Israel's oldest dance company has had a fluctuating history, from blooming international success, to longer years of droughts.
By ORA BRAFMANdance review 88(photo credit: )Inbal Dance Theater, premieres
Ethnic Arts Center, Tel Aviv
November 19
It has been ages since the Inbal Dance Theater announced a premiere. Israel's oldest dance company - founded in 1952 - has had a fluctuating history, from blooming international success, particularly in the States, to longer years of droughts.
For a long time now, the barely surviving company chewed up older materials. Now, with new management, it has received an injection of fresh blood - but whether this is a new beginning or a very last breath remains to be seen.
Barak Marshall, son of Margalit Oved, the star of old Inbal, recently premiered Monger - which turned out to be a huge success. He now offers his earliest creation, made a decade ago: Aunt Lea, set to music by Oved and Nusrat Ali Khan. It still contains some of the freshness that at the time could have been seen as beginner's luck. Fortunately, it wasn't.
Both of his works are deeply rooted in Inbal ethno-theatrical values and basic stage components, but with a total fusion of ethnic and contemporary approaches to movement, leaving a defined individualistic residue.
The second creation of the evening was Toros, by Sahar Azimi, who brought along four dancers of his own. So technically, Azimi and his piece were only guests at Inbal.
On a semi-dark stage, five figures clad in gray, skin-tight outfits moved in slow motion to the strange and eerie sounds of Didi Erez's electronic music. The back wall was covered to the top with old sound equipment. Perhaps it depicted a graveyard of consumer culture that buried itself under heaps of rubble, now being visited by humanoids who flow softly until an inner pulse, like a wave, jolts their bodies and awakens their senses.
