Dante Adela Lecture 9/25/08
> From: Dante Adela
> Volume One, Issue 27, March 23 - 29, 2007
>
> GAGA in motion at Cedar Lake Dance
> Gaga for GAGA dance
>
> By Lisa Santandrea
> There are just five of us on the first day of class: two
> men, three women. One arrived by the suggestion of a trusted
> yoga instructor, others were enticed by a mysterious e-mail
> announcement: GAGA classes at Cedar Lake Dance in Chelsea,
> taught by dancers of Israel’s famed Batsheva Dance
> Company. We sit on the floor of the stage, facing Shani
> Garfinkel, our GAGA instructor. “We won’t stop until
> it’s over,” she informs us, then quickly reassures,
> “but nothing should hurt.”
> She jumps to her feet: “Okay!” We rise, appropriating
> the expectant poses of those schooled in following the
> leader. Of course, we’ll follow, but what? Will the
> demands of GAGA be aerobic in nature? Will it require
> yogi-like stretches and precision, or a Joseph
> Pilates-inspired focus on the core? Music by the downtempo
> UK band, Zero7, fills the room.
> GAGA begins in the hands. Following Garfinkel’s lead, we
> stretch our fingers, separate them, move them in circles,
> arch and bend. Then the wrists are added to the cycle of
> circles, which eventually takes over our shoulders, ankles,
> our torsos and toes. Directions are definitively
> non-precise, often combined with images designed to evoke
> feeling, such as “You’re in a cold shower. Let the water
> run over you.” Each student develops his or her own
> groove, arms overhead, bodies gyrating. We have become a
> room of acid-tripping dancers in a ’60s B-movie.
> “Imagine looking at yourself from above,” Garfinkel
> instructs at one point. “Notice how silly you look. Take
> pleasure in it,” she adds, guiding us toward complete
> abandon. It is an eye-opening instruction: Whatever we’re
> doing, we’re doing it right. The sudden realization that
> we’ve become an undulating mass driven by our body’s
> desire to move is a shocker. It also seems to be the
> point of GAGA — that, and the pleasure of it all.
> GAGA is the creation of Ohad Naharin, artistic director of
> the Batsheva Dance Company. The name itself, GAGA, means
> nothing. “We used to call it the ‘language of Ohad
> Naharin,’” Garfinkel explains, “and that just was
> shortened to GAGA.” The company was formed in 1964 by
> Martha Graham and Batsheva de Rothschild. A protégé of
> Graham’s, Naharin became artistic director in 1990. His
> company’s performances have been heralded as vibrant
> masterpieces of mystery and sensuality.
>
> In June, dancers from the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
> will perform Naharin’s “Decadance,” a program of
> reconstructed excerpts from ten works created between 1985
> and 2006.
> For Batsheva dancers, GAGA is essential daily practice.
> Garfinkel describes it as “training yourself to release
> movement potential.” “It’s not a physical
> challenge,” she explains. Instead, “it’s a combination
> of the passion to move, the effort and the pleasure.” It
> began 20 years ago when Naharin was providing choreography
> for Batsheva dancers. After a serious back injury, he
> explained by e-mail, “I needed two things: to get my body
> to move a little bit and also to be able to give other
> people the keys to the way to move in my work.” In the
> process, “I developed an awareness that had to do with
> finding where in my body I’m not hurting and where in my
> body I have unused muscles, unused movement.” Eventually,
> through continued communication of such movement to his
> dancers, “it became a language and a method.” For
> professional dancers, Naharin considers GAGA “higher
> education.” He says, “The important idea is to make
> people
> excel in the method they already know.
>
> It’s not to abolish or cancel or change their techniques.
> If someone wants to be a ballerina, then GAGA can help her
> to be a ballerina.”
> Providing GAGA instruction to non-dancers happened
> “almost as a joke,” says Naharin. About ten years ago,
> he began providing twice-a-week instruction to five
> non-dancers who worked for Batsheva. “Very quickly, I
> learned a lot about movement, movement habits… but in a
> new light because none of them had the ambition to be on
> stage. They just wanted to feel better, and to move better
> and to get stronger. So then GAGA became something that had
> nothing to do with the performing arts, just with the
> maintenance of your body — healing your body, finding
> pleasure and joy in movement. That became a very serious
> thing in my life — working with non-dancers. Today [in
> Israel] we have a venue with hundreds of non-dancers who
> come to take GAGA classes.” The classes at Cedar Lake,
> which began earlier this month, are the first he’s offered
> in the U.S.
> There is no “script” for a GAGA session. Although
> Garfinkel aims to create a few movements in which effort is
> maximized, the impetus is on creating an experience in which
> one can let go. For that reason, there are no mirrors in the
> room. When asked if this is intentional, she nods
> emphatically. “It doesn’t matter what it looks like from
> the outside.”
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Cultural Map
"The Original Topography of Manhattan Island from the Battery to 155th Street" From Report on the Social Statistics of Cities, Compiled by George E. Waring, Jr., United States. Census Office, Part I, 1886. (Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas-Austin)
