The internationally renowned Batsheva Dance Company was founded in 1964 by US modern dance icon Martha Graham at the behest of her patroness Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, with the aim of promoting modern dance in Israel. Ohad Naharin joined in 1974 first as a dancer, eventually becoming its artistic director between 1990 and 2018, and now serves as its resident choreographer. But Naharin and Batsheva are also famous for GAGA, an extremely expressive and sensorial movement language — now practised and taught all over the world — developed by Naharin himself. GAGA stimulates the search for freedom by looking at corporeal awareness and a deep connection within the body.

 

Two souls and two paths

MOMO, choreographed by Naharin, was co-created with the company members and former dancer Ariel Cohen. The music, a recorded score edited by Naharin under his alter ego Maxim Waratt, ranges from minimalism to more lyrical and elegiac tones, featuring, among others, Laurie Anderson with the Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass, and Arca.

The programme notes state that “[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 a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA”.

Regarding the origins of the word “MOMO”, it is something of a mystery that opens up multiple possibilities for understanding. It would actually seem that its meaning derives from the Japanese word “mo”, which translates as “also”. This appears plausible because, as we will see shortly, the two different souls are potentially represented by the two different groups on stage. But as the dancers themselves pointed out, MOMO also works as an acronym for “Magic of Missing Out”. Incidentally, it would also appear that Naharin’s dog is actually named Momo. Then, although probably not directly related, here in Germany when we read the word “Momo”, we can’t help but think of Micheal Ende’s (famous for writing The Neverending Story) eponymous fantasy novel, which featured a little girl called Momo and her struggle against the “Grey Gentlemen”, thieves of other people’s time.

The light in the theatre hall is still on, the audience are still taking their seats, and four male dancers enter the stage, but their presence is not immediately felt. They are bare-chested and barefoot, dressed in cargo trousers, military green. As the house lights go out and the stage lights come on, an eerie dark grey wall can be seen on the backdrop of the stage.

The quartet always moves in unison and in a highly coordinated formation, moving forward, stopping, intersecting with each other by bringing their hands to their ankles, and then to their mouths, and finally by rolling. Every now and then, they stop and emit a sound that is something between the visceral and the military. Sometimes caricatured, sometimes aggressive, they accentuate their concept of dominant masculinity through citations of traditional dances and military formations.

Little by little, the other seven dancers enter, alone or in small groups: they are mainly dressed in pastel-coloured or earth-tone leotards, tutus, corsets, and short dance jumpsuits. Their movement language is diametrically opposed to the quartet: their bodies use elastic dynamics to the utmost, they propel themselves employing gravity-defying leaps, dangerous off-axes, extreme head-stands, and endless, sensual cambrès. Unlike the quartet, they are not homogeneous and are characterised by highly personal movements, searching for a kind of hedonism. If the four are reminiscent of the military, these newcomers might represent queerness and everything that cannot be regimented, such as the arts, perhaps. The two distinct groups seem to be observing each other but do not come into either contact or conflict, for most of the piece’s 70-minute duration.

The dual character inevitably offers fragmented visions and interpretations. Immersed in dim light, almost a constant twilight, and in a soundscape of multiple flavours, the choreographic composition, expressed by the two distinct groups, embodies a constant dialectic between visceral sadness and disruptive joy. Surely, the movement quality and vocabulary manage to evoke in the dancers’ corporeality a telluric and ancestral tone, almost in reference to ancient archetypes.

At one point, the four climb the wall and sit on inserts, observing the others from above, as if hanging, a mix between guards and buddhas. The other dancers bring in portable bars like those used in ballet. To the music of Glass, they begin sequences contaminated by academic language, a kind of heartbreaking movement reminiscent of The Dying Swan. However, their contemporary physicality differs from that of the classical dancers. A dancer in her white mini tutu evokes a Degas ballerina, but with a body expression as if driven by the wind. The bars also become a means of climbing, like in pole dancing. Then they, too, crawl up on the wall.

To Mother Acapella by Arca, the four break up their firm formation, until they generate a line with the other soloists and stop altogether. They all dance together for a while, remaining in their own place, repeating the same sequences. For a few, very brief moments, I feel like they are looking for each other, all trying to be one, until a dancer gives a firm blow on the shoulder of one of the quartet, the impact of which generates a kind of gentleness with the quartet. This, however, is only fleeting and results in the division into two lines: the quartet on one side and the other seven soloists on the other. Finally, the soloists climb up the wall and walk on it until they disappear behind it, and the quartet leave the stage in a military formation.

Although the performance was of their customary high level, I had the sense that the company was subdued, as if they could not always express that complete freedom and carnality of GAGA-informed movement. If this is truly the type of creation to openly manifest frailties and vulnerabilities, almost as if seeking introspection (unlike perhaps the famous Decadance (2000) where the bodies were ready to “smash everything”), to me the dancers seemed mentally “preoccupied”, as if clouded somehow.

In the final scene, where the two groups of dancers take different directions, we are left with no promise of one integrated resolution. In this dual game that unites conflicting and parallel forces, our search for meaning is lost in the intangible energy flow that has just passed us by. Although our eyes and senses remain full of staggering beauty, an inevitable feeling of emptiness emerges, a lack, a missed opportunity, perhaps. However, the two different paths represent the possibility of making two different choices: again that double “mo” returns, that “also” plus “also”, where “also” is perhaps just another possibility, another interpretation.

“Together, we’ve lost”, said Naharin in the Haaretz journal (2024), referring to the inability to emerge from the events of 7 October with a political solution. Although MOMO was created long before these events and the ones that followed for almost a year and half, its formation seemed to anticipate this moment, and above all provides a mirror to a tragic ongoing situation.

In this enigmatic piece, open to different interpretations, we see two different corporealities which might represent two possibilities; these corporealities do not meet, or rather they meet, they enter slightly into touch, but then each one continues down its own path. At the same time, these two worlds do not clash, but interact on the same field. So if on the one hand it seems like a reflection on something that cannot be sewn up, something irremediable, it can also represent a lay prayer to stand in the change.

 

Written from performance of 18 January 2025, Berliner Festspiele, Berlin.

 

MOMO

Choreography: Ohad Naharin
Co-creation: The Batsheva Dance Company dancers and Ariel Cohen
Cast (Batsheva Dance Company season 2024 – 2025 dancers): Yarden Bareket, Emil Brukman, Adi Blumenreich, Nathan Chipps, Holden Cole/Sean Howe, Guy Davidson, Londiwe Khoza, Adrienne Lipson, Bo Matthews, Igor Ptashenchuk, Yoni (Yonatan) Simon
Lighting design: Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi) 
Set and props design: Gadi Tzachor
Costume design: Eri Nakamura
Sound design and editing: Maxim Waratt
Music: Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet from the album Landfall/Metamorphosis II by Philip Glass / Madre Acapella by Arca/Maxim Waratt