SUNNY

Sunny, the hit song by Bobby Hebb, [...] serves as the heartbeat of a luminous dance piece. Emanuel Gat grants his dancers great freedom, yet unites them as if they were part of a concert, a celebration, a ritual. [...] Premiered at the Montpellier Danse festival in 2017, Sunny is refined yet accessible dance—human, sensitive, and mesmerizing.

Energizing Sunny by Emanuel Gat and Awir Leon at the Philharmonie. [...] The audience trembles with their own desire to dance while the dancers of the company weave their web between individuality and collectivity, with the thread of music provided by Leon. Joy circulates through the room and the bodies. One leaves the performance charged with contained energy.

What an excellent, varied, and carefully thought-out ensemble. The younger dancers contribute with virtuosic fluidity and exuberant energy, while the "older" dancers (+35) bring a compelling unpretentiousness and genius of movement, as seen in (Swedish) Sara Wilhelmsson and the giant of the stage, Michael Loehr.

[Emanuel Gat] knows how to work precisely with specific compositions, movement connections, and phrases. The dancers are very clear about what and how they are to dance. Phrases of solos, duets, and small groups are layered one over another. The choreography thus appears as an unorganized chaos, yet it still forms a cohesive compositional whole.

The sound score leads, somewhat inevitably, to the feeling of a playlist – each scene a separate “song”, one trancey, one dreamy, one upbeat and so on – but the choreographic material is far more connected, thanks to Gat’s awesome compositional skills. [...] Although each scene has its different character [...] the recurrent motifs make the material both coherent and varied.

This is a luxurious choreography—but not a luxury tied to money. Instead, it is a luxury of time, evoking the feeling of playful days by the beach, lazy afternoons in a lounge, or the expectant hours before a party (one that someone else is hosting). [...] One’s associations are free to roam, and it is precisely this sense of freedom that makes it so pleasurable to step into the world Emanuel Gat creates.

This stunning piece [...] set the Montpellier night ablaze. [...] It is impossible to say whether the choreography or the live music is the more mesmerizing element of SUNNY, as they are so seamlessly interwoven. The audience’s gaze shifts fluidly between the singer-musician’s captivating performance and the dancers’ fluid, delicate, yet intense movements.

With an almost cinematic sensitivity to the precise distance between bodies, it is these approaches and withdrawals that weave the entire dramaturgy of the piece, giving it its inimitable color. [...] A joyous choreography emerges, beautifully crafted, highly original in its vocabulary, dazzling in its combinatory play, and intelligent in the way it intertwines virtuosic dance with everyday gestures.

It wasn’t a new show—yet it felt like one! At Cité de la Musique, Emanuel Gat’s Sunny found itself transformed, as if placed in an arena. The result? Astonishing. [...] The direct connection between performers and spectators replaced much of the original mystery. By the end, the space theoretically allowed for audience members to join the dancers on stage.

With ten dancers and live music by Awir Leon—himself a former dancer turned electronic musician—Gat lets the sun shine in, offering a free-flowing exploration of bodily expression and liberation. [...] Gat embraces an unconventional choreographic language, masterfully embodied by his dancers, winning over the audience with his singular vision.

It's a beautiful thing to watch these performers flood the stage, and see the games they play with the surfaces they share and the space they occupy. [...] Ultimately, Sunny is about the joyful engagement of bodies, the heavenly and the human, and on that level it is a strong creative achievement. And the audience did go absolutely mad for it.

SUNNY by Emanuel Gat is a blast of pleasures. Gat is one of the rare artists of the moment who puts forward a notion of research. His writing is a continuous flux of new sensations. Together with Awir Leon on stage, SUNNY offers some of the most beautiful sequences of the season. The richness of composition, the intelligenceof changing moods and colors, renders SUNNY a choreographic miracle.

Emanuel Gat delivers a master piece, [...] Gat stays loyal to his way. Beyond the dance itself ,which evolves freely to the point of virtuosity, its a piece tainted by the relations created between the dancers. Stretches of silence, costumes, games, piercing looks and bursts of laughter create a world overflowing with youth and cheerfulness.

The dance feels charmingly casual, as if just happening in the moment, yet it is meticulously crafted with subtle intricacies. The movement language is anything but worn-out; instead, it captivates with many quirky, unexpected details. [... SUNNY] seems to address something universally human. Perhaps it can be said that it deals, in a broad sense, with our interactions with one another.

