Dance Review: 'Arnica'

This unpretentious production is modest in scale compared to Noa Dar's previous elaborate work Tetris.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
dance review 88 (photo credit: )
dance review 88
(photo credit: )
Noa Dar Dance Group Arnica Tel Aviv March 8 The best place to see Noa Dar's latest work, Arnica, is in her spacious new studio in Tel Aviv, an alley away from Ibn Gvirol street. This unpretentious production is modest in scale compared to her previous elaborate work Tetris with its physical and conceptual intricacies. Dar has composed this new evening as a string of miniature solo pieces, picked up from various works she created in the last decade and danced by three female dancers, including herself. Although she hasn't been on stage for years, Dar seems to be in excellent shape. In fact, she looked less contrived than she did years ago in her prime. She managed to portray her idiosyncratic language with great charm. Michal Mualem and Shira Rinott - fine dancers in their own right - contributed their own colors as interpreters of Dar's lexicon. Although the studio setting is less formal, with the dancers sitting on chairs while waiting their turn to dance, Arnica is meticulously choreographed. Dar's use of illustrative movements, which rely heavily on verbal texts of songs or on detailed subtext, is considered old fashioned. Yet in this retrospective context and form, it makes sense. And when she performed her solo, set to Tom Waits' song "C'mon up to the house," Dar was empowered, funny, devilishly daring and totally contemporary.