May 31 through June 3, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performs its Summer 2012 Series at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, near Chicago’s famous silver “bean” by sculptor Anish Kapoor. Alongside Malditos by resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, the company unveils its first production of Quintett by William Forsythe and revives THREE TO MAX, last Spring’s world premiere “collage” by Ohad Naharin, director of Batsheva Dance Company. Ohad discusses his approach to dance in a wide-ranging interview with Zachary exclusive to Critical Correspondence.
Interview Date: February 13, 2011 (By phone between Naharin in Tel Aviv, Israel and Zachary in Chicago, IL.)
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Zachary: Glenn Edgerton, artistic director at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, recalls you asking to teach class when you visited Nederlands Dans Theater, when he was there in the early ’90s. Do you remember this and, if so, anything about those classes? Would you consider them the beginning of what became Gaga technique?
Ohad: Hm. [Pauses] I need to concentrate. There’s a lot of stuff I deleted from my brain. [Laughs] I believe that one of the reasons I developed the Gaga movement language is because I needed to have keys to give dancers to work with. And a very important part of the development of it was working with other dancers. I don’t recall exactly those classes because that was, really, more than 20 years ago. I do go back even before, if I think of beginnings or the source of the movement language—it is going way back. It’s going as way back as I remember myself and it’s definitely going back to when I first started teaching, and that was even before those days. It was already happening in New York [but] the movement language evolved a lot since then. It’s not that it’s so much rooted in what it was, but [that] it needed the process. I think the classes then were more, in terms of their form, more conventional and much more limited in terms of understanding. What today is very fundamental to Gaga is the ability to articulate the scope of sensations and the small details, the small gestures, the attention to details. I think in many ways I was moving in similar ways back then. I think I was dancing for the same reasons, yet [I had] a very different toolbox for the dancers than what [I use] today.
Zachary: What do you recall about the shift from coming out of existing, formal techniques to creating your own?
Ohad: It didn’t go in a linear way. The more I developed it the more I found similarities in things [where] before I didn’t see the similarities. The more I understand, the more I discover. I can sometimes totally agree with something that I disagreed with before. So it’s not about departure from what was [before] only. It’s about going in different ways. It is about getting rid of styles, or the recognition of school. But it doesn’t mean I’m getting rid of what other people discovered.
Zachary: The first publicly presented piece of choreography you made was something you showed in 1980 at the Kazuko Hirabayashi studio.
Ohad: Right.
Zachary: How is or isn’t what you make today traceable back to this first work?
Ohad: I remember it very well, in terms of the steps, and I remember it even better than many of my later works because I performed this piece many times. I danced it, and I taught it many times. I think it has a lot more in common with what I do today than being different. We all have a lot more in common than differences. And the little differences we [have, we] make them seem huge. [Pauses] So, yes: I recognize [in my first work] my passion. I recognize the need for skills. I recognize the power of imagination. I recognize the ability to laugh at myself. I recognize how I was turned on by timing, and how I like music, but I don’t just dance on the music. How I like a kind of minimalism, this sense of erasing. Less is better. [Pauses] Explosive power. Animal instincts. I was already connected to all those things. I think the movement then was maybe a lot more conventional.
Zachary: You said in a 2004 interview, “I don’t want to reflect the world around me.” Do you remember where in you that statement came from and how, if at all, your feelings are different today?
Ohad: I’m not sure, exactly. Maybe when I said that, what I meant was that I’m not trying to put a mirror to reality. My work—for me, I like to create for myself, for my dancers, for my viewers. I’m trying to create something that is another world, maybe. Many times when you see art work, you have your point of reference. We see something and it reminds us of something else. I’m very interested in the ability to not to let this point of reference disturb us from having a fresh moment—even if I can recognize the existence of this reference, even if I use it on purpose. Let’s say that I use a very well-known piece of music that many choreographers have already used. This is not the point I’m making. The point I’m making is very different. Maybe what I’m asking [of] an audience and of myself is not to let this reference, this point of reference, disturb us from connecting to our imagination[s] and a fresher moment, and then a stronger moment. It’s not about what it reminds us of.
