Dance Review: <I>'Pearls' Movement on the Parquet Floor</I>

All 10 dancers, immersed in a misty, reflective mood, seem to live peacefully in semi-detached innocent existence.

By ORA BRAFMAN
dance review 88 (photo credit: )
dance review 88
(photo credit: )
Adama Dance Company 'Pearls' Movement on the Parquet Floor Suzanne Dellal July 7 It has been a while since Liat Dror and Nir Ben-Gal ventured to present a new dance piece in Tel Aviv, away from their communal place in the desert. The evening's title was quite tempting in a bourgeois way, considering that the creative pair had moved down South to find new meaning through New-Age spirituality. Two decades ago, they were the spearhead of independent choreographers who won recognition abroad; they preceded a creative wave that turned our thriving dance scene into a sought-after commodity. In Pearls, they offer unsuccessful attempts to reconcile their relatively clear ideology with their quest for a movement style which can express it. They rely on soft, slow-paced, flowing, freestyle movements that have little regard for technical disciplines, deploying loose - even sloppy - compositions and hoping for the best. All 10 dancers, immersed in a misty, reflective mood, seem to live peacefully in semi-detached innocent existence. As a communal recreation form, it is all fine and dandy. But when choreographers Dror and Ben-Gal recall "Give peace a chance," and read to their spectators a poorly written story about a king and queen in search of the long way to make a baby - I give up. Dror and Ben-Gal had given up before that. They gave up on their earlier sharp artistic instincts and acute understanding of contemporary stage dance when they turned to embrace the non-judgmental approach. Even so, one tiny pearl in the shape of a refined double duet against the backdrop under an arch of light was a reminder of what the evening could've been, but wasn't.