Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The singular Batsheva Dance Company returns to BAM with Ohad Naharin’s mesmerizing MOMO

• By drediman
• March 7, 2025
• No Comments

Last night at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, I attended the first out of three Batsheva Dance Company performances of Momo, Ohad Naharin’s latest full length piece for eleven dancers. Glaring Middle Eastern politics aside, I usually jump at the opportunity to catch this singular Israeli dance company perform. To be sure, no one moves quite like Batsheva’s dancers, which is due largely to their tutelage in Gaga, the dance philosophy developed by Naharin — Batsheva’s longtime former artistic director, who steered the company from 1990 through to 2018 — to emphasize uninhibited freedom in movement.

Choreographed in 2022 to “mix-tape” selections from Landfall — a 2018 effort between Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet, featuring music by Philip Glass, Arca, and Maxim Warat — Momo holds you with its steady gaze. The piece conveys two distinct essences that theatrically manifest themselves in alternatingly parallel and conflicting groups — one is comprised of four trousered men, who seem to be manipulating the cadence of the piece through their masculine energy; the other is made up of seven idiosyncratic and non-conforming characters who are adamant about proclaiming their individuality. Over the course of the work’s 70 minutes, Naharin patiently presents a steady progression of captivating choreographic visions as these two groups navigate co-existence — or not (one sequence involving gravity-defying barre exercise variations was particularly mesmerizing). In terms of stage design, the production is dominated by an imposing monolithic wall that serves as a backdrop on which dancers can climb and present themselves in different configurations, allowing for some striking stage tableaus (the visual effect is reminiscent of the Met’s new production of Moby-Dick, as well as Angelin Preljocaj’s Snow White).

Throughout, the dancers — some new to me, others veterans of the company — were invariably captivating. In final reflection, Momo is a mature creation by one of the world’s most iconic contemporary choreographers. Although the work is seductive in its ambiguity, there’s also confidence in the way it depicts meaning through suggestion and broad strokes. Indeed, there’s something eerily prescient about the uncompromising and somewhat threatening homogeneity exhibited by the trousered group, especially in light of the current political shift here in the U.S. The piece ends with the renegade seven proverbially making a run for it, escaping their oppressive situation by circumnavigating the aforementioned wall. Should we, as well?

RECOMMENDED

BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY: MOMO
Dance
Brooklyn Academy of Music
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 8