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Batsheva simply breathtaking

Batsheva simply breathtaking

DANCE
Deca Dance
Batsheva Dance Company
5 stars
Heath Ledger Theatre

Review: Nina Levy

I watch dance, I teach dance, I practise dance, I write about dance. It's easy to take its existence for granted but occasionally I see something that takes my breath away and reminds me why I have chosen to immerse myself in this particular art form.

Batsheva Dance Company's performance of Deca Dance on Sunday night was one of those magic hours.

Deca Dance crackles with an energy that is felt from the moment one walks into the auditorium, to discover a man (Shamel Pitts) dancing an apparently boneless solo. The electricity in the air could be due, in part, to Deca Dance being, in a sense, alive.

Based on selections from artistic director Ohad Naharin's 20-year back catalogue for the company, the content of Deca Dance is constantly evolving. That palpable freshness is reinforced by the program notes - although the names of the works from which material is drawn are listed, it's unclear whether these are listed in the order presented.

The dancers are instinctive and sensual, individual yet bound by some unspoken code.

While I was entranced by the entire program, a section to the Passover song, Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One?), traditionally sung in celebration towards the end of the Seder meal, was my favourite.

Naharin and his dancers take a song that cumulatively and light-heartedly enumerates the building blocks of the Jewish faith and make its exuberance physical. Seated on chairs in a semicircle, the black-suited, black-hatted ensemble seem possessed as they repeatedly arch back, leap from their seats, cast their hats in the air, tear off their suits, belt out the final line of the song - each time returning to sink quietly back to the original seat.

While this was my personal highlight, the remainder was also a delight to behold. In one scene a group of six male dancers alternate between meditative stillness and movement sequences that see them variously spin though the air from one foot, flip backwards on one hand, barrel across space; the rhythms of their feet playing counter to the score. An ensemble of women dance next, perhaps in answer to the men, a dance of clean movements in which their bodies unfold and fold like linen.

A sense of play pervades Deca Dance. The penultimate scene appears to be based on multiple games of Chinese Whispers. Covering simple gestures, back-breaking arabesques and revealed bottoms, the chains of movement are interspersed with breakaways, perhaps improvised, in which dancers become wild animals, cavorting across the stage.

Watching Deca Dance was pure, unadulterated joy. My mind and body sighed. "Oh yes," they agreed. "This is what it's all about."