Pieces of peace
Ohad Naharin and Batsheva Dance Company blur borders.

By Rita Felciano

SOME 10 YEARS ago I saw a dance that recharged the biggest cliché in postmodern dance, folding chairs. It was a stunner. The choreographer was Ohad Naharin.

This is how it went: exuberant dancers in identical black suits entered one by one and threw themselves into one of many seats arranged in a semicircle. In what resembled a mad game of musical chairs, they then rose and arched into the air; looking as if a bullet had hit them in the stomach, they slumped over and slid into the seat next to them. As the pattern repeated itself, they started to strip, throwing their clothes into a pile that grew center stage. Finally they stood naked except for their underwear.

At which point I wanted to scream – all I could think was that before entering the ovens, Holocaust victims had been required to take off their clothes so the Nazis could neatly pack them up and return them to Germany for reuse. Was this a dance "about" the Holocaust? Was the empty chair for Elijah, who might come back, as stipulated in Passover celebrations?

Last year Nederlands Dans Theater II performed another Naharin piece, Minus 16. It was an odd mix of material drawn from other dances. The chair dance was one of them. Juxtaposed with the other elements in the piece, it had lost most, though not all, of its dread. The movements now looked a little silly, as if executed by spectators participating in a wave during a football match. The dance looked unruly and somewhat orgiastic, like a parody of conformism run amok.

Deca Dance, the piece with which the Batsheva Dance Company makes a much belated Bay Area debut this weekend, is collaged from eight works, most of them created during Naharin's tenure as Batsheva's artistic director from 1990 until October 2003. The chair dance is one of them.

Speaking from Montreal, where he's setting a work on Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Naharin explains that combining choreographic pieces is "a flexible way of working; it keeps pieces fresh." Maybe the chair dance will acquire yet another flavor.

To this Israeli-born, Martha Graham-trained choreographer, context is everything. Naharin likes to change his and our perspective regarding what he has done before. Unlike the archeologist who takes shards and glues them into something resembling the original, he creates a completely new pot.

As a citizen of and an artist from a country in turmoil, Naharin lives on the edge. He has been outspoken about Israel's policies in the Middle East. "My government," he told a Canadian interviewer, "is living an illusion of power with no real respect for the weak. It's a phobia that connects all the way back to the Holocaust.... Now, instead of being the victim, we are victimizing others because of it."

Naharin has taken on his own government. In 1998, Batsheva was scheduled to perform Anaphaza (which starts with the chair dance) during a celebration of Israel's 50th anniversary. Members of the Orthodox community objected to the company being clad in underwear. The controversy wound its way through the Knesset to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who asked President Ezer Weizman to mediate. The latter suggested the dancers wear gatkes, or long underwear. Naharin went through the roof about this interference and offered his resignation as Batsheva's artistic director. In solidarity, the dancers refused to perform at the celebration.

Naharin remained with Batsheva, but more controversies were to come. In December 2000, because of local turmoil, Batsheva was prevented from performing before a mixed Israeli-Palestinian audience in Nazareth. So the company took its show to an Arab audience in a neighboring hall. Afterward Arab dancers and musicians performed for the Batsheva dancers. One of those performers was Arab Israeli Habib Alla Jamal, and the following year, the score for Naharin's Virus – a section of which is used in Deca Dance – raised eyebrows in Israel because it showcased Jamal's arrangements of Palestinian folk songs. Some of the lyrics called for "our children to come back to their homeland," with repeated calls of "jana" (paradise/peace).

Naharin doesn't want to be pigeonholed. "I don't feel a need to separate the political and the personal. In the human condition, borders are blurred," he explains. So he insists – again and again – that his work be considered on its artistic merits. "The political in my work is a by-product," he says. Like any artist, Naharin wants us to look at the way he solves the formal challenges he sets for himself every time he steps into the studio. To do otherwise would be reductive and denigrating.

'Batsheva Dance Company: Deca Dance' runs through Sun/14. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, S.F. $25-$45. (415) 978-2787.