Zachary: Is that the reasoning that went into, for example, your decision to use Isao Tomita’s synthesized version of Ravel’s Bolero, instead of a traditional orchestration?
Ohad: It’s not that I used it because it was unfamiliar or different. I used it because I like it better than the original. I listened to a lot of original Bolero scores and I didn’t like [them]. But because I created this playground for [myself], where I said, “I’m going to do the Bolero,” before I gave up—I wouldn’t [have started the work] if I [hadn’t found] Isao Tomita’s version. But then I found it, and I discovered something that gave me a jumping board into it.
Zachary: How did your back injury impact your thinking about formal dance and concert dance?
Ohad: My back injury was a very important station in the development of my movement language because, first, I still have a lot of irreversible damage from the injury. So I had to become very… It’s about efficiency. It’s about discovering pleasure while you are in pain. It’s a lot about finding places of atrophy and weakness in one’s body. So the injury, dealing with the injury, really pushed me to a lot of discoveries. I don’t know how it affects my movement, in terms of what I do for choreography. I don’t know if it does, actually. I think it’s more that it helped me improve this toolbox that I have for myself and for my dancers.
Zachary: How and when did your injury occur?
Ohad: How did it happen? Well, some doctors said that I had a weakness from birth. I had a very, very lazy body and I was… I started to dance late. I had very little training. I was dancing on cement floors. I wasn’t warming up. I was lazy. I did some rough things to my body and I had problems for a while. [During] one performance, my legs buckled while I was dancing and, the next day, the doctor said, “You probably have herniated discs.” And it was very serious.
Zachary: What were you performing?
Ohad: I was performing in the States, actually, an evening of my work with my dancers. I think it was in upstate New York, somewhere. In 1987.
Zachary: Tell me about the decision-making process for building THREE TO MAX, in terms of what compositions you’re using for it, and how you’re staging these compositions for the Hubbard Street dancers.
Ohad: Well, it was a long process and I changed my mind, and developed [THREE TO MAX] a lot in the last couple of months. And I changed it again, just a couple of days ago. This is something, by the way, that I do with [Batsheva Dance Company members]. In addition to the new works that we are doing, we always have this piece that we call Deca Dance, based on the idea of playing with our current repertory. It allows us to perform things that otherwise we [wouldn’t], because many of the full works, we [don’t perform] anymore. This process is kind of fresh and ongoing. And I know the size of the [Hubbard Street] company and I know I’m doing half an evening, so that already creates a framework. I know that I’m sharing an evening with Sharon [Eyal]. I’m familiar with her work, so this also affects, a little bit, what I decide, but not much. It’ll affect a bit how I’m going to open the work.
Zachary: Will the work for Hubbard Street be another called Deca Dance?
Ohad: No, I think I’m not going to call it Deca Dance. I like to call it Deca Dance when it’s a full work, a full-evening work. I think I will call it just the names of the different dances that it’s taken from.
Zachary: In my experience, it sometimes takes quite a bit of digging to find out what I’m watching in your works. When Batsheva Dance Company performed here, at the Auditorium Theatre, two years ago, there was a list in the program of source works for Deca Dance but it required a lot of research to find out what excerpts were chosen, for example, and what sequence they were in. Is this a deliberate choice, aimed at distancing names and titles from what’s seen onstage, to prompt viewers to deal more directly with the movement?
Ohad: Yeah, actually, a little bit, a little of what you just said. Also because what’s in the program is not important, really. What I said before about points of reference: It also has to do with that. It’s nice to credit dancers and musicians for what they do, but for me, it’s [not for] knowing exactly which piece is in what order… Also, we keep changing [Deca Dance]. I keep changing it. It’s hard for me to [write] a program note. I just give [the audience] the pool of dancers and the pool of works that [the choreography] is taken from. I think that’s okay. But if you don’t think so…
Zachary: No, that makes sense. It’s interesting to me just because it’s so different from the kind of hyper specific notation that’s more common in dance. About Sharon Eyal, can you explain what you saw in her work that led you to offer her a choreographic residency at Batsheva?
