WORKS (2017) - world premiere on June 30th, 2017 at Festival Montpellier Danse (FR)
WORKS (2019) - world premiere on October 4th, 2019 at the Suzanne Dellal center in Tel Aviv (IL)

WORKS was originally created as a collaboration between Emanuel Gat Dance and Le Ballet de Lyon, mixing ten dancers from each company. Two years after its creation, Emanuel recreated a new version with dancers only from Emanuel Gat Dance, further developing the ideas and themes explored in the first version of the work. 

WORKS is a dance piece celebrating dancers. Their uniqueness, virtuosity, engagement, fearlessness, sense of responsibility and humanity. A group of 10 dancers, all long time collaborators of Emanuel Gat Dance, sharing years of a joint artistic collaboration as well as an intimate knowledge of Gat’s creative process, fill the stage in a frantic succession of choreographic fragments evolving through various constellations, formats, musical environments and choreographic procedures.

WORKS is in many ways a reaction to the changing times and to the constant evolution of how dance, and art in general, is being created and produced. It is an attempt to question old boundaries and hierarchies, to foster a new redistribution of artistic responsibilities and resources.

 A stream of choreographic consciousness, WORKS navigates freely between questions of scale, decision making, collaborative strategies, notions of efficiency and clarity, real time choreography, theatrical approaches and musical interpretations, in order to reveal the inner logics and mechanics of human behaviours.

WORKS is personal journey of ten individuals looking for connection. A complex choreographic structure and at the same time, a dance reduced to its most fundamental elements, where dancers are ‘driving’ the work and recreating it each time anew, examining the role of the performer as an onstage, live creator.

Dialogue gives rise to subgroups emerging within the group. The gesture fires the smallest details, fingers that point or make “horns” […]. It follows or contradicts the directions taken by the dancers who form flows, efface them, dissolve, invent, arise. The conversation game conducted by […] brilliant and fully invested dancers multiplies the unexpected forms, combines the most diverse feelings and leaves the viewer speechless. As if he saw before his eyes, in a joyous and abundant outpouring, the birth of and death of the salt of life itself.

Ariane Bavelier, Le Figaro

That the dancers gaze at each other’s eyes on the stage - an obvious fact that is not always present in the artificial context of the show - is also one of the strengths of WORKS by the Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat, presented on July 2nd at the Agora. The […] performers of this production […] are always in contact. They transform a learned score into a magical game that prefers the fragility of the moment to technical perfection.

The gestural flow of Gat is reminiscent of the “flow” of the rappers whose language is modulated in variations constantly renewed. A jubilation of the halo movement each of the interpreters who form a body with all. Regularly, the dancers release numbers and words that lead to a change of course. On Bach or a quartet of tubas, a live, exciting and beautiful dance that takes time to breathe and smile.

Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde

Credits

Choreography, lights: Emanuel Gat

Music:
- Richard Strauss, Im Abendrot. Gewandhausorchester directed by Kurt Masur – Singer : Jessye Norman.
- Emanuel Gat, MnM
- Emanuel Gat, SARA
- J.S Bach, The well tempered clavier, book 2 Prelude #4 in C Sharp minor BWV 873, Piano : Glenn Gould
- Chick-P, Business Bach
- Irving Berlin, They Say It’s Wonderful, The Chordettes
- Awir Leon, MANU 15
- Nina Simone, Sinnerman, (Live in New-York, 1965)

Costumes: Thomas Bradley, Emanuel Gat

Created in collaboration with and performed by: Thomas Bradley, Robert Bridger, Péter Juhász, Michael Löhr, Emma Mouton, Eddie Oroyan, Genevieve Osborne, Karolina Szymura, Milena Twiehaus, Sara Wilhelmsson

Production: Emanuel Gat Dance
Coproduction: Festival Montpellier Danse, Scène Nationale d’Albi
Coproduction Milena & Michael: Maison de la Danse de Lyon
With the help of Conseil Départemental des Bouches-du-Rhône and the Région Sud - Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Emanuel Gat Dance acknowledges the support of the city of Istres, of the French Ministry of Culture and of the DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

Created at the Agora - cité internationale de la danse and Maison de la danse d’Istres.

Press articles