In more ways than one, SUNNY is a luminous creation—a performance featuring exceptionally talented dancers with an undeniable radiance, a choreography that is both intricate and effortlessly clear, and a meticulously crafted lighting design. [...] Awir Leon’s sonic landscape is crucial, freeing the imagination while existing in perfect harmony with Gat’s choreography. A truly remarkable achievement.

When asked if he dances in SUNNY, he laughs and mentions Cunningham, joking that perhaps, at seventy, he’ll perform a solo. For now, he’s too satisfied with what he sees—the trust between him and his dancers, most of whom have been with him for seven or eight years. He watches them with admiration. Through them, he sees a SUNNY full of contrasts—both joyful and melancholic, just as life can be.

With a blast of appropriately intense white sunlight, the week began with Sunny, a meditation on time passing and the myriad possibilities of human interaction. In contrast to last week's wonderfully hypnotic Greek Elvedon, this show shifted gear and deftly focused on a freeform day teeming with exuberant live music and movement, with energy and optimism.

Gat has reached such a level of serene mastery in his composition that everything seems to unfold in whims, games, and reversals—dizzy with freedom yet pinned to a virtuosic framework. These dancers are among the sharpest, their movement taut, at times almost gymnastic in precision. Their gestures are voluble. Their shifts and combinations relentless.

SUNNY can certainly be seen as a nod to the machine-like nature of clubs. [...] The performers in SUNNY do not represent a club; rather, they let it constantly shimmer through while simultaneously surpassing it in an entirely different way. This makes SUNNY just as much a disturbing event as it is a celebration—something many might not notice simply because they don’t go to clubs and/or hold a romanticized notion of its practices as pure joy.

The combination of the variety of the dance sequences, the dancers’ ability to interpret the “spontaneous” sound and the sheer physicality of the movements of the dancers kept the audience riveted. Messrs Gat and Leon and the dancers, as if they were one entity, brought the audience to a place not previously known.

Ten dancers immerse themselves in the music, using Gat’s participatory method—rooted in improvisation, attentive listening, and additional constraints set by the choreographer. Duets, solos, group formations, and linear arrangements unfold in this rich performance, which opened the most recent Montpellier Danse festival—and was a resounding success.

For those who have followed the Israeli choreographer for at least a decade since his move to the region, this piece is his richest and most accomplished. It showcases all the inventive codes that define his signature style. [...] As if energized by his collaboration with former dancer-turned-musician Awir Leon, Gat embraces bold creative choices that are seamlessly integrated into the work.

Gat’s ten-member company forms five pairs, moving in ways that center around bending and yielding, creating a beautiful reflection of human connection—devotion, tenderness, and humility, captured in elegant simplicity. Later, the piece shifts to more aggressive passages and costume changes, exploring closeness and distance—an understated yet captivating portrayal of love’s search, discovery, and loss.

Just as the dancers constantly change their clothes, choreographic structures are exposed and then discarded. [...] Gat places trust in the creativity and intelligence of his dancers. In Sunny, there are polyphonic moments where movements interlock perfectly, making the group appear like a living organism.

[SUNNY] is both a live concert and a choreographic process, visually and sonically captivating. [...] Dance and music together create a highly sophisticated aesthetic experience, transforming the space into a charged field of energy. [...] Finally, the stage fades to black, and the applause confirms a successful festival opening.

In their most powerful image, the ten dancers stand downstage, gazing toward the audience, yet leaving us to determine whether the invisible barrier between us is a tangible wall to be broken or merely a suggestive illusion. We ask ourselves what remains of bodies when dance is pure gestural interdependence. Which movement will endure amidst such complexity.

A dance-concert for ten performers, radiant and exhilarating. [...] In Emanuel Gat’s refined artistry, we had previously admired the intricate harmonies of performers unfolding in space in Brilliant Corners, as well as the solid counterpoints of The Goldlanbergs. This time, Gat’s dance—perhaps less intricate—is even more exuberant, marked by a vital and shared fluidity.

Gat has spent the past decade bringing his refined and subtly intricate choreographic world to French and international stages—marked by formal perfection, artistic rigor, and inventive spirit. [...] With SUNNY, he draws on the power of the ensemble to create a luminous work, brimming with contagious energy.

Emanuel Gat’s signature lies in a collective of ten dancers attuned to their own bodies and to one another, where each individual takes responsibility for their movement, treating it as a personal and intimate offering. [...] SUNNY is, without a doubt, Emanuel Gat’s most personal piece. For those accustomed to his polished, rhythm-driven dance, this work invites a new way of seeing.