Indescribable Israelis
Pinto & Pollak @ Ohio Theatre
