Chaos, stillness and movement will collide onstage when Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company appears for two nights in February at Cal Performances in Berkeley.
Israel’s premier dance company, based in Tel Aviv, will present the Bay Area premiere of “MOMO” on Feb. 22 and 23. The 70-minute piece reflects the company’s lithe athleticism and seeks to embody duality.
“‘MOMO’ has two souls,” according to the event website. “One sends long roots to the depths of the earth — a soul that embodies archetypes and myths of hardened, raw masculinity, and the other is in a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA.”
The choreography is set to the music of Laurie Anderson, Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass and Arca.
The piece does not shy away from challenging the audience, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Chaos is something that does not frighten us in the least,” choreographer Ohad Naharin said at a press conference in Israel to launch the piece in 2022, the Post reported. “The opposite is true. Chaos is very present in the how and the way of how we work. In dance, we have the ability to use chaos to speak about what we want to speak about.”
Naharin has been Batsheva’s regular choreographer since 1990. He’s also a star in the dance world in his own right as the founder of Gaga, a system for expression through movement that is popular worldwide. (Classes are available in San Francisco). He was the subject of the 2015 documentary “Mr. Gaga.”
Batsheva was founded in 1964 by Baroness Batsheva (Bethsabée) de Rothschild, with Martha Graham, the esteemed modern dance pioneer and a mentor to Rothschild, serving as its artistic adviser. The dance company marked its 50th anniversary with a 2014 tour that included shows in San Francisco.
Batsheva’s upcoming U.S. tour, which also takes it to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and New York City, faces a call for boycott by a group called the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Cal Performances declined to comment on the boycott effort.
The nonprofit American Friends of Batsheva responded to the issue in a statement sent to J.
“Batsheva Dance Company has been the target of calls for boycott in its international tours, yet we believe that cultural boycotts are not an effective means of fostering dialogue which is essential to promote a shared future of peace and dignity for all in our region,” the statement said. “We bring our art as our statement, in conviction that art has the unique expressive strength to offer new perspectives and perceptions, thereby creating genuine change.