“One. One & One” Equals All

By Garth Grimball

Vertigo Dance Company, based in Israel, concluded this year’s American Dance Festival with a performance of “One. One & One” (2017) at the Reynolds Theater on Duke University campus. The dance opens with a solo. Yarden Oz drips and extends her body while Etai Peri pours peat moss out of a bucket in a line from downstage right to left. Avi Belleli’s soundscore starts with a layering of strings, dogs barking, and, perhaps, explosions. There is an evocation of a wall. A black curtain hangs mid-level on all three sides of the stage, bifurcating the space horizontally. Stone-like benches sit facing each other.

Choreographed by Noa Wetheim (Artistic Director and Co-founder) with Rina Wertheim-Koren (Assistant AD), “One. One & One” features nine dancers whose spines curve, bend, and arch like the slopes of a mountain range. The full cast joins Oz and Peri in overlapping solos and counterpoint. Dancers strut down stage and strike poses. A motif emerges of thwacking hands back and forth between thighs and chest with a force of self-flagellation. 

Each dancer moves like every cell is charged. A body’s internal motion is as evident as the lines and shapes that glide through space. The energy swells and the dancers bring out more buckets creating more lines horizontally across the stage. The lines are broken. The soil is thrown and spread until it covers the stage. Ruth Ben David catapults herself into the new landscape creating dust clouds. She embodies the frenetic mob as she vibrates and rolls.

The relationships shift. Solos become group dances. The men do an abstraction of folk dancing. The cast starts cheering each other with hoops and hollers. They run across the stage and leap into and over arms, reaching higher and higher. The accumulated sweat and soil dampen the neutral toned shirts and pants into second skins to be peeled off.

The movement vocabulary feels deeply influenced by Gaga technique and the Batsheva aesthetic. In addition to soil as set, the style of repetition is reminiscent of Pina Bausch. Belleli’s score leans towards the melodramatic, especially a section featuring electric guitar. The dancers keep the work from feeling derivative. They exude an almost feral presence; ready to erupt at any moment as if they are dancing for the first time.

With the exception of a gendered moment that felt rather retrograde, “One. One & One” becomes a big, sweaty, powerful group dance. The lights go down on a collective, standing together, breathing.

 

Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.

—–