Chaos is something that does not frighten us in the least. The opposite is true. Chaos is very present in the how and the way of how we work. In dance, we have the ability to use chaos to speak about what we want to speak about. — Ohad Naharin, 2022*
The “we” is the Batsheva Dance Company and the “how” is the Gaga method, a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin to release hidden impulses, as it were. Practiced in rooms without mirrors, the method is based on dancer reactions to verbal prompts—sometimes using invented words. Indeed, the title of MOMO—the elegiac 2022 dance the troupe is presenting in Los Angeles for the first time—comes from “mo,” the Japanese word for “too.”
Created on the dancers with longtime collaborator Ariel Cohen, Naharin has described the piece as two works running concurrently—70 minutes total—a bifurcation (or doubling) that plays with focus and distraction. Set mostly to the Hurricane Sandy-inspired album Landfall by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet, an all-male quartet adopts a deliberate tempo while a separate group of seven dancers often sets a more sprightly pace.** A dance about dance, perhaps—about stationary observation as much as movement—acts of witness, repulsion, and recovery seem to play out both between and among the two groups.
Performed over two evenings and a Sunday matinee at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, MOMO marks the company’s Music Center debut. See info and links below for details.
BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY — MOMO
Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15, at 7:30 pm
Sunday, February 16, at 2 pm
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles
*Ohad Naharin, MOMO press conference, Tel Aviv, November 2022.
**Additional music: “Madre Acapella” by Arca and “Metamorphosis Two” by Philip Glass.
Also see:
batsheva.co.il/repertory/momo/
haaretz.com/on-stage-and-off-ohad-naharin-conveys-a-powerful-message-amid-gaza-war
Ohad Naharin, MOMO, Batsheva Dance Company. Images (8) courtesy and © Batsheva Dance Company.
Lighting design by Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi), set and props design by Gadi Tzachor, costume design by Eri Nakamura, soundtrack design and editing by Maxim Waratt (a pseudonym for Naharin).
