Messenger in the vibrant world of contemporary dance production in Israel, Vertigo Dance Company has been exploring man and his manifestations through the body and dance for two decades. Founded in 1992 in Jerusalem by Noa Wertheim (trained at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem and subsequently a dancer with the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Company) and Adi Sha’al (former dancer of the Batsheva Ensemble), Vertigo presents itself as an imposing authorial company capable of combining vibrant, energetic, and symphonic dance with engaged themes and surreal visions. The name of the company comes from the first piece that Wertheim and Sha’al - partners in life as well as in art - created together at the beginning of their careers as authors: a duet entitled Vertigo, inspired by Adi Sha’al’s first flying experience during his training in the Israeli Air Force. At the center of the composition is the investigation of rotating and twisting in space that leads to a loss of control applied both to the individual and to the partnership. Since then, their research has not encountered setbacks: together they have produced about fifteen works driven by the shared desire to explore new territories, to work around the concepts of community and ecology, while staying true to the holistic and spiritual approach that distinguishes them. They are indeed responsible for a school in Jerusalem that offers training programs for dancers and pathways for the differently abled, as well as the birth of the Vertigo eco-art village, a guesthouse and training facility in the rural area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
With Vertigo 20, the show that celebrates the twenty-year artistic journey co-produced by Napoli Teatro Festival in 2013, they retrace the time of research and creation by constructing an imaginary space that is both intimate and theatrical. A ritual that is also a collage of sequences from past performances built around the theme of gravity defied, thanks also to an original set design with tiered walls on which the bodies of the twelve dancers rest like birds. “A ritual process - defines Noa Wertheim - of a spectacular hourglass that measures the flow of time.”
