Emanuel Gat Dance | Reynolds Industries Theater, Duke University American Dance Festival | Durham, North Carolina
Last night's performance at the American Dance Festival proves how refreshing it is to see choreography rooted in sharp intuition and an unpretentious search for new paths. Charismatic Emanuel Gat showed two dances on themes of human desire and loss, subject to the mercy of nature. Winter and spring provided the context for his singular style.
When American dance fans speak of Israel, Ohad Naharin's name is often the only to arise in conversation. There are lesser-known Israeli choreographers, though, who deserve just as much attention. Add Gat's name to the list. His work shows traces of classic German and American modern dance, elements of release technique and a skillful integration of social dancing, but it's hardly predictable. He's used even his own pristine version of Latin Salsa to spice up that warhorse of modernism, Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps."
Gat and company member Roy Assaf opened the program with an affecting duet set to three songs from Schubert's "Winterreise." Both men are strong and wiry, with shaved heads and piercing dark eyes. They dance with such similar intent that they could be twin brothers with comparable body memory. Last night they demonstrated no intent to upstage each other.
Beginning in silence and dressed in long grey tunics and black trousers, the men chase each other around the stage without smiling. Exacting phrases evolve into unison and then canonic or symmetrical episodes. Eventually a recorded baritone voice (without credit in the program) invades this barren landscape. The first song describes a Linden tree offering refuge from romantic despair. The second is about frozen tears that later thaw and flow in a stream toward a distant beloved. The third is a meditation on a decrepit organ-grinder barefoot on the ice. These aren't exactly cheery little tunes.
Gat and Assaf hardly touched each other during, but in three charged moments they stood face-to-face in confrontation. Are they malcontent lovers? Perhaps rivals for the affections of an absent third? Gat's decision not to force narrative permits daydreaming on the matter.
In the opening of "Rite," Gat and Assaf stood quietly with three long-haired women on a blood-red carpet while Stravinsky's familiar bassoon melody unfolded. Once the pounding rhythms of "The Augurs of Spring" began, however, the quintet transformed abruptly into weaving parade of pelvic tilts and rolling shoulders. Gat has formalized and structured Salsa in this striking re-interpretation in order to make it worthy of such as heady task as renewing the earth.
Gat prepares one of the women for her inevitable sacrificial dance, which proceeds quietly even though the music approaches its feverish conclusion. He unzips her black dress to reveal her sinuous back and bare breasts. Slowly pinning her long red hair to the crown of her head, she is the last one to sink slowly to the carpet before the crashing final cadence.