Vertigo Dance Company at Suzanne Dellal Dance Center: Mana (Vessel of Light)
Mana dances the tension between container and contained, exterior and interior, whole and hollow.
And what is installed first, vessel or light?
Does the Sun rise to fill in the absence of Moonlight, or rather is it the lack of Moonlight that creates the inspiration of its vessel, container of light?
(Based on the Zohar)
This timeless tale follows the flow in black and white, with few specks of ruddy-warm. The bewitching-dark night stands in still, mystical contrast to the milky-white house, symmetrically centered in its simple stable form on stage.
Geometric shapes will now act out the dialogue between feminine and masculine, draw the drama between the forces of life that forever struggle to compliment each other:
Feminine: circular, soft black balloon, hanging like a full moon, up above the house
Masculine: pointy, sharp angular triangular roof, edgy rectangular door, protruding
Feminine: curve and crave in sensual, spiral hip-stirred movements
Masculine: stride, high-strung, across the stage in “connect-the-dot”-like linear routes
Both forces aspire to escape the hollow and reach the whole in this quest to be holistically contained and content. The visual image interlaced throughout the show is of a black balloon attached to a dancer, pulling her up, tall, stretching out for perfection, her white legs long and strong, trotting like a royal horse in a parade.
At first glance, the fully dressed, almost orthodox, costumes communicate a puritan, reserved modesty. But quite quickly, a bare foot peeking under heavy garment, an escaping white shoulder, a curving contour, a tight waistline, a hip, lend to a sensual, lustful, communication. The free-fall back bends and suicidal leaps shatter the quiet, restrained recital.
The music drapes the dancers like a fitted gown, in sync, in tune. I play the soundtrack CD over and over and give in to the lyric mood quietly setting in. Ran Bagno, who has been working hand in hand with Vertigo’s mom and pap (Noa and Adi), wrote the score and played all the instruments, except for percussion, tapped by Dani Makov. I sit with Bagno over Cappuccino on a sunny winter day in down town Tel Aviv and ask him about the creative process of piecing music for this show. “Unlike some other dances, Mana isn’t a collage of fragmented scenes,” he says, “rather, it’s composed as a single, comprehensive piece. When Noa came out with the idea of a ‘vessel holding light’ I struggled to find just the right musical instrument to fit in…until I stumbled over my kid’s old, abandoned guitar. Something about its virgin, broken, acoustic sound was perfect for infusing the muse.”
Watching the fluid flow of movement on stage, I’m reminded of Alexander Calder’s art—capturing compound sketches in one single line stroke. The expression captured in Manna carries the visual aesthetics of calligraphy: fine brush, dipped in black ink, forms a black blotch over snow white paper. Then, in a single skilled hand, it drifts, pulling up tall, lying low, and spiraling all the way through.
Vertigo Dance Company founded the pea-green Eco Art Village, where they live and create in a little utopian planet of clean air and fresh manure: http://www.eco-artvillage.org/index_eng.asp. This might explain why their work is genuinely untainted, raw and earthly.
