A highly anticipated return for Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar to the Festival after last year’s success. The Israeli duo, known for their unusual choreographic and scenic vocabulary, returns to Oriente Occidente with their explosive, passionate, yet delicate energy. Two works are on the program, originally created for international companies and now restaged for their group, L-E-V (meaning "heart" in Hebrew). These are Sara, a thirteen-minute piece created for Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in 2012, and Killer Pig, a choral summation of the fusion of movement, music, light, and fashion style that defines them, first conceived in 2009 for the Norwegian company Carte Blanche. Originally a female-only piece – the title unmistakably refers to the Canadian serial killer, a pig farmer convicted of murdering six women – Killer Pig has been reimagined for a mixed group of performers. All dancers are dressed in nude-colored lingerie to highlight the purity of the body in this tribal ritual tinged with eroticism.
As is customary, the stage is stripped of any scenic embellishment, allowing the lighting, designed by Avi Yona Bueno, to take center stage. Scene by scene, the lighting delineates the dancers' bodies, emphasizing their three-dimensionality and sculptural presence. With a gradual increase in rhythm – the musical collage is by the faithful Ori Lichtik, percussionist and creative DJ, a founding father of Israeli techno – the performance fills with details, and the ritual comes to life. Interestingly, in this piece, the choreographer incorporates an academic movement vocabulary with jumps and tours en l’air that interrupt the trembling bodies, head jolts, and the poetic chain of hands raised to the sky. Viewers have the choice of losing themselves in the whole, focusing on the details, the synchrony, or the rhythmic expansion that invades the hall beyond the stage.
In contrast, the dancers of the other piece, Sara, wear sleek, black bodysuits designed by Odelia Arnold. These skintight, fashion-forward bodysuits act as a second skin, highlighting the dancers' heads and hands in their whiteness. In this short piece, bodies in motion, balancing between minimalism and the assertion of a new sensibility, rhythmically convey that Sara’s soul is searching for love. A universal and... contagious love.
