For the February 26, 2025 performance of Batsheva Dance Company, from Tel Aviv, culturevulture.net writer David e Moreno and editor Michael Wade Simpson sat next to each other, sharing notes and perspectives on their favorite dance company and choreographer, Ohad Naharin. This review is a dialogue between two dance journalists on Batsheva’s production and the political events surrounding “MOMO.”
MWS: “MOMO,” the 2022 evening-length piece has “two souls,” according to program notes. One sends long roots to the depths of the earth—a soul that embodies archetypes and myths of hardened, raw masculinity, and the other is in a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA.” On stage, a group of four men remain linked for the entire piece, moving as one unit, sometimes partnering each other in slow, Pilobolus-like weight-sharing formations, and other times, seated, placidly, mid-air, against a darkened climbing wall upstage, while onstage, seven other dancers move in a series of quirky and athletic solos, below them. The other soul, comprising of seven dancers moves within its own autonomous and independent force field and the other is a constellation of elements that spin around the same nucleus—alternately drifting away and towards it, making room for necessary tenderness and catharsis.”
DM: The four men move like a mute Greek Chorus, beginning the performance shirtless men, in trousers walking the entire stage perfectly synched, one step following the next to a soundless stage. At first appearing like an Egyptian hieroglyphic walking in profile, hand on hip, one elbow pointed out of their backside. The four completely blend their different personalities and body types into something communal, an equalitarian mass. Their gender and DNA appear without question, reinforced by a few good ole pushups. Yet, they also represent a healthy masculinity, where physical intimacy isn’t threatening but lovingly creative and powerful. Their presence is grounding, predictable, reassuring, like the speed in which they move which is consistently slow and methodical to the radical fairy-like expressions of the other nonbinary dancers, all colorfully and individually costumed. (Costume Design, Ari Nakamura) Where one male dancer eloquently dances, Les Ballets Trokadero de Monte Carlo-style, in a tutu with effeminate perfection.
MWS: You’re a big Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass fan and have covered several of their performances for CV. Tell me something about the dramatic score which held the piece together.
DM: I adore “Landfall,” Laurie Anderson’s 2018 collaboration with San Francisco-based Kronos string quartet is an ominous and haunting album. It is somewhere between a poem and a series of reflection on the 2012 natural disaster of Hurricane Sandy. The music is a surreal blend of electronics, acoustic instruments, high-tech software and voice overs— Anderson, as well as clips from CNN, and supports MOMO’s choreography beautifully. As does Philip Glass’ foreboding and repetitive “Metamorphosis Two”, and Arca’s unexpected “Madre Acapella.”
Arca, a nonbinary trans woman has redefined the role of diva and music drawing from club music, experimental sound, and the ballad tradition of her native Venezuela. Her mournful acapella song sung in Spanish to their mother—The Mother, translates as, “It hurts in my soul, everything about me hurts, distance was but my only option, my only option, I feel myself turning into you…” The inclusion of this song as part of the score was devastatingly great!
MWS. The piece featured the above-mentioned climbing wall, a stunning space shifter, as the four men left the floor and began to slowly move into the air, with effort, perfectly in unison.
DM: This segment was perfect theatrical magic. At one point, when the four face the audience sitting cross legged, they looked like the rishis of ancient India, the sages who can float through the air in lotus pose, as the seemed to levitate above the other dancers. Avi Yona Bueno’s subtle lighting design also help create this exquisite effect.
MWS: Near the end of the piece, it is the other group, each idiosyncratic in movement and costume, which begins an ascent of the wall, exiting, one by one, into the rafters. And then there were ballet barres brought out, and a section where classical ballet was alluded to before being twisted and reshaped. The barres themselves became tree limbs from which the primate dancers hung in groups.
DM: Indeed, a parody on ballet even though “Momo” has more ballet in it than most Batsheva dances.
MWS: And then there was the “wave.”
