Emanuel Gat's Winter Variations un summertime / Los Angeles Times

A pall washed over the normally sunny town of Montpellier, France, when dance aficionados learned that Pina Bausch, the undisputed goddess of theater dance, had died unexpectedly Tuesday in Wuppertal, Germany, at age 68.

What better tribute, then, than to go on with the show(s) at the 29th annual Montpellier Dance Festival, where the art form continues to be on view at various venues through Saturday. In the case of Israeli choreographer-dancer Emanuel Gat, who makes his home in France, his extraordinary duet with Roy Assaf, “Winter Variations,” was performed to a full house at the 2,000-seat Opéra Berlioz. Filling such a vast stage is no easy feat, even for a medium-sized company, but to command the space for 50 minutes with this unabashedly intimate pas de deux proved a breathtakingly emotional journey.

A study in heterosexual male bonding -- talk about bromance -- the world premiere featured the duo executing deliriously perfect unisons. Whether marching militaristically on their knees or moving tenderly minuet-style, holding hands and half-hopping, the pair riveted. The music was also sublime, including Richard Strauss, Franz Schubert, the Beatles and Riad Al Sunbati, while Gat’s gorgeous lighting design created an endless horizon one moment, a beckoning abyss the next.

Gat, 40, is a major talent (he recently made a piece for 12 women of the Paris Opera Ballet), with “Winter Variations” offering catharsis for a troubled world. Indeed, on Tuesday the audience responded with nothing less than a collective sigh at the fragility, beauty and, finally, the resilience of life.

For those unable to have been in the south of France this week (or at the American Dance Festival last week), the work will be presented at the Lincoln Center Festival on July 14, 16 and 17.



La beauté de l'éphémère / Les Trois Coups / Fatima Miloudi

Directeur artistique du centre chorégraphique d’Istres depuis 2008, Emanuel Gat, lauréat en 2006 du Bessie Awards, a proposé au Corum de Montpellier «Variations d’hiver», sa dernière création. Entre l’American Dance Festival et le Lincoln Center Festival, il fait une halte et offre en compagnie de Roy Assaf une heure de poésie et de pur enchantement.

Il n’y a là, au regard de nombreux spectacles de danse, rien de narratif où se raccrocher pour tenter de comprendre où va le geste et ce qu’il signifie. C’est que justement celui-ci se suffit à lui-même et qu’il est à la fois origine, chemin et aboutissement. Du mouvement, uniquement du mouvement. Et on se laisse totalement prendre au charme, à la fluidité et à l’énergique douceur des deux corps qui se déplacent et s’enchevêtrent. Quelquefois à l’unisson ou en miroir, mais souvent légèrement décalés, les danseurs savent jouer du geste et du repos, du déplacement et de l’arrêt, de l’entremêlement et de l’écart. Tantôt hypnotique dans la sinuosité de la rencontre des corps, tantôt suscitant un regard étonné devant un mouvement neuf, le duo est virtuose et imaginatif.

J’ai tout aimé et particulièrement ces instants: le port d’un danseur à l’avant du corps et l’impression, à les voir avancer vers le fond de la scène, que celui qui portait semblait être la charge. Inversion étonnante, comme ces figures d’Escher qui laissent voir un aspect et convoquent dans le même temps son double. J’ai aimé encore le parcours de la scène sur les genoux, les bras aidant à l’avancée. À force de regarder les danseurs arpenter le plateau, ils semblaient perdre une partie de leur corps et se réduire en taille.

Ce qui est étrangement attirant et envoûtant aussi, c’est la présence des mains: mains qui effleurent le corps de l’autre, mais aussi mains qui rencontrent leur propre corps. Elles guident; elles passent. Sur le crâne, la nuque, le menton… et touchent à peine ou pas. Le regard est subjugué par ce déplacement. La sensation de quelque chose d’imperceptible passe là: la beauté de l’éphémère. La formation de chef d’orchestre d’Emanuel Gat et la danse des mains qu’elle enseigne aurait-elle une part ici? En tout cas, tout geste, même la frappe vigoureuse des bras sur les cous, est habité par une douce fluidité, jusqu’à ce mouvement de bascule sur le ventre qui fait avancer le danseur sur la scène et qui clôt l’œuvre.

Dans le Kansas City Star, la critique écrivait: «If you want to see the future of dance, take a long look at Emanuel Gat». Il est de fait que le chorégraphe israélien et Roy Assaf, celui qui l’accompagne dans ce duo emprunt d’une belle intimité, ont fasciné le spectateur. Il ne reste qu’un désir: celui de regarder à nouveau.



