Ora Brafman <ora.brafman@gmail.com>

Retrospective mood framed Be’er’s latest work, a rich assemblage of short scenes woven into an unusually textured fabric composed of passion and awareness, the stuff that art-work is made of; a rephrased line borrowed from the late poet David Avidan.

Be’er is one of the more important voices on our dance stages, and has accumulated an impressive body of works. Like him, the company is based at Kibbutz Ga’aton and has just celebrated its 50th year. Be’er, now in his mid-sixties, literally grew up with it.

He had turned this current creation into a cultural journey on memory lane and added quite a few personal references to other art forms like films, poetry, and a wide and varied range of musical preferences. In a way, the detailed extravagant work had released in him a new degree of artistic freedom which made ‘The Director’s Cut’ more accessible.  A pleasure to watch.

In the title Be’er puts himself in the director’s chair and the current choreographic work reinforces his attraction to that “newer media”, which hover above the stage throughout the evening. Perhaps it was Spielberg’s film ‘The Fibelmans’(?) which evoked something in him.

After almost four decades of choreographing a long line of creations- many of which were related to social and political issues- they will be remembered as canonical. one could hardly expect that this fast bit, dynamic sequences following one another, will reveal more unprecedented scenes. Among them will rise dancers with shimmering party hats, holding black balloons on strings, whipped cream cakes and an exploding bunch of flowers that sprayed a shower of red paper flakes, befitting a Broadway musical show with glam outfits. A reminder; Be’er, the choreographer is also the lighting, costumes and set designer, as well as a co-sound track designer.  Before this day, his stage was never flooded with such a strong impact of red lights.

With all the frills and many piquant details, the core of the work is the incredible complex architectural structure of the work, that controls the inner composition of each sub-scene, often based on developing phrases that peak into group regimented unisons, which breaks into smaller fragments, yet return to the original rhythmical sense.  There is no end to each scene’s uniqueness in terms of its specific lexicon, yet they always stay true to Be’er’s accumulated corporal vision.

Towards the latter part of the evening, we had the pleasure of watching several duets planted between the otherwise crowded and highly active stage. It was an opportunity to see some of the company’s better dancers. Some were actual eye openers for their surprising strong virtuosic craftsmanship.

At the end, the audience showed its gratitude the conventional way- by intensive hand clapping. The dancer bowed again and again. Then Rami Be’er came up and started to ‘conduct’ his dancers feverishly, running, jumping and actually dancing along the wide frontal line of dancers. Few years ago, he wouldn’t have dared.  Both parties seemed to enjoy the finale tremendously. So did we.