DM: Yes! Throughout the performance, dancers lifted one arm to the audience as if raising it to be volunteer, slowly letting it melt down as if disappointed, as if not selected, not chosen, not seen. Or extending their arm in the air as a wave of farewell to someone who doesn’t see it; a missed opportunity—a well-intended wish that quickly turns to sorrow. This fey gesture repeats itself, increasing in its delivery as the performance moves on, turning it from novel and fleeting to repetitive.
MWS: How did you feel about going through the gauntlet to get into the performance. Being at UC Berkeley, I was anticipating pro-Palestine protestors, but not the line of police officers in riot gear guarding us from them, and not the emotional quandary of crossing a kind of picket line to get into a dance performance. I’ve been writing about dance for 40 years, and that was a first. The tiny woman with a megaphone shouting, “STOP KILLING BABIES,” stays with me.
DM: In my mind, I connect the Palestinian protestor’s chanting outside the theater as part of the score and the performance, including the battalion of armed police that walked through security check lines as we entered Zellerbach Hall. All of this added to the theatricality and passion of this evening’s work. I don’t say this lightly. I am not one to walk across a picket line. Nor did I see this as a picket line but as part of a year-long protest on the CAL, “Freedom of Speech” campus, which I am supportive. I cherish our right to assemble and freedom of speech and feel like it is also under threat. So, I don’t mean to sound dismissive of the protest or the intense feelings that this elicited for many, but, in all honesty, for me the performance started there with dancers undoubtedly aware of the high security and opposition surrounding their performance. We were lucky to not have a bomb threat stop the production.
The argument, the protest is based on Batsheva being funded by the Israeli government and even though Ohad Naharin has been critical of Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing, he, his company and trademark Gaga dance style, are boycotted by pro-Palestinian activists—a group targeted by Trump for deportation. Government sponsorship of the performing arts is so contrary to our country, especially now. I’ve always held the view that government support was a good thing and helped in sustaining great companies and performers. But, like everything else in our world, this is so murky now.
MWS: While watching MOMO I kept thinking of Batsheva’s famous chair piece, “Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One),” because it had a similar dichotomy and politics at its core. “Echad Mi Yodea” has been performed widely (by other groups) and cased a political uproar when it debuted, upsetting religious fundamentalists in Israel because it used a popular Passover Song reimagined by the Israeli rock band, “Tractor’s Revenge,” and because the dancers strip down to t-shirts and boxer shorts. In the Batsheva Dance Company version, the piece begins with a recording of Naharin speaking these words: ”The illusion of beauty and the fine line that separates madness from sanity, the panic behind the laughter and the coexistence of fatigue and elegance.”
DM: The company is no stranger to controversy.
MWS: When the group was planning to perform the chair piece at a 50th-Anniversary celebration of Independence in 1998, a faction of ultra-orthodox Jews was so horrified that they would be performing (eventually) in their underwear that the president of the country demanded that Naharin, at the last minute, change the costuming. Instead, he resigned, the dancers refused to perform, and the next day there were massive free speech demonstrations in Tel Aviv. Naharin was reinstated, and the event served as a turning point in Israel’s culture wars.”
MWS: How did the Bay Area dance community deal with this?
DM: Some boycotted the performance concerned with how using artists, often without them fully understanding their role, for military and propaganda purposes takes place. I’ll add a link here where people can learn about the extent of this boycott:
https://dancersgroup.org/2025/02/dancing-with-solidarity-the-case-for-boycotting-batsheva-and-gaga/
MWS: Despite Naharin’s official statement condemning violence against Palestinians, the company is accused of “art-washing” or promoting Israel’s values and actions by traveling the world and presenting dances. Boycotts have been promoted in every city the company is traveling to.
DM: The irony is that “MOMO” is beautifully political in its own way, taking on the struggle facing trans and nonbinary people, and the right to express oneself freely. “MOMO” weighs in on the charged subject with creative intelligence and prowess, elevating cultural awareness with a delicate touch. “MOMO” deserves to be seen by many.
