Silent Ballet

January 11, 2017 Julia Gat

Photo by Stephanie Berger

World Premiere on July 1st, 2008 at Montpellier Danse Festival

Dance as a musical score.

An orchestration of movements, this dance piece is using silence as well as its own live sounds, as a dense, thick musical environment, open to endless opportunities for melodic, harmonic and dynamic interpretation.

A self-contained dance, Silent Ballet is a work for 8 dancers, experimenting with different sets of choreographic tools and the transformation they undergo during the process of creation. Starting as parts of a growing physical mechanism, those initial sets of tools holds the DNA of a slow unfolding logic with countless references.

In many ways, Silent Ballet is dealing with dance making itself. It exposes the parts of this fine tuned process and allows a glimpse into the alchemy of physical abstraction.
Questions about dance and beyond are being tackled within a bare landscape, in a dance piece striped to its basic elements.

Press quotes

[...] In “Silent Ballet”, which had its North American premiere, there was no musical soundtrack, but Gat had his dancers create their own with the clatter and squeak of pounding, pivoting feet and the sound of breathing in a dynamic, precise, and demanding work. Although Gat used silence to punctuate the rhythms, the sound of the dance became a powerful partner to the eight performers who took the stage. The piece was choreographed for nine performers; our programs alerted the audience that one dancer of the troupe would not be dancing. Throughout this tightly woven piece, it was hard not to wonder where that other body fit, who was dancing without a partner in parallel, which trio had morphed into a duet. No one seemed to be missing; the dance filled in that gap entirely. Instead of using music to help provide the boundaries and sequence the movement, the bodies in parade set the boundaries. The weaving pattern of the dancers was framed by a large white square that demarcated the performance space and shrunk the large Rose Theater stage. The dance opened to a cacophony of movement. First, one of the two women in the group began to move, viewed by a chorus line of the remaining dancers who watched from the upstage white floor border. Soon, all the rest joined her in a wild mix of kicking legs, swirling arms, sharply angled elbows from positions on the floor and in the air. The chaos morphed into order, as first one pair began their mirrored movements, then others; groups danced together and around each other. Without a soundtrack or tune to mark the time, the synergy of the group created the rhythm, alternating explosion and connectedness. Pools of light and darkness followed the dancers instead of leading them. The audience, in some confusion without the musical cue and with an uncertain dance ending, paused in the darkness before, hesitantly and hopefully, applauding.

Martha Sherman, DanceViewTimes

Silent Ballet negated the notion that Gat relies on music to dictate mood. This group work for nine (eight performed here), underscored the athletic side of dance, and in turn, the theatrical aspects of a sporting event. Breaking out of a line at the beginning, pairs and trios danced as the others stood observing, sometimes from downstage, situated between the audience and the action. The performers watched each other constantly to gauge the timing of their interactions precisely, like teammates. Occasionally, one dancer would become a human soccer ball passed among partners. A surprising amount of sound was generated from squeaking sneakers, footfalls, and exhalations. Gat again showed his gift for lighting, casting a white band across an ensemble tableau, then upending it by fully illuminating the stage. He has a way of taking the conventions of dance and theater, spinning them, and presenting them in fresh, intriguing ways.

Susan Yung, Dance Magazine

[...] Based in France with his company, 39 years old Emanuel Gat planned on being a conductor before discovering dance at the age of 23. It was love at first sight. His movement is pure and refined, a mix of soft lines and overwhelming accuracy. It is the center of his proposition and he refrains from adding outside elements as texts videos etc. In Silent Ballet he also removes the music in order to let the bodies do the talking in total silence. We can hear the puff of dance, the sound of footsteps, the thud, the jumps, the sound of racing dancers. It is a choreography that requires listening in order to perceive the dance. On the vast stage, cut by a horizontal strip of lights, one dancer moves as if dancing on a suspended wire. Others join him covering the entire stage with a forceful and precise dance. Incredibly intricate games of legs and arms combinations develop in a process of mechanical accuracy. Blocks of dancers gather in sculptural forms, immobilized but with an inner dynamic at the same time. Prolonged moments of stagnation with dancers detaching themselves from one block and joining another creating a plastic presence. It is a dance with a deep sense of self-reflection.

Giuseppe Distefano, Cultura e Tempo Libero

[...] Also performing to an enthused audience was Israel's Emanuel Gat Dance Company in the world premiere of a new work, Silent Ballet (which arrives at Sadler's Wells in September). Silent Ballet saw nine dancers dressed in nude tones of grey and beige execute choreography which oscillated between ferocity, speed and steely poise. Much of the movement radiated from the torso, a taut powerhouse in Gat's work - bodies arched, forceful, and at once fluid and articulated. Dance without music can sometimes appear bland and unpunctuated - not so in Silent Ballet. Firstly, the dancers were not entirely silent; the soundscape of their labours filled the auditorium with a percussion of inhalation and exhalation, the whoosh of fabric speeding along the floor and the strikes of feet rebounding between jumps. These strains, often hidden by dancers in performance, allowed the audience to feel the motor, drive and sheer force behind the movement. Groups formed and separated, squared up to one another and exchanged weight in close knit duets. There was a combative quality in much of the work, reminiscent of the Brazilian martial art dance Capoeira, and at all times dancers presented themselves with an inner focus. This resolve manifested itself not in showy extroversion and toothy grins, but in a unified immersion in the movement.

Mary Kate Connolly, LondonDance.com

‘Silent Ballet’ is a bravely mounted and executed contemporary dance piece, which is distinctive, not just for its lack of music, apart from some machine like sounds near its conclusion, but for its stark, everyday, often somewhat repetitive aspects of its choreography. Its movements appear to mimic some of the body movements we all undertake continuously, but do not consciously acknowledge: bending, lifting, dancing, running, jostling for position in crowds. But rather than actually convey these movements, Gat’s choreography merely suggests them, as impressionist painters suggest light in order to offer viewers a feeling of their subject matter. The focus in ‘Silent Ballet’ is solely on the movements of its dancers, which, alternate between moving in semi-unison and seemingly, randomly. The only discernable sound through much of the piece is the light stomping of a bare foot or the faint scrape of my pen across the page. The mood of the piece shifts from benign to threatening as a territorial battle begins with the originally lone dancer surrounded by the company who appear in turns, to be hostile, then wary of him. Industrial sounds, suggestive of crowded public spaces, and body language indicative of cramped environments seems to say as much about the space between the steps of Gat’s dancers as it does about the movements themselves. Whether the piece is about human struggles or simply the lack of presence in moments of everyday life is left to viewers to decide. Much of the piece gives an impression of individuals coming alive after a long deadening day. Without music, the mind tends to focus on the emotion behind the movements. Any way you’re inclined to view it, ‘Silent Ballet’ is a fine reflection on the art of the dance.

Mary Couzens, EXTRA! EXTRA!

Choreography, Lights & Costumes: Emanuel Gat
Created in collaboration with and interpreted by: Hervé Chaussard, Amala Dianor, Andrea Hackl, Pansun Kim, Michael Loehr, Philip Mesia, François Przybylski, Rindra Rasoaveloson.
Length: 35 minutes
Production: Emanuel Gat Dance
Co-Production: Montpellier Danse Festival, Festival RomaEuropa, Sadlers Wells, Lincoln Center Festival, Maison des Arts de Créteil, Régie Culturelle Scènes et Cinés Ouest Provence