DARKNESS IN SHECHTER’S SUN
Dance explores human conflict
You can take the Israeli out of his country, but can you take his country out of the Israeli?
Although Israeli-born choreographer Hofesh Shechter has had a successful international career from a base in England over the past decade, Mideast conflicts prominently informed the works that his company showed in Montreal under the Danse Danse umbrella in 2009 and 2012. Next week, the same series is presenting the Hofesh Shechter Company in Sun, a take on human conflict that goes well beyond any national borders.
“In my previous work, there was perhaps a sense of man as a victim of the social order or structures,” Shechter said in an interview from New York, where he is drawing on his early background in Israeli folk dance to choreograph Broadway’s latest revival of Fiddler on the Roof. “Sun presents man as a hunter and as the absolute cause of the suffering upon us.”
So humankind, in Shechter’s eyes, is not the partial or inadvertent cause of its own suffering, but the absolute cause. Evidently, Shechter’s outlook on human nature has darkened since his 2010 work Political Mother, which Montreal saw three years ago.
Political Mother was a harsh look at the social forces that guide people to act without thinking. To the booming sound of electric guitars and drums — Shechter composes his own music and likes it loud — the ensemble moved often in parallel motions of military-like precision. Uniformity is a characteristic of Shechter’s ensemble work, suggesting an overriding force inside us.
“What’s the power that moves us, controls us and stirs actions? I’m obsessed by that.”
Political Mother ended on an optimistic note that brought some relief, but its optimism seemed tacked on, rather than a result of organic growth. It was as though Shechter was trying to convince himself as much as other people that our lot is going
to get better, despite evidence that it won’t.
Sun tries to explore why it won’t.
“It presents something and tells you it’s not the truth, so you keep on seeking for the truth. It presents layers of lies. Hopefully, like Picasso said, through the layers of lies perhaps we get a sense of feeling a sensation of truth at the end.”
Along with Shechter’s own compositions, Sun uses familiar music in an ironic way to illustrate what the choreographer called “the plastic cover on something rather horrible.” For example, there’s the memorable Irving Berlin tune Let’s Face the Music and Dance, which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers interpreted in one of their most moving duets, in the movie Follow the Fleet. In a scene at a highsociety party, Astaire exhorted Rogers to enjoy the “moonlight and music and love and romance” while they were still able to, because “there may be trouble ahead.” Turned on their head, the lyrics could express the fears of members of any regime — Louis XVI’s France, Hitler’s Germany, Batista’s Cuba — teetering on the edge of collapse.
“I found (the song) sarcastic, amusing, disturbing. That’s how I connected to it,” said Shechter.
Similarly, Shechter puts an ironic twist on the stirring music for the Arrival of the Guests at Wartburg from Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. For many older Israelis, Wagner’s music is still identified with Nazi Germany.
“Beautiful music, very jolly and powerful. Again, it has a disturbing connotation and context. This beauty for many people represented a cover for something horrible. How could this music exist in that (Nazi) world?”
There’s a satirical side to Sun that’s most clearly suggested by Christina Cunningham’s design for the Pierrot clown costumes worn by some of the 14 cast members.
“Who is allowed to tell the truth in a world of lies?” Shechter asked rhetorically. “When a clown came before the king, he was one of the few people who could say certain things without getting his head chopped off. He could bring subjects to the table in the bubble of safety of a performance. It allowed things to be said that perhaps shouldn’t be said. I like throwing that feeling in.”
How far a dance work can go to uncover social truth is problematic. Sometimes the dramatic power of dance can generate a strong emotional response in the audience that ignores the complexity of a many-sided situation. In May, as part of Montreal’s Festival Trans-Amériques, Israeli choreographer Arkadi Zaides presented a solo show, Archive, that used documentary videos to reveal alleged Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. Often the context of the videos was absent or unclear, captions did not always correspond to the images, and repetitions of the same incident created the impression that such cases happened more frequently than perhaps they did.
Zaides got a very warm audience response, thanks partly to his exuberant performance. His sincerity in seeking to improve Israel’s relations with Palestinians was unquestionable. Indeed, one of his previous works involved a Palestinian dancing with Israelis. But whether the incidents in the videos were true or not, Archive was manipulative rather than informative.
Sun doesn’t pick sides. Its indictment is universal. Perhaps Shechter’s outlook represents his frustration over a Mideast situation that is only getting worse.
“My feelings are hopelessness. It’s a really sad cycle.”