The Hofesh Shechter Company will perform its explosive POLITICAL MOTHER this week at BAM (photo by Ben Rudick)
HOFESH SHECHTER COMPANY: POLITICAL MOTHER
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
October 11-13
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.hofesh.co.uk
British-based Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter, a former drummer and tap dancer, has struck a chord around the world with his debut full-length piece, the brash and bold Political Mother. A work for twelve dancers, Schechter’s follow-up to Uprising/In your rooms once again features his physical, in-your-face choreography set to his own propulsive score, played by a live heavy-metal band led by music collaborator Yaron Engler, with Lee Curran contributing the powerful lighting design, Tony Birch the sound design, and Merle Hensel the costumes. The seventy-minute multimedia assault on the senses, first performed in 2010, was expanded into a “Choreographer’s Cut” at Sadler’s Wells last year with even more dancers and musicians. Political Mother, which is built around ideas of control, is running October 11-14 at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House as part of the thirtieth Next Wave Festival. In addition, while in New York, the Hofesh Shechter Company will be holding intensives at Cedar Lake in Chelsea from October 15-19; the 10:00 am – 2:00 pm slots are sold out, but there is still limited availability for the 3:00 – 7:00 pm workshops, designed for “professional dancers/recent graduates and third year students in full time dance training.”
Music and dance collide in loud, beautiful ways in POLITICAL MOTHER (photo by Julieta Cervantes)
Update: As the audience enters, a smoky mist drifts through BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. Soon a lone figure appears center stage, dressed in a samurai outfit. He pulls out a sword and commits hara-kiri. Then the soundtrack suddenly blasts out of the speakers and two words are illuminated on a backdrop: Political Mother, announcing that Hofesh Shechter’s hotly anticipated international sensation is about to blow your mind. And blow your mind it does, for more than an hour of energizing movement, blaring music, and blazing lights. A dozen dancers move on- and offstage, running, jumping, writhing on the floor, and forming a hora-like circle as they change costumes from ordinary clothing to gray, dingy prison garb. Behind them, drummers in military outfits pound away, while above the percussionists are five guitarists who play screeching industrial hard rock tinged with Middle Eastern melodies. Occasionally a man up top, dressed alternately as a heavy metal hero, an old-time crooner, or a brutal dictator, grabs a microphone and bellows out an unintelligible song or command as the dancers/inmates below wait on his every word. Somewhere in the middle of this marvelous maelstrom, a classical interlude gives everyone, onstage and in the audience, a brief respite, but then it’s back to the madness as Shechter explores ideas of power and control in his breathless choreography, with Lee Curran’s superb lighting signaling changes like a strobe operating in slow motion. Then, as explosive as it’s been, it stops, reconfiguring itself with a song choice that makes the audience laugh out loud, bringing it all back home with a fond simplicity. No mere dance, Political Mother is like an event unto itself, a daring, balls-out work that takes over your mind, body, and spirit for seventy glorious, unforgettable minutes.