The Batsheva Dance Company: “MOMO has Two Souls”
The Batsheva Dance Company. MOMO. Photo credit: Ascaf.
January 2023. The Batsheva Dance Company is currently presenting its new work MOMO in Tel Aviv and on other Israeli stages. In March and April 2023, the company will take the piece on tour to France and Switzerland. Collaborating with the company’s dancers and Ariel Cohen, Batsheva’s house choreographer Ohad Naharin has created another masterpiece. The production’s haunting soundtrack consists mostly of the album Landfall by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet, a collaboration inspired by Anderson’s experience of Hurricane Sandy. Costumes were designed by Batsheva dancer and costume designer Eri Nakamura.
MOMO has Two Souls
The short program notes handed out at the performance explain: “MOMO has two souls. One sends long roots to the depths of the earth – a soul that embodies archetypes and myths of hardened, raw masculinity, and the other is in constant search for an individual and distinct DNA. . . “
Making Sense of Life
Art helps us make sense of life by translating reality into a different medium, but the best art is always open to interpretation. It allows you to see in it what you feel inside yourself. MOMO is so charged with meaning that you inevitably try to interpret every movement you see on stage. Two types of dancers are set against each other in an unspoken contest: a tight group of four men, and a loose assortment of seven individuals who appear on stage to bare their souls.
The production opens with the group of four men: they walk on stage dressed in cargo pants, their upper bodies bare. The group is completely uniform, their individuality has receded to an extent that they look like sleepwalkers. Each of the four men seems to find his meaning in fulfilling his role inside the group, they move like four limbs of one body. There is a melancholic sadness in the gentle, earthy movements of the group – but also an immense trust and physical understanding of each other. The seven “individuals” who appear on stage are searching, anxious, even frantic, and alone - but they are also glittering, shimmering and intriguing in their individuality.
The Batsheva Dance Company. MOMO. Photo credit: Ascaf.
Gradually, but inevitably, the pull of the group proves stronger than the yearning for individuality. It is an infinitely sad victory as the dancers gently spin with blank faces, standing next to each other in a long line along the ramp of the stage. But can a group ever completely absorb and repress the unique emotions of every individual? MOMO’s spinning line is never perfect. There is always one dancer who briefly leaves the communal movement, bursting into a short exploration of his or her own self. And one member of the group hasn’t given up hope that there could be someone out there who might offer true comfort and belonging: shouting an increasingly desperate greeting into the distance, the dancer is looking for someone to overcome the endless loneliness of falling in line with a group you don’t want to belong to.
The Batsheva Dance Company. MOMO. Photo credit: Ascaf.
On a Personal Note
I watched MOMO a few days before moving from Tel Aviv to Berlin in January 2023, after having lived in Israel for almost fourteen years. After the performance, my husband, our two children and I joined a rally of 80,000 people on Habima Square, home to Israel’s national theatre company Habima and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The rally was against Israel’s racist, illiberal new government and its criminal, dictatorial and violent tendencies. As I watched MOMO, I was thinking about what is happening in Israel today. But I was also watching the performance as a non-Jewish German and as a historian who has spent most of her life writing about ballet and culture under the Soviet dictatorship. I was thinking about the history of my own country, about my adopted country, and about Russia’s descent into total darkness after its invasion of Ukraine. I was thinking about the human desire to belong to a group: human beings are social animals. We have always lived in packs. We crave human connections. Only very few people would be willing to go through life without any meaningful human relationships. But each of us is also completely unique. This inherent tension between the dreams and desires of the individual and the demands of the group is at the heart of much of human history – and has inspired many works of artistic creation.