‡ LeeSaar: Prima at P.S. 122
I met director/choreographers Lee Sher and Saar Harari in 2008, when their piece Geisha was wowing New York City dance lovers. We spent some time together in Poland and I got to watch a class in which they introduced the concepts of the technique that drives their creative process. If you can imagine a world in which every action is a pure gut motivation — not clouded by insecurity or other emotional baggage, you’d have an inkling of the workings of the “Gaga” technique, a movement language developed by Ohad Naharin, artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance. In the hands of lee and saar, it leads to work that is sexy without being pornographic; supersonic without being chaotic; and poetic without being precious.
Visually, the work emerges from an undulation that often starts at the second chakra and fires up in the third (that’s the pelvis and the navel for you non-yogis). Which is not to say this is a stylized movement; rather there is a through-line that may result in a hip grind or may be just a passionate finger solo. The four dancers are credited as Creating Dancers; each has her own dance personality in the work, and introduces herself by name only at some point in the show. They are Jye-Hwei Lin, Hsin-Yi Hsiang, Hyerin Lee, and Candice Schnurr. A picture’s worth a thousand words; here are some rehearsal clips. The second gives a better sense of the final performance. I saw this last night. It plays through today. Catch it!
‡ home decorate: hang some art! Ah, the last bit of moving takes so long…