CCMusic.com

Founded in Tel-Aviv in 1964, the Batsheva Dance Company has been headed since 1990 by Ohad Naharin: an incredible dancer with musical training, who has a true passion for movement. Through his "Gaga" technique, a choreographic vocabulary that explores the sensations and the availability of the bodies, he made his mark on the dance world and offered the company it's finest hours. In 2015, Tomer Heymann's documentary "Mr. Gaga" paid tribute to the Naharin phenomenon, it's influence on the contemporary dance scene and in pop culture. This diptych aims to broaden the Batsheva videography by, as a showcase of Naharin's aesthetics and demanding technique, featuring two of the most emblematic works in the company's current repertoire, both filmed in Paris: Naharin's Virus and Last Work. A collective creation, Naharin's Virus is, in a way, a dialogue between Naharin's choreographic style and the Batsheva dancers'. It's starting point is the text Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) by the Austrian playwright Peter Handke. An aesthetic manifesto, it is also a political piece: it is worth noting, for instance, that it features traditional music written by a Palestinian composer... A carefully negotiated balance between frenzy and meditation, a frail and unstable whole saturated with an enigmatic opacity and symbolism, Last Work is also a politically committed, ethically-charged piece reflecting on war, peace, oppression and coercion. While dance is stretched up to it's limits, Naharin's choreographic gesture calls for a new outlook on our contemporary world, it's violence, it's possibilities, it's future.