sarma

It is puzzling why Israeli dance companies are seldom presented here.

They are hot festival items worldwide. And the few times we received them, audiences were euphoric.

Last weekend, dance wunderkind Emanuel Gat made his Singapore debut, thanks to key sponsor Braun Buffel.

Comprising two duets and a solo, his triptych was nothing less than pleasurable.

Part of Israel’s young wave of choreographers, Gat is winning a steady name for his stylistic versatility and charisma.

With a shaven head and feral gaze, the 35-year-old talent bears the gait of a man who dumped his army boots to tread barefoot on stage.

He is no rebel but a believer in pure motion, whose motorics include everyday walking steps to emotional gestures and contact improvisation.

Besides a multiple approach in creating movement, his choreography is underpinned by a controlled viscerality.

He follows thus the footsteps of his predecessors – the Kibbutz Dance Company and Batsheva led by Ohad Naharin – who have graced the stage here.

They view the moving body as embodying human depth and thus the representation of human truth.

Such a premise, some would argue, is a choreographic philosophy from the last decade, not hip in today’s penchant for dance that is conceptually overt and intellectually cold.

But when delivered by an artist lirk Gat, familiar charms find their way.

Against a black background and naked white stage, fine sentiments coursed through the first duet, Winter Voyage, set to four lieders from Schubert’s Winterreise, songs of woe and demise.

In silver-grey tunics, Gat and Roy Assaf shuffled their feet as if in thick snow, moving together in sober and silent passages. They paced about and also hopped, making counterpoints but never touching each other.

In his bare-torsoed solo, Happy Birthday, Gat daubed his face with white paint. He swirled his red skirt and arms to stirring Andalusian tunes, collapsing abruptly at the end, a wounded beauty.

Gat’s technical and theatrical range shone in the closing duet, Ana wa Enta (Me and You), where he and Niv Sheinfeld plied through floorwork, using their bodies as playful seesaws.

They were two guys caught in gender trouble, bending psychology and making erotic hints amid Arabic string beats. Both sat on chairs and eyed each other – before springing into action again.

Sheinfeld’s amazing levitational leap into Gat’s arms perhaps summed up the essence of Gat’s world – full of surprise, yet humanly possible.