BRILLIANT CORNERS

Since 1957, Brilliant Corners was solely known as the title of a landmark album by Thelonious Monk. From now on, it will also be remembered as a fascinating piece by Emanuel Gat. [...] Each dancer shines in the most hidden corners of the stage, exchanging glances, occasionally resting on the edges but always present. The solos burst forth, showcasing the distinct personalities within the group. One never tires of this dance—inescapable, relentless, and profoundly true.

Gat uses a darkened stage with a simple rectangle of light as his performing space. In that, his dancers march on and form a group. Wave-like, the group flows, pauses, releases; it reforms, regroups, a cycle of swelling movement of the group en masse, while the individual dancers within move to different rhythms and speeds. It is like watching both the great waves and the small drops of water at one and the same time.

Over the course of sixty minutes, the piece experiments with the perceptual dimensions of sound, time, and movement in space. [...] The result is deeply harmonious, a shared experience of cohesion. The silent, highly disciplined premiere audience at PACT Zollverein was striking. No surprise, given how much attention this work demands.

Ten outstanding dancers in carefully selected everyday clothes form, at the beginning, a heterogeneous group that moves across the stage together. [...] How individuals emerge from the large group movement, fall into a second, smaller group sequence, which in the next moment disintegrates into different solos – this is striking in its laid-back ease and continually surprises.

Emanuel Gat brilliantly reaffirms the vitality of the Israeli dance scene, even though his path differs slightly from the norm. [...] Abstraction is key here, yet this community of dancers—always on the edge, never leaving the stage—feels like the cast of a dance film. Survivors, in their own way. [...] Brilliant Corners largely delivers on its promise, solidifying Emanuel Gat’s place in 21st-century dance.

An intense, spellbinding and demandingly dense work. [...] On the shadowy stage, the dancers are constantly hyper-alert to each other's presence, yet there is no sense of personal connection: encounters are makeshift, they barely touch and their eyes scan each other for signs, rather than registering recognition. So although they clearly belong to the same group, the effect is of a piercing existential solitude.

The ten dancers, in street clothes, are relaxed and grounded. Deep pliés are smooth and sure; legs swing high without strain. Gat and his dancers enjoy playing with phrasing. In one sequence, the whole company try out slow, flowing movements, then finish the sequence with a snap. They don't dance in unison, but work out variations on a step or a mood.

What a pleasure it is to witness this work unfold like a daring human endeavor, full of risk and adventure. And what joy to watch, second by second, as its intricate web of codes and signs gradually reveals a dazzlingly pure formal perfection. This precision in movement not only captures the individuality of each dancer with incredible authenticity but also contributes to the collective portrait of a group. [...] Absolutely brilliant.

Gat has composed his own Brilliant Corners, as he sees choreography and composition as deeply similar processes. [...] "I seek movements that do not strive for meaning or beauty but instead convey truth in an immediate and intimate way—a form of honesty and morality." It is an idealistic formula, with which this "contemporary classicist" strives for goodness and truth, inevitably producing something else along the way: beauty.

Are Israeli choreographers taking over the contemporary dance world? It certainly seems so. [...] Sinuous, yet taught with control, pure dance is mixed with the ordinary act of running, the odd snatch of playful interaction. A glorious pedestrian-ism, with few ostentatious leaps or lifts, just breathtakingly elegant natural movement stretched, slowed, sped-up and syncopated beyond all familiar recognition into something gorgeous.

A dance like a soft knit through which one flows between the threads; that embraces the shapes of the body without losing its elasticity. A dance, a textile second skin, that dresses while caressing, envelops while leaving free. These soft sensations flow through Emanuel Gat’s Brilliant Corners. [...] The cohesion of the performers gives Brilliant Corners its strength. It is a testament to Emanuel Gat’s working method, where he enters the rehearsal studio without a plan, relying on the quality of relationships to bring the piece to life.

With Brilliant Corners [Emanuel Gat] elevates himself and positions his work at the forefront of European debate. [...] A total of 10 high-performance dancers, meticulously selected, allow Emanuel Gat to craft a syncopated and complex composition, sometimes irritably dry, within a meticulous abstraction, featuring prominent reflex arcs and rapid vital responses that sustain the dynamics. [...] Brilliant Corners is a revelatory break.

The choreographic language is rich, and the style fluid. The wealth of lexical details employed deserves appreciation. Gat invents singular movements for the nine dancers on stage—each performing their own choreography. This multiplicity reveals the depth of the choreographic work, enhanced by the fluidity of the gestures, which seamlessly create a series of unified tableaux. [...] This Parisian premiere was undoubtedly a success.

All exceptional performers, his dancers resemble flickering flames in an incandescent fire—free electrons magnetically drawn to one another by an invisible force.[...] They embody not so much a unified ensemble as a constellation of individual presences. Yet this organic, shifting collective follows precise rules of movement and spatial regrouping, allowing a strange and poignant beauty to emerge in its sudden flashes of brilliance.

Brilliant Corners is composed of a multitude of carefully assembled details. It is both complex and simple—complex in its structures, yet simple and direct in its ability to communicate the immediacy and intimacy of a human dramatic situation. [...] It encourages letting go of the need for interpretative abundance and instead focusing on seeing more, hearing more, and feeling more—fully engaging with the experience offered by choreographic reality.

The choreography, built on intricate counterpoints of rhythmic and melodic layers, comes to life in each body, held in static tension, then explodes simultaneously in multiple points of space in an apparently discordant manner. [...] The choreographic process refined by Gat marks another captivating chapter in the exploration of the body’s energy and its boundless potential yet to be discovered.

Watching Brilliant Corners you experience a sense of having to winch your way towards its charms rather than being drawn in by its innate magnetism. The work doesn't attempt to be appealing, yet its sandpaper approach has an unexpected attraction. The main draw is the dancers, who are able and focused. They run and jump in complex loops without bumping into each other, and then pose in scarecrow duets and rag-taggity patterns.

Simplicity, delicacy, and lightness intertwine like threads on a canvas. [...] The visual impact and the collectivity of the movements are the elements that make Brilliant Corners a minimalist performance— also due to the occasionally absent or always very essential music— that must be seen for its compositional beauty, in which not only the corners but the entire stage becomes brilliant.

There are works whose creation process would be just as exciting to follow as the result on stage. Brilliant Corners definitely belongs in this category. The ten dancers, each with very different backgrounds and styles, form an organic connection, whose kinetic energy stretches, contracts, accelerates, or almost comes to a halt, yet continues to flow constantly.

Brilliant Corners demands great concentration from the audience. [...] "Great dancers!" was the first thing one might say afterward, followed by uncertainty, as words fail to grasp the variety on display. [...] The indescribable, however, is still meticulously organized, based on preset rules that evolve from the situation. It’s a complex structure that could be seen as a model for social or learning processes.

Gat’s dance language is pure and technically refined. Watching the virtuosic ensemble—composed of dancers with diverse backgrounds—is a pleasure. [...] Dancers play a crucial role in Gat’s work, which places the notion of space—both literally and figuratively—at its core. In Brilliant Corners [...] he juxtaposes the individual and the group, shaping the work through jazz principles. At times, this results in brilliant, enchanting moments.

The audience [...] has the chance to witness the evolution of a dance in which the personality of each dancer stands out throughout the performance. [...] The choreographer doesn’t seek to control the final result of the performance. This creates a dynamic between the dancers, inviting a constant rediscovery of the choreography. [...] By focusing on the connections between individuals, and the energies and dynamics they generate, Emanuel Gat offers a metaphor for human relationships.