Considered to be Ohad Naharin’s muse and one of the Batsheva dance company’s
leading dancers for almost two decades, Sharon Eyal developed as a choreographer
within the supportive cradle of Batsheva. With and a budding career on the
international scene, Eyal opted for independence and formed her own company, LE-
V (“heart” in Hebrew), taking with her some of Batsheva’s best dancers with
her.
Premiering her company at the Suzanne Dellal Center within the
International Exposure framework, the company performed House, a new and
improved version of a the last piece she created for Batsheva, called Hofesh
Dance.
The nine-member company is composed of ex-Batsheva dancers as well
as foreign dancers. The female section is powerful, more interesting than the
male section, but altogether they look good and work well as an
ensemble.
Though in House, as in Hofesh, the dancers wear uniform,
skin-colored outfits, shimmering red lipstick and heavy eye makeup, the
uniformity of the earlier piece has lost some of its rigidity.
Many of
the unison passages have become noticeably more flexible, allowing greater
leeway for individual expression and thus a more complex overall
structure.
House seems to indicate an evolution toward greater freedom,
and that, along with the piece’s strong animalistic undercurrents, hypnotic
rhythms and delightfully repetitive micro-movements offers some real
delight.
With House, Eyal shows she has matured as a choreographer, and
will likely keep on challenging the dance scene in the future.