American Dance Festival Charlotte Ballet Performing KAMUYOT

We sat on our bench spots as the 17 members of the Charlotte Ballet ensemble walked slowly round, making sure that they made steady and unflinching eye contact with each of us. It wasn’t the first time their movements asked “Fourth Wall? What wall? Where?” As if the music only they could hear had stopped as in musical chairs , each dancer carefully extended a hand to one of us— to hold, to engage. It wasn’t exactly like one of the prior invitations to come out into the performance space on the gymnasium floor. This felt more intimate— the long steady gaze of lovers made it so, whether the hand was outstretched to us, or to our neighbor.

Without preamble and in an instant, that moment’s feeling of gentle communion explodes into feral. The dancers’ bodies ripple. Some soar. If one is rolling on the floor we imagine they are on an invisible recharger. We see energy. They may be channeling energy from thunderstorms of foreign galaxies. It is wild!

And, it’s quite a jolt.

Oh my, who were we just locking eyes and holding hands with?

Aided by a soundscape that spans from Beethoven strings to the Hawaii 5-0 theme song— 16 works listed in the program, most electronically charged —- the dancers melt to and from an ensemble moving as one. They spill into breathtaking solos, or flash by in smaller grouplets.

American Dance Festival Makes Us Gaga

We find ourselves gaga.

That isn’t why this choreographer, Ohad Naharin, named his movement language gaga, we learn from reading interviews from years’ past ,as his works and method spread from Israel to Europe to North America and beyond. Rather, he explains the word just sounded right, like a playful baby. Dancers trained in the Naharin movement language learn to move body parts gracefully that we mere mortals never knew were even parts to be moved, like spaces between toes. Much like Jewish mourners who must cover mirrors to look within, we learn that part of the training requires rehearsing choreography without benefit of correcting mirrors.