Contemporary dance, dance-theater, acrobatics, and mime are the artistic substrata on which the Israeli duo Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak build their performances. Refractory to being identified with a specific genre, Pinto and Pollak renew themselves from production to production, bringing new inspirations to the stage each time.
Inbal is a dancer and choreographer with studies at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, leading her to perform with the Batsheva Dance Company and embark on a strikingly early and successful authorial career. Avshalom, on the other hand, is an actor and director, born into a family of artists (his father is the famous Yossi Pollak) with a prestigious background from The Nissan Nativ Drama School in Tel Aviv. Since 1992, they have been a fixed couple, the year they founded the company that bears their name. Over twenty years of activity in Israel and around the world have earned them significant recognition. Among other honors, they received a Bessie Award in New York for Wrapped in 2000, the Israel Theater Academy Award for Oyster, a blockbuster in their repertoire, and the Best Dance Show 2014 from the Israel Critics Circle Award for Wallflower, their latest project.
Created for and within the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Wallflower (in English, one who is a wall decoration at a dance) presents a unique work compared to their previous pieces, both for the occasion and the location in which it came to life and for the collaboration with the Japanese trio of musicians Umitaro Abe, Mayu Gonto, and Hirofumi Nakamura, whose compositions draw from the sounds of instruments such as the biwa—the small lute of Japanese tradition—along with the harmonica and percussion sounds from common glass objects.
In pure abstraction, Wallflower avoids any narrative elements, venturing into the poetic and visionary universe of a solemn artistic and natural rite. The space is white, and the bodies of the dancers, wrapped in multicolored tights, move like geckos in the night. The wall and the light are their attractions, alongside their fellow dancers: magnets that attract and repel each other, drawing bizarre shapes in space. The colorful microcosm has strict rules: gravity first and foremost, but also a hidden natural force that dictates law and marks the rhythm of life. It will also ensure a survival of the soul when the geckos, exhausted, are forced to shed their skins.