Anne Morris - World Dance Reviews 2009

"Artmaking is about contrast," choreographer Emanuel Gat offered at the post-performance discussion following the world premiere performance of Winter Variations at the Reynolds Industries Theater (June 22-24, 2009). From the first image, Gat revealed the contrasts at the heart of the work, balancing the tension between darkness and light, sound and silence, movement and stillness. The duet, created and performed by Gat and Roy Assaf, opened with an electronic hum, growing gradually louder. The lights blinked on, revealing large squares of faint light on the stage, separated by margins of shadow. Gat and Assaf, sometimes alone, sometimes weaving in and out of unison, moved with precision into and between the lighted areas, freezing for long, measured pauses before continuing. Filled with specific but baffling gestures - an arm outstretched like an elephant's trunk, a hand cupped under the chin - the full-body movement skimmed the surface of the stage with a smooth, unhurried lightness. Arms and elbows fanned and pierced the air, framing and passing over the face and around the head. The idiosyncratic movement remained compelling throughout the work, as it grew in intensity or pulled back, connected the two men or propelled them apart.

According to the program notes, space emerged as a primary element in the creation of the duet, so that the stage itself became almost a "third actor." Both the lighting design and the use of the vast stage by the dancers - in their proximity to or distance from each other or in their exploration of the farthest corners - brought the space alive. Negative space was made clearly visible and significant as the dancers played in the spaces between elbow and ribs, between the knees, within the shadowy margins of the light.

Set to an eclectic score including works by The Beatles (A Day in the Life), Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs), and Egyptian composer Riad Al Sunbati (Awedt eyni), Winter Variations came together out of solo work by the two dancers as well as scraps of ideas and movement developed in Gat's recent group choreography. The work, according to Gat, follows a strict formalistic logic, negotiating elements such as time, space, line, lighting, rhythm, and music. Gat has balanced these components masterfully, particularly the sense of timing - between the dancers, or with the musical phrasing - and the pacing of the dance as a whole. He seems to know just how long to stretch each moment, and when to jump quickly ahead. Beyond these formal elements, Gat claims not to know what the dance is about; if he has done his choreographic job right, he seems to be saying, then the work itself will suggest images, emotional content, and particular metaphoric significance to viewers, in a multitude of interpretations.

Certainly one of the most potent aspects of Winter Variations, as in the dancers' previous duet, Winter Voyage, is the relationship between the two men. Throughout the hour-long work, this relationship took on layers and permutations of significance. Power, intimacy, vulnerability, indifference, synchronicity, individuality - all were present. Performing in diverging and converging streams of movement or perfect unison, the two men passed long periods of time without sharing a single glance, only to come to an abrupt stop nose to nose. Gat balanced, seated in the chair of Assaf's lap, his feet curled around Assaf's ankles as Assaf walked slowly, one heavy step after another; the men traversed the stage walking on their knees, continuing so long we forgot they once had longer legs, approaching each other as if to connect, but passing shoulders without a glance. The final image was particularly striking. In a bright wash of light at the front of the stage, the two writhed and wriggled across the floor, isolated and struggling, continuing until the last and sudden gasp of the lights blacking out.

The American Dance Festival's Israeli Festival continues with the presentation of Ohad Naharin's "Decadance," performed by the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (June 25-27).



The Jewish week / Emanuel Gat's silent treatment / by Eric Herschtal

by Eric Herschthal / www.thejewishweek.com

There is nothing conventional about the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat. He spent years training to be a classical music conductor, and then, after a stint in the military, abruptly tried dance. He was 23 and had never danced professionally, but with his natural talent for syncing movement with music, he was quickly accepted into the modern dance troupe, Liat Dror Nir Ben-Gal Company.

What’s more, his first major success for his own company, “Winter Voyage,” from 2004, featured a male duet that somehow transcended gender politics, a hackneyed theme of many same-sex works. And though he is Israeli, Gat avoids making political works, even while collaborating with Arab artists. And finally, despite having no formal ballet training, he has often set works on ballet companies.

Now, “Silent Ballet,” his new commission for the Lincoln Center Festival that has its premiere this week, is choreographed without music. Movement is the only score. The work features nine dancers pacing across a spare white stage, sometimes breaking into synchronized segments, often not, creating a visual poetry out of chaos and cohesion. Dances without music are not unheard of (see Doris Humphrey’s “Water Study” and Jerome Robbins’ “Moves”), but they are still rare, and a seemingly strange choice for a choreographer with such keen musical instincts.

In an interview from Istres, France, where his company is now based, Gat said the point of discarding music was to focus on dancing’s core elements: movement, space and timing. “I want [‘Silent Ballet’] to function in this empty space where it can develop with its own rules,” he said. “My basic motivation is very simple: to speak to the basic elements of dance.”

