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Sensory overload of the body By Ayelet Dekel Tags: Israel News  Earthy, muscular dreamers move to a gypsy beat in Barak Marshall's "Monger," commissioned for the Tel Aviv Dance Festival and premiering next Friday. Influenced by the vividly detailed, surreal imagery of Bruno Schulz, and the tensions of Jean Genet's "The Maids," Marshall creates a compelling physical narrative in his new work. In simple dresses and dark suits with plain white shirts, the dancers never stop moving, as if bound together by invisible forces, perhaps by history itself. The gestures are precise and fluid: The arc of an arm embracing the air, the women's cupped hands forming a moon, the halo just above the men's heads - all fleetingly recall Chagall's lovers, floating in the midnight blue of distant Jewish imagery. A strong sense of origins permeates this work, a reflection of Marshall's return to choreography after an eight-year hiatus, and to the arena of his beginnings as a dancer and choreographer. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Marshall joined his mother, Margalit Oved, when she was invited to come in 1994 to direct Israel's Inbal troupe, in an attempt to revive it. A dancer, performance artist and choreographer who had been a star at Inbal before her move abroad, Oved was born in Aden, Yemen and her creative endeavors are immersed in traditional Yemenite dance and music. Although he had toured as a child with his mother's company and grew up surrounded by music and dance, Marshall recalls that "dancing was exactly what I did not want to do." He did not study dance or feel any inclination to pursue a career in the performing arts. But the death of his aunt led him to seek solace in music, spending hours at the Inbal rehearsal studio listening to music and moving instinctively, allowing his body to express its grief. It was only when one of the company dancers who had been watching him demonstrated some of his own moves that Marshall realized he had been creating a dance. The finished work, "Aunt Leah," an expressive, energetic collage of text and movement, won the 1995 Shades of Dance competition at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv. Marshall calls it, "my most honest piece about loss and love, created without any thought of an audience." Advertisement A period of intense creativity and nonstop work followed, during which Marshall created "Emma Goldman's Wedding" - which won the Bagnolet Prize in 1998 - and "Shoshana's Balcony," in 1999, toured with his own company, and was invited by Ohad Naharin to be Batsheva's first resident choreographer. He created new works there for both the ensemble and senior company. Once again his body spoke and led him onto a different path: Suffering from a broken leg and unable to dance, Marshall returned in 2001 to Los Angeles, where he began exploring both music and cultural traditions in the performing arts. Singing contemporary compositions influenced by Middle Eastern traditional music, he performed works composed for him by Ariel Blumenthal with the Jewish Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles, and by Yuval Ron with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project. Expressing a reverence for traditional dance languages that are often ignored in contemporary works, Marshall embodies the often-contradictory identity of his heritage. Growing up as the son of a Yemenite-Israeli and New York Jew in a white part of Los Angeles, he initially tried to escape his ethnic identity, yet remained an "outsider," marked by his odd name. "Now we have Obama," he smiles, alluding to the transformation American culture has undergone since the 1970s, embracing multiculturalism as a source of energy and renewal for all aspects of cultural life. Cultural dialogue While teaching intercultural choreography and composition in the department of world arts and cultures at UCLA (with which he is still affiliated, while on leave in Israel), Marshall was approached by Miki Yerushalmi of the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, to create a program that would encourage U.S.-Israeli cultural dialogue. Now in its second year, "Bridge: Choreographic Dialogues" is an exchange program that brings choreographers from the United States to the Suzanne Dellal Center for a two-week summertime residency alongside Israeli choreographers; Israeli choreographers spend two weeks conducting workshops at UCLA during the academic year. In August, local dancers thus had the opportunity to work with choreographers Sahar Azimi, Cheng-Chieh Yu, Sheetal Gandhi, Renana Raz and Marshall himself. Cheng-Chieh Yu, for example, taught Bagwa Chung, a martial-arts tradition that focuses on the harmony of mind and body, to enable the body to respond continuously to any changes that may occur around it. Alon Karniel, a member of Israel's Vertigo Dance Company who participated in that workshop, says of his experience: "It was seriously heaven; I had so much fun ... It's a whole body experience, there's no such thing as a local movement. You are aware of the whole body; you exist in a globe of energy." Deploring the fact that "Western culture is completely mind - there's no body whatsoever," Karniel says participation in the workshop enhanced and altered his own understanding: "I can know every aspect through the mind, but until it is integrated through the body, I can't know it [as a dancer]." Local choreographers, in their turn, allow the American students to experience different modes of working and creating. "Americans are starved," says Marshall. "Israeli choreographers bring freedom. Everybody has their own moves not based on technique." Marshall's own work as a choreographer is very physical and demanding. In the past he danced with his own company, trying out and perfecting every move himself and with the dancers. He says he built his work "Monger" around one person with the help of his assistant, Osnat Kelner, and then transferred it to the dancers as complete "sentences." "I'm trying to get my dancers to speak with their bodies nonstop and to engage in dialogue with one another through their actions in a very contemporary way," he explains. After only two weeks of rehearsals, the dancers move through a series of precise, expressive gestures with speed and intensity - dancing not as possessed individuals, but as a people endowed with human strength, compassion and endurance. The connection between the couples is palpable, even when their bodies do not touch. "The dancers have made me want to come back to create, they inspire me," the choreographer explains. Marshall disagrees vehemently with colleagues who feel that specific movements are not as important as the general feeling or direction that motivates the work, and says, "Every movement, every moment onstage is deeply important." In seeking to create situations of "sensory overload [in which] the entire body is alive," he admits, "I try to push myself very, very hard." Many of his works incorporate texts, and all refer to a specific narrative context. Bringing together elements of Yemenite and contemporary dance, an eclectic soundtrack that ranges from Handel to Balkan Beat Box, physical theater and vaudeville, "Monger" is composed of theatrical situations and the tensions they generate. The dancers are servants in the basement of a mansion, struggling to define themselves and escape their situation. Each embodies a particular character and is challenged by portraying it through the choreography with every part of his or her body. "I hate corps de ballet dancers [used] as bodies, they don't have faces or arms or any recognizable features." When told that a particular hand gesture seems to be reminiscent of traditional Yemenite dance, Marshall notes that it is also found in Indian dance: "There's a lot of crossover. It's also just theatrical." A thousand movements seem to take place simultaneously, each with many layers of meaning. "I want to present a very strong image for people to respond to," says Marshall, who clearly rejects the abstract vagueness and murky themes evident in some contemporary works. In addition to "Monger," Marshall is also bringing "Aunt Leah" back to the Inbal Dance Company next month, and working with dancers from the troupe. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Hitting Hezbollah Iraqi site reports Nasrallah was poisoned last week and Iranian doctors saved him. Terror as support Al-Qaida-linked Web site supports McCain for president by means of welcoming terror.

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