Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company will alternate between an all-female and all-male cast for PROJECT 5 at the Joyce (photo by Gadi Dagon)
Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
September 21 – October 3, $10-$69
212-645-2904
www.joyce.org
www.batsheva.co.il
The dazzling PROJECT 5, an hour-long four-piece show that features either an all-male or all-female cast depending on the night, marks the return of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company to the Joyce after more than a quarter-century and the first time longtime artistic director Ohad Naharin has presented work at the dance mecca. The two-week run began with the women on Sept. 21, with Iyar Elezera, Shani Garfinkel, Bosmat Nossan, Michal Sayfan, and Bobbi Smith taking the stage in “George & Zalman,” a 2006 work that combines text by Charles Bukowski and Arvo Pärt’s sparse tintinnabuli piano solo “Für Alina.” As a recording of Smith’s voice intones the lyrics — “Ignore / Ignore all / Ignore all possible concepts and possibilities” — which build in repetitive, cumulative phrases, the five dancers express their own movement phrases to accompany the words, only at certain times coming together in the same movement. Wearing black knee-length dresses, they each perform a solo at the end, temporarily breaking them away from the group dynamic. Naharin’s offbeat choice to use a Bukowski text, which as expected includes language not generally found in contemporary dance, threatens to be shocking but ends up being rather poetic. (It also led to the older couple next to us asking, “What is the difference between fucking and copulating?” while the woman behind us wondered aloud who Bukowski was.) “George & Zalman” is followed by the gorgeous pas de deux “Bolero,” with Elezra and Nossan building in intensity to Isao Tomita’s electronic version of the Maurice Ravel standard. Sayfan, Smith, and Garfinkel form a kind of avant-garde girl group in “Park,” a short excerpt from the longer 1999 work “Moshe.” The trio, behind microphones, sing in Hebrew, incorporating sharp, angular movements between verses. Following a five-minute video pause, all five women perform the breathtaking “Black Milk.” Now wearing off-white two-piece costumes with flowing skirts that recall Middle Eastern dress, the dancers wipe mud on their faces and bodies and form into pairs, depicting a more physical language of romance and violence, featuring holds, pushes, and embraces, the first time they have actually touched one another all night. PROJECT 5 is another superior display from one of the world’s most inventive and talented companies. (PROJECT 5 continues through Oct. 3, with the women performing Sept. 22-23, 25, and 26 and the men Sept. 24-25, 28-30, and Oct. 2-3.)
Chilean-born Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO is a psychedelic head trip, an acid Western that will blow your mind. Jodorowsky stars as the title character, a gunslinger traveling through a deserted landscape accompanied by his naked young son, who already knows his way around a firearm. After coming upon a town that has been decimated by a nasty group of marauders working for the Colonel, El Topo seeks violent revenge, eventually taking off with a woman and leaving his boy behind as he meets four masters on his path to proving he is the best there is. But soon El Topo is praying for redemption with a community of inbred cripples trapped in a cave. EL TOPO is a wild and bizarre journey through religious imagery, romance, and vengeance, a surreal spaghetti Western strained through the mad mind of Jodorowsky, widely hailed as the creator of the midnight movie. The film melds Bergman with Leone, Tod Browning’s FREAKS with Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, filtered through Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s LONE WOLF AND CUB. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and, despite your better instincts, will lure you into the cult of Jodorowsky. EL TOPO kicks off the Blood into Gold: The Cinematic Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky series at the Museum of Arts & Design, which continues with screenings of THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973) on September 24, FANDO Y LIS (1968) on September 30, SANTA SANGRE (1989) on October 1, Jodorowsky’s LA CRAVATE and Louis Mouchet’s LA CONSTELLATION JODOROWSKY (1994) on October 7, and RAINBOW THIEF (with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif!) on October 8. Jodorowsky himself will be on hand to teach a sold-out master class on September 25 that should be quite an event.