That is something that Gat, now 40, has been doing for years. When he staged “Winter Voyage” at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2006, critics swooned over its rigorous construction and devilishly precise execution. Those performances won him a prestigious “Bessie Award” and led to a string of bookings at high-profile venues like Sadler’s Wells in London and the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C.
“He seems to put his life into [his choreography],” said the Lincoln Center Festival’s director, Nigel Redden, who commissioned Gat after the success of “Voyage” in 2006. “He lives on the edge like so many Israelis do.”

Now he’s back at the Lincoln Center Festival with another new work that builds off “Winter Voyage.” Titled “Winter Variations,” it uses the same male duet format and the same dancers — Roy Assaf and Gat himself — but changes everything else. Instead of Shubert’s “Die Winterreise,” which provided the score for “Voyage,” the new work is set to music by Richard Strauss, the Egyptian oud player Riad al Sunbati and a remix of the Beatles’ “Day in the Life.” Still, the new piece evokes the same intense intimacy that made the earlier one so mesmerizing.

But don’t think that “Variations” just repeats an earlier theme. “Voyage,” Gat said, “was really just a starting point.” In part, the new piece explores a powerful relationship that has developed between Gat and Assaf over the last several years. In a separate interview conducted by e-mail, Assaf said that when he first met Gat during his last year of military service, “the connection was obvious and immediate.”
After Assaf’s service ended in 2004, he immediately joined Gat’s company and has been dancing with it ever since. When asked what was unique about Gat’s style, Assaf wrote: “The minute you see one [of his dances] you know without questioning. If I need to use one word to describe it, I would say ‘honesty.’”

Intensity might be another. Like Redden, Gat is quick to point out his connection with fellow Israeli choreographers: “Something in common is the intensity, which is clearly something Israeli,” he said. Yet as Gat gets comfortable in the south of France, there is a chance he might mellow. He left Israel in 2007 after a failed attempt to establish a dance school there, an experience that left him deeply frustrated. He recently told TimeOut London that “after a big investment of time, energy and money I realized it wasn’t going to happen the way I think it should, and not within the next 20 or 30 years.” He went on: “The core issue is that art and culture are a low priority in Israel right now.”

They are strong words, but not unique. Though Israeli choreographers have increasingly carved out international reputations, many have left the country. Major stars like Hofesh Shechter and Jasmin Vardimon are now based in England; Yuval Pick is in France; for Zvi Gotheiner and Roni Koresh, New York is home. The problem isn’t that there are too few dance companies and schools in Israel, but too many. Choreographers move to larger countries outside of Israel because there are more venues to perform, more exposure and more money. Gat put it bluntly: “There was more opportunity here.” His studio in Istres is much larger than the one he briefly set up in the Negev desert, and the three-year grant he received gives him more financial security, he said.

Though he acknowledges that moving to France has changed his work — “it really allowed me to grow” — he still sees himself as an Israeli choreographer. “I’m presented as an Israeli choreographer, I’m interviewed as an Israeli choreographer,” he said. And of course, most of his dancers are from Israel, as well as a steady amount of his funding. The Consulate General of Israel in New York, for instance, is providing some funding for Gat’s Lincoln Center Festival appearance.

When asked if moving his company outside of Israel might have a negative impact on the country’s dance scene, he said it would not. The international success of the country’s premier troupe, Batsheva Dance Company, has been “an amazing ambassador for Israeli dance,” he said. But he stopped short of saying that he himself was too. “I’m not so pretentious,” he said. “I would say my move has changed my work, not Israel’s.”

Emanuel Gat Dance performs “Winter Variations” and “Silent Ballet” at the Rose Theater, Broadway at 60th Street, on Tuesday, July 14, Thursday, July 16 and Friday, July 17 at 8 p.m. each night. $20. Visit www.lincolncenterfestival.org or call (212) 721-6500 for tickets.

Winter variations at Montpellier Danse / By Ora Brafman

‘וריאציות חורף’ של גת הם אכן כמשתמע, פיתוח במובן מסוים של הדואט ‘מסע חורף’ שיצר גת עבורו ועבור רועי אסף לפני מספר עונות. זה עדיין דואט, אלא שהעבודה היא באורך מלא וההחלטה לעלות אותה על הבמה הגדולה ביותר בעיר היא לקיחת סיכון לא מבוטל של הנהלת הפסטיבל ואכן כשעולה האור על הבמה, השניים הדוממים במרחביה, בתאורה המרהיבה שיצר גת עצמו, נדמה כאילו הם שני שורדים במרחב מתפשט.
קשה לתאר איך השניים, בתנועה נטו נטולת יומרה, ללא חבילת טכניקה, פירוטכניקה וטכנולוגיה  באמתחתם, הם לא רק מחזיקים את הבמה אלא גם את הלב בעבותות

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