillment shared by all human beings.

L.A. Dance Project, founded by Benjamin Millepied, allows us to look through the allure of Martha Graham's choreography into an interior landscape of flawless contemporary ballet. The program features three works by Martha Graham and founder/artistic director Benjamin Millepied. Martha Graham Duets are three distinct pas de deux from larger Graham works. The first is inspired by the “White Duet” from Diversion of Angels (1948), famous for purity of form; the second and third duets – the playful “Stars” and the ethereal “Moon” are rarely staged and are, in fact, the only surviving sections of Canticle for Innocent Comedians (1952) whose remaining choreography is thought to be lost. Orpheus Highway explores the tragic love story of its eponymous mythological protagonist through an intricate juxtaposition of film and live dance performance, directed and choreographed by Benjamin Millepied inspired by the Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet. In turn, Millepied’s Bach Studies (Part 1) explores the Partita for Violin No. 2 in D Minor by applying the compositional techniques of counterpoint, fugue, and canon to choreography.

An evening of the Seoul International Choreography Competition's winners featuring four works by up and coming Korean choreographers. The programme includes Sequence by Seouk Hun Ryu – a piece about silence, our innermost resentments, and sorrow featuring eight women; Uninhabited Island by Jae Woo Jung – a solo about the the terrible experience of loneliness; Sal by Jin A Kim These works are brought to Tel Aviv through a partnership between Suzanne Dellal Centre, the Modern Dance Promotion of Korea and the Seoul International Choreography Competition. a trio in which a violent energy belches forth and thorns sprout from the performers toward the world; and Sinawi by Jae Seung Kim – a piece where four dancers seek to reach the essence of harmony in disharmony amidst transforming images in which God is represented through dance -- all while set against the backdrop of traditional Korean Sinawi music. 

The French presence at the Suzanne Dellal current festival is indicated by three various performances, including Acta est fabula by Yuval Pick (originally from Israel), the director of Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape, which focuses on the idea of the collective and requires dancers to dance together and in unison; Professor by the fascinating French choreographer Maud Le Pladec inspired by the “Professor Bad Trip,” a musical composition of composer Fausto Romitelli for an electronic ensemble; and Les Beaux dormants by choreographer Hélène Blackburn – this encapsulates the Ballet of the Opéra national du Rhin’s ambition to foster the link between adolescents and dance. The choreographer is fascinated by the moment when childhood bursts into adolescence, when puberty changes young people’s relationship with the world, a painful rite of passage sometimes evocative of struggling through a thorny forest towards adulthood. For this creation for 12 dancers, the choreography has been broadly inspired by Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, but underpinned by Martin Tétreault's original music.

The International Dance Season is almost here – for more information and tickets please visit the Suzanne Dellal Centre website.

Photos by Sang-hoon, Leonardo Orozco, Jose Luis Tabueñas, Ana Iturbide, María Alperi, Benjamin Millepied