Last Work

An aura of the ephemeral shimmers through the energetic, dense dance piece Last Work by choreography legend Ohad Naharin. A sense of clarity and reflection, as if in the center of a hurricane. Unperturbed, a person in the background runs through the scenery. Seemingly fleeing or light-footedly dreamy, this body does not move from the spot. 18 other dancers fill the space with the movement language so characteristic of the Batsheva Dance Company: expansive bodies, deep lunges or quotations from traditional Israeli dance formations such as the circular hora. For all its dynamism, Last Work is defined by a subdued calm and meditative underlying tension, carried alongside the dance by the electronic sounds of German DJ Grischa Lichtenberger. After the highly acclaimed re-staging of Sadeh 21 in the 2018/19 season, Naharin returns with another task for the dancers of the Hessisches Staatsballett.

«Ohad Naharin’s pieces may well recall a current political context, but they are also universal and timeless. They are sparing yet rich in detail, drawn with precision in space, each bend or beat of the hand, each plunge into angular twists, each imperious embrace of the other conveying an extra nuance of emotion.»

Sylvia Staude, Frankfurter Rundschau

«Grischa Lichtenberger’s music floats for a long, almost meditative moment, while in the background a dancer in a blue dress jogs lightly on a treadmill. Like a human metronome, she sets the tempo of the danced evening, which at the end bursts into images and movement.»

Stefan Benz, Wiesbadener Kurier

«Last Work[…] slices through the brain like a warning against snap judgements, black and white sorting, the inertia of thought and feeling. This is how we might interpret ‘Last Work’, which is never explicitly stated.»

Melanie Suchy, FAZ