DANCE REVIEW
BETA DANCE COMPANY Suzanne Dellal, April 7
Choreographer and musician Dege Feder is artistic director of Beta Dance Company, a dance group based in Neve Yossef, a community center in Haifa. The original company was founded two decades ago in an attempt to assimilate contemporary modes into Ethiopian dance, in the same sense that black American artist Alvin Ailey merged African motifs with modern dance and made his company a thriving national treasure.
Looking close to home, the aspiration to transform ethnic cultural elements such as dance and music into stage creations that appeal to wider audiences worked for a while, 60 some years ago, when Sara Levi-Tanai founded Inbal Dance Theater which received international acclaim in its relatively short golden era. Yet Beta and its predecessor Eskesta, hardly crossed over. Now, perhaps breaking the glass wall is almost within reach.
Feder, who became Beta’s artistic director less than two years ago, is a wonderful performer, thin-framed with shy smile – which is misleading. She is strong willed and a talented choreographer with visual imagination and an ambition to leave no move unturned. She still needs further ripening, but her musical sensibilities are a great asset and often kept the work structure together, where the choreographic sequences ended breathlessly, before they were fully explored.
Hahoo (“ABC” in Amharic), performed by Dege Feder, Mazal Demosa and Yael Avinatan, is a good introduction to Feder’s skills. The moves are inspired by the flowing shapes of the Amharic alphabet, expressed with delicate gestures or by use of the whole body. The other two dancers zealously perform the ethnic elements, but Feder with her natural talents and refined musicality actually danced in the full sense of the word. The second work, You Are Me and I am not
You, is more ambitious choreographically, performed by six female dancers, some obviously new to the stage. There were many varied and interesting ideas in the work, with compelling compositions and strong moments on stage, but the company needs stability to reach fully professional level, which is almost impossible without funding.
Even with stronger support, socio-political agendas have no correlation with a successful dance company, which requires other base components. If Beta were to make it, it will be close to a miracle.