Comedy ballet Amor premiered in Tel Aviv's Suzanne Dellal Auditorium
Amor’s stylistic roots are based on the lightweight musical theater practices of four centuries ago.
By ORA BRAFMAN
The Jerusalem Ballet premiered its comedy ballet Amor in Tel Aviv. This was the first dance company to perform live at Suzanne Dellal Auditorium in front of an audience during the coronavirus pandemic, just days before the second shutdown is scheduled to begin.Ballet artistic director Nadiya Timofeyeva choreographed this delightful 17th-century anachronistic libretto written by Spanish playwright and poet of the Baroque era, Lope De Vega.Amor’s stylistic roots are based on the lightweight musical theater practices of four centuries ago.Timofeyeva relied on the spirit of the play, and cleverly coerced it to adjust to contemporary manners and visuals, yet maintained the solid foundation of classical ballet techniques.Playing around with past and present concepts, she managed to keep her interpretation of the ballet tight and artistic intentions clear.Amor was performed by a vivid ensemble of eight dancers, and Timofeyeva treated them as a cast of soloists, which means she demanded a lot from them, both by showcasing their good technique and the ability to portray their roles with the right measure of self-expression, without turning their roles into caricature.The Jerusalem Ballet managed to survive in its own niche of endless contradictions and tensions between classical ballet’s built-in conservative streams and contemporary perceptions in order to establish relevance.Amor turned out to be delightful because it managed to make the more demanding technique maneuvers seem easy, full of light, using a fun approach, convincing us that the dancers enjoyed it as much as the viewers.It was a highly respectable performance, perhaps the company’s best, which is saying a lot.