Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company: transported outside the ordinary

If originality is the measure of excellent choreography, then Rami Be'er of Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company surely deserves the highest recognition for his achievement with his piece Ekodoom. Add to that the fact that all of the (numerous) dancers in his company are themselves outstanding artists, and you have a completely absorbing piece of dance that transported me well outside the confines of the ordinary.

Before the lights came down, there was a single female dancer, with muddy looking make up all up her arms and legs, in a large box - with the front cut open - and the box had a tree coming out from behind it. The dancer in the box was writhing and struggling and waving her mane of hair around frantically, in a way that suggested something close to agony. To be honest, this section turned me off at the very start. It made me groan inwardly and think of some kind of sexualized version of Tarzan's Jane in a box, signifying...what? I wasn't entirely sure.

However, my uncertainty about the point of the box and tree didn't last, as the rest of the dance quickly grew into a very striking work that covered aesthetic territory from primal stew to cartoony humour and ruminated on any number of heavy themes.

The choreography moved smoothly from incorporating as many as 15 dancers to sections of solo work and duets, and utilized the full range of these talented dancers' strength and flexibility.

The first section of the piece grabbed me immediately, in part because of its striking use of lighting. The dancers lined up in rows of threes at the back of the stage and, as though marching, made their way, one by one, to the front. But what was so visually gripping about this moment was that each dancer was wearing a robe that almost looked medieval, and as they advanced towards the front, the dancers all held their hoods aloft, high above their heads, as though extending their bodies skyward. As this section was starkly lit from the back, the result appeared to be a series of massive, shadowy figures hooded in an almost frightening way as, perhaps a medieval executioner or even a Klan member moving towards the audience in a way that was haunting, macabre.

Be'er's choreography was full of such moments where the costumes, lights and music were fully utilized to create a powerful synergy of elements that was, at all times, tremendously kinetic, dynamic and richly textured.

Another striking moment came when the dancers entered the stage, each one carrying a chair that would be used by each dancer as the partner in a duet, and then as a prop allowing them to rock back and forth and shake manically, transforming the dance from grace to frenzy in an instant. After the frenzy, came the comedy when one dancer entered wearing an exaggerated version of touristy bathing costume and carrying a parasol, while the dancers on the chairs continued their rocking into surreal-land. All of this section was colourful - each of the chairs was a different colour - and the bathing costume was a flurry of loud yellows, and for a time I felt that we had been brought into a Dr. Seuss-esque landscape of the absurd. However, after the levity a lone female dancer emerged, this time clothed in all white, and a delicate, soft snow began to fall on her. There was a total shift in mood as the stage became a wintry landscape and the dancers came back out in their capes, absorbing the snow, moving through it purposefully, again, almost marching. It was at this point that the dancers turned away from the audience, seized the black curtains on the sides and at the back of the stage, and yanked them down, exposing the nakedness behind the stage and drawing my awareness back to the fact that this was a performance, and making me realize how absorbed I had been in the world of Rami Be'er. A gradual, graceful end to this piece had the repetition over and over of a soundtrack that sang "Everybody gets a little lost sometimes."

Indeed, I was happily lost in this work for its nearly hour and half, and with its rich creativity, magnificent dancing and imaginative use of all of the stage elements, Be'er and his dancers' world is a place I would gladly get lost again.