Repertoire

Naharin’s Virus
Ohad Naharin

Peter Handke’s play “Offending the Audience” (1966) challenges the notion of theatre as a space of pretense and representation, breaking down its mechanisms. Time inside the venue and outside it is one and the same. The dancers are simply the bodies they are, and the audience is an active and present partner in crime.

The use of the play deprives the viewers of the suspension of disbelief they crave. The audience becomes a body aware of its physicality, of being an active viewer, of its debasement, singularity, mental flexibility, and ability to undermine world orders.

The spoken, sung, written, and danced text spreads across the stage and comes together to form a concoction of beauty and pain. And when the rhetoric of “us” and “you” collapses, an endless stream of insults is hurled at the crowded hall.

Welcome, you pretentious lowlifes, motherland’s sycophants. You will be moving soon. Get ready.

Choreography: Ohad Naharin
Addaptation to “Offending the Audience” by Peter Handke
Original Music: Karni Postel, Habib Alla Jamal, Shama Khader
Music: Samuel Barber, Carlos D’Alessio, P. Stokes, P. Parsons
Music advisor: Karni Postel
Sound editing: Frankie Lievaart
Text: Peter Handke (excluding the dancers stories)
Translation to Hebrew: Shimon Levy
Text about the Piece: Shira Vitaly
Costumes: Rakefet Levy
Original Cast: Chisato Ono, Sharon Eyal, Yoshifumi Inao, Jeremy Bernheim, Maya Weiser, Mario Zemberano, Inbal Jacoby, Keren Malchit, Yaniv Nagar, Itamar Sahar, Stefan Ferry, Christine Frank, Noa Zuk, Mami Shimazaki, Yael Schnel, Jesper Thirup Hensen
65 Minutes
Originally commissioned for the Batsheva Dance Company
World premiere – March 19, 2001, The Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv Yafo

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