Ohad: Sharon. [Pauses] I’ve known Sharon for more than 20 years. She was a dancer, an apprentice with Batsheva when I arrived. She was there before I was. And I worked with her often as a dancer, until a few years ago. Sharon is a kind of—Sometimes I talk about choreography and I call it the Holy Trinity: skills, passion and the power of imagination. Sharon is a great example of that. She is a very skilled dancer and also dance maker. She is one of the most passionate performers I’ve worked with and [has] a wild imagination. And I thought to give her, you know, the company that she grew up in. It was very natural. She was already making works in our workshops. It just happened.
Zachary: Are there elements in her work that reflect an extension or progression of your own research?
Ohad: Well, she is a Gaga devotee. [Laughs] And I think she uses Gaga to go beyond her limits, [beyond] the familiar. And she believes in Gaga as a tool for dancers to go beyond their familiar limits. But Gaga itself is not choreography. She has her own voice. I think she definitely learned about structure and organization, about production values: I’m sure that’s something she got from all the years before [as a Batsheva dancer]. I can recognize that knowledge that she acquired with us. But I also recognize her own voice more than anything else.
Zachary: Was Glenn Edgerton’s initial concept to produce an evening comprised half of your work and half of hers, or did you decide on the split bill together?
Ohad: Because I believe in her work, I thought it would—I don’t know how exactly how it came up but it came up in conversation, that it would be a good idea to do an evening of both of our work.
Zachary: Companies such as Hubbard Street and others you work with outside of Batsheva require dancers to delve deeply into a ways of moving, ways of thinking about interpretation and sets of priorities that can vary dramatically from project to project. Sometimes, dancers who perform mixed repertory keep two or more divergent or conflicting approaches to dance active simultaneously. When I was a member of Hubbard Street and worked with you during the staging of Tabula Rasa, for example—
Ohad: Wait—we worked together? Zac, remind me, what did we do?
Zachary: Minus 16 and Tabula Rasa. I’m sorry, I thought someone probably mentioned it before our interview today.
Ohad: Are you tall?
Zachary: No, I’m short, and have blonde hair.
Ohad: Short. But you were not in the original [HSDC cast] of Minus 16, right?
Zachary: Right. I joined later, and learned the work in 2002.
Ohad: Aha. Okay. 2002… I can understand why I don’t remember. [Laughs]
Zachary: No worries! What I wanted to say was that, for me, it was difficult to reconcile the process of taking a Gaga class versus a ballet class before rehearsal, of talking about movement and interpretation in different ways from work to work. There were blocks for me, at times, between learning things and being able to apply them. Was your approach born in any way out of feeling that other techniques left aspects of what the body is and how it works unacknowledged?
Ohad: I wouldn’t make that statement because it’s much more individual. People who work in different disciplines already have a lot of conflicts about what they think ballet is or what they think movement is. I would say that I agree with people who think that movement is something that shouldn’t hurt the body. Movement is something that can heal the body, even if it’s very strenuous. But that doesn’t mean that what I do contradicts ballet, even at its most mannered. I can fall in love with ballet dancers and I love, actually, ballet technique. And I apply a lot of elements from ballet to our Gaga—a lot. One of the most important stations [in its development] was when Batsheva Dance Company started to do Gaga as a basic, daily training, and that only happened in 2001 or 2002. So it happened around the time that I met you. Which means that the most development in Gaga has actually happened since. You met me [when Gaga was] in a very undeveloped state.
Zachary: Ah.
Ohad: And in that sense, if you felt frustrated, what it means is, actually that I failed. Because it is my responsibility to show you solutions, and to give you a sense of how similar and how easy it is to go from one way of dancing to another. Because it’s one body and a versatile dancer is not someone who has a different approach or a different philosophy when he goes from one technique or one method [to another], from one choreographer to another. He just has a flexible mind and different buttons that he can push to do different things. If you can give me an example, I’m curious. Because one of the things I’m really working on now with my dancers, with Gaga, is how much more in common all kinds of movement styles, approaches, disciplines [are], how similar they are if they are done right. It’s not that I always know what [that] means, “done right.” But I’m sure that all of us who work in different disciplines agree about so many basic things, [like] what makes a healthy, strong, fast, articulate, efficient, beautifully formed and dancing-from-the-right-place dancer.
Zachary: To go back to this earlier topic, of finding new relevance or resonance with your past experiences in dance: Can you give specific examples of what you look back on now and see fresh connections to, or harmonies with, in your own work?
Ohad: I’d say Martha Graham or the School of American Ballet when I was a student there. The tai chi that I do. It’s less with choreography. I meant more the different methods that I was exposed to. [Pauses] Some of my ballet teachers I can go back to and appreciate more. Or [others, whom I] actually now appreciate less. Some, like, guru teachers in New York, that everybody was going to: I can see how misguiding they were to some dancers. And then I can see some who, in a very articulate and beautiful way, were really doing something right.
Zachary: Such as?
Ohad: Richard Rapp and Stanley Williams. Those were two teachers that I can reflect—It’s not in a profound way, because I wasn’t [at SAB] for a long time. I think then I wasn’t really available to appreciate them as much as I do now. I love Martha Graham: Herself, because I was lucky to meet her and work with her, and her technique. And much more in that sense the Limón technique or release technique.
Zachary: Is there anything you’d like to say about the evolution of your relationship with Hubbard Street and working with the company?
Ohad: Hm. [Pauses] Most of the work is going to be done by my assistant, Yoshifumi Inao. He is going to be the person to teach and work with the dancers. I am going to come for a week and I’m going to do what I call “taking the fish out of the water.” [Laughs]
Zachary: Why do you call it that?
Ohad: Because he’s… It’s just a silly thing. Like, before the fish is in the net, someone works very hard, to fish them. I just have to pull it out of the water. Oh, dear. Never mind. It’s more like a joke between me and my assistants. It’s actually a very meaningful time that I’m going to have with the dancers. Yet all the teaching and the casting is going to be done by Yoshifumi.
Zachary: So what have you told him to begin work on?
Ohad: Actually, I didn’t. I trust him to know what to do. We discussed the program and, as I told you, I changed my mind a few times. And he was [in Chicago] to consult with [HSDC] about the changes that I made. I just made a change two weeks ago and I re-changed it two days ago. We spoke about it and we both agree that the change is right. [Pauses] There is a section [of Three, the series of solos danced at the front of three single-file lines] where, at Batsheva, the dancers in this section made a lot of their movement. [Yoshifumi and I] discussed how to do it [at HSDC], how to go about it, whether [dancers there] should learn what the [Batsheva] dancers did, or if they should choreograph [their own versions]. We agree that they should try to choreograph their own and he and I will decide. They should do both: learn the material and also try to create. It’s a difficult section because it can’t be too showy but at the same time, you want them to be showy and be over-the-top.
Zachary: It sounds me to me similar to the balance needed at the end of Minus 16, during the last semicircle, in the finale.
Ohad: Right, right! And in Three it’s a lot more magnified because it’s longer and more particular and more structured and it’s constantly building up. It’s like a revolving door, [like] people coming out of a revolving door and the revolving door is going faster and faster and faster and faster.
Zachary Whittenburg entered the dance scene as a performer, joining Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet in 1998. His dancing career later brought him to North Carolina Dance Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and BJM Danse Montréal. More recently he has freelanced, taught ballet and improvisation for professional dancers, and has presented choreography in Chicago, Canada and for the camera. As a writer, Zachary has covered dance, film, music and performance for online magazine Flavorpill, the Windy City Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit, Pointe, Time Out Chicago, Total Theatre UK and his own site, trailerpilot.com, in addition to penning program notes and a series of essays for the Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s CDF Salon Series.
