For longterm health and wellbeing, explore the snake in your spine, gesture with your skin, inscribe circles in the air with your coccyx bone and move fast, but also incredibly slowly. In less words: To live long and be well, go Gaga.
This is not the first thing that pops to mind during a medical visit—but the thought is instantaneous during Cal Performances’ Feb. 23 presentation of the Israeli company, Batsheva. The Tel Aviv-based dance company, founded in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, arrived last week in Berkeley with MOMO, a new work by Batsheva resident choreographer Ohad Naharin. The 70-minute Bay Area premiere explored realms of the soul and provided a marvelous platform for the dancers’ physical capacities and artistic expressivity.
The work made in 2022 is non-narrative and made complete with a simple but intensely effective set design—a climbable back wall and ballet barres—by Gadi Tzachor. Naharin’s always-mesmerizing choreography and dancers appear to have no limits in strength, agility, nuance and humanity.
Previously the company’s artistic director from 1990-2018, Naharin is the creator of Gaga, the primary movement language and major component for training the troupe’s articulate dancers. Gaga is taught in-person at their studios in Israel and online by Batsheva and others trained in the technique. Around the world, instructors include it in their studio classes or incorporate it in various movement modalities—including some in the East Bay, such as Ann Dyer Cervantes’ Mountain Yoga, with two studios in Oakland.
Gaga in any application is largely individual and sensory-driven, allowing each person to investigate the potential of the human body without aspiring to achieve predetermined forms or follow restrictive formulas. While standard classes and classes designed especially for dancers are offered, seated Gaga and classes geared to serving children and families provide accessibility for everyone. During hour-long classes, an instructor guides the physical engagement activities and mental motivation.
After witnessing the Batsheva dancers’ ballistic leaps and weightless or mixed-message hand gestures, it seemed Gaga only opens doors to physical possibilities, never shuts them.
Add to that healthy doses of shimmying hips, shimmering hand movements, “modernized” breakdance and voguing elements, or dancer Londiwe Khoza’s arched barefoot running on tiptoe across the Zellerbach Stage in a step known as “bourrée.” It is impossible to name every striking image seen.
In the theater’s lobby after the show, audience members gushed about the finesse and fitness they most admired. Most people appeared ethereally elevated, and the environment warm and accepting, as they made their way outdoors.
The presence of people exercising their legal right to protest the company’s appearance in light of the conflict in Gaza and the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians meant the plaza outside of the venue projected a different climate. There were shouts of “shame on you,” barricades and a strong police presence. The general aura of tension, anger and fear felt palpable. Immediately, people increased their walking pace, looked down or away from the protestors, ceased speaking and raised their shoulders as if to guard their ears from verbal attack.
Which brought to mind those subconscious thoughts about longevity and wellbeing. Was it wrong to thrill at the dancers’ incredible fitness? Was it a violation to consider signing up for a class or workshop? Was it bad to have anything to do with a company that has been called one of Israel’s “cultural ambassadors” and has remained silent in response to protesters’ demands for support? And finally, was attending a healing art form a departure from solidarity?
Perhaps it’s best to conclude, with simplicity, that each person must discover their own key to lifelong health and wellbeing. In less words, go Gaga.
