GOLD

In Gold, Emanuel Gat’s universe takes on a more spiritual dimension, incorporating excerpts from a radio work by Glenn Gould—a brilliant blend of music and voice. [...] The dancers move with freedom and serenity, embodying a language that is more graphic than sensual. Yet here, the body speaks through its very presence. The dance arrives like the cherry on top—a gilding of pure spirituality.

Emanuel Gat’s choreography could be considered the dance-world counterpart to Gould’s musical universe, as both artists masterfully fuse sensuality with intellectual rigor and raw emotion. [...] Gat overlays an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations with a poetic radio documentary. [...] The result is an intense interplay of music and dance, through which profound human relationships unfold.

The abstraction in this second part is radical. [...] What is beautiful here is the listening that circulates between the performers. A sensitive listening to the music, and a listening to the group and the space. The variations in speed are numerous, the bursting and fusion of the body a recurring logic here, and the lifts and other physical contacts between the partners form a language just as shared.

So, Gold, first, where Janis Joplin's a cappella voice (Mercedes Benz) is added to that of Gould, before the arrival of the piano, after the bells and the choirs, a whole jumble of somewhat chaotic sounds that reflect on the dancers' performance—inventive, excessive, sometimes absurd in the style of the Monty Python's foolish steps, or reminiscent of the animal kingdom when it crawls, twists, untwists, or tries to take flight. Both disjointed and fascinating!

The entire choreography is quite graphic: as if the unknown letters of an unknown language come alive on stage, tracing their lines on the striped pages of the white space. [...] Let there be no misunderstanding: the letters do not acquire personalities. But neither do they remain cold, indifferent lines—it’s as if I’m looking at handwriting that still carries the warmth of the writer’s hand.

Emanuel Gat develops a choreography as dense and dynamic as the sound material from which it is inspired, composed in the manner of a fugue [...] and underpinned by a meticulous observation of human relationships. Metaphorically telling a family story, GOLD provokes intense correspondences between gesture and thought, music and dance, the individual and the collective. The whole piece shines with a deep brilliance.

The invisible is visible, even when another pair or trio’s movement draws our attention to the farthest/opposite edge of the stage. The inside and outside are simultaneously present on stage—and this creates the possibility for a different kind of theatricality, for expanding the theatrical play, exposing and piercing the silent agreement and complicity between audience and performer.

GOLD is a miracle of choreographic counterpoint. [...] The writing is almost transparent in that it is made up of connections and encounters between bodies that intertwine or separate, leaving spaces within the very fabric of movement, as if to better materialize silence. With sharp intelligence and quiet splendor, GOLD releases the intense emotion of an unvarnished dance.