SACRE

Gat's dancers are attentive and aware, their laborious physicality allowing them to stay alert to others and move with them in expressive gestures, but also to withdraw into themselves. [...] Magical. [...SACRE] is a mesmerizing work that encounters immense desire and a sense of disaster, as if one cannot exist without the other

Like every character in every version of Sacre, the salseros pour their passion into every step. Emanuel Gat has mastered the art of transforming this street dance, refining it into something sharper, rawer, and even more dramatic. It becomes a fictional dance within popular culture, yet fully infused with the pulse of collective energy.

Gat completely deconstructs the narrative idea originally present in the 1913 ballet created by Nijinsky, although emotions of duality, seduction, and conflict still remain in his creation. [...] The friction and tension of a ballroom dance in the epic story told by Stravinsky opens up a completely intriguing new perspective on the legendary reprises that make up this mythical work.

The revival of Sacre is an absolute delight, recalling the initial shock of seeing Emanuel Gat [...] boldly replace Stravinsky’s ritualistic choreography with an explosive, surging salsa. The striking red carpet that defines the performance space [...] clearly demonstrates Gat’s innate ability to solve spatial challenges. The dancers engage in an intense battle, as if their struggle will last all spring.

Second part on that evening was a rendition of Gat’s dance creation SACRE, originally choreographed in 2004. [...] A quarter of a century later, the revised version holds its own and more. Gat used the tightly woven creation, unraveled its fibers, and let the Rite’s guts spill, with their rough edges and even more relevancy.

Then comes Sacre in a wild salsa, magnificent in those moments on the carpet where the two male dancers [...] alternate figures and partners, while the third female dancer inevitably sways alone—until a passing partner picks her up again. [...] A performance bordering on the acrobatic. Yet never monotonous, [...] in a beautifully balanced ebb and flow.

The five dancers come together and part ways in turn, never allowing us to predict who will be the chosen one. The dramatic progression of the music aligns with the dancers’ physical exhaustion, pushing the limits of bodily endurance in this highly refined work. A stunning feat, rightfully appreciated by the audience at Vaison Danses on this warm Provençal summer night.

SACRE demystifies the music. It strips away the literary narrative layered upon it, revealing the raw musical skeleton, the pulsating sound texture, the bloodstream of energy, and the vital core that makes it all throb and come alive. [... Gat's] choreography counters Stravinsky’s musical waves with equally powerful energy surges, making it a worthy adversary to the great composer of the twentieth century.

A bold challenge, met with dazzling brilliance. [...] the performance unfolds in a hypnotic whirlwind, where rigorous elegance meets feverish intensity. [...] As an iconoclastic master of ceremonies, Emanuel Gat—who oversees choreography, costumes, and lighting—crafts a mesmerizing composite ritual. With a singular creative gesture, he restores Le Sacre du Printemps to the full splendor of its modernity.

This is a masterfully planned and precisely executed counterpoint fortress, in which the dancers’ vocabulary is both vast and tiny: its richness supplements Stravinsky’s complex, wild polyrhythms and multi-tonal score, while also making dance, movement visible in its most elemental form: in rhythm. In Gat’s interpretation, time becomes palpable; time as the foundation of movement.