Dance Review: Koresh Dance Company

The choreography was energetic but rarely crossed the boundaries of banality.

By ORA BRAFMAN
dance 88 (photo credit: )
dance 88
(photo credit: )
Koresh Dance Company (USA) Spring Festival Herzliya April 2 On its first tour to Israel, the Philadelphia-based Koresh Dance Company - directed by Roni Koresh, an ex-Israeli dancer - introduced its artistic ticket. The company presented two rather long works: Looking Back, structured as a medley of short dances based on popular "standards" from the '40s and '50s, and Theater of Public Secrets. The first was all fun, peppy and jazzed up musical-style dance, a long string of numbers with sweet music that invites you to hum along. Dancers moved to "Fever," "Cry me a River," "Night and Day," "You Ain't No Friend of Mine," "Sway me Now" and more. The song for every pallet strategy was a honey trap, titillating the taste buds, but supplying, regretfully, only light snacks. The choreography was energetic but rarely crossed the boundaries of banality - it was full of too-obvious moves and a rather simplistic approach to music and lyrics, as if the dance were a mere illustration of the tunes. The latter part of the evening, Theater of Public Secrets, was strangely enough assembled on similar grid as the first: short dances, almost all with a different musical source, and most fragments in a form of cliché love duets. But one could detect an ambition to create dance that would transcend beyond the featherweight category - to no avail. Koresh's 11 dancers looked fine and did well, maintaining the expected standards of American regional companies. It's a shame that there was no printed program in sight; it's disrespectful to the dancers a well as the audience. Even so, I want to mention one dancer in particular; he is the wiry, twinkle-eyed black dancer, with radiating personality, a killer smile, the coolest moves and scorching energy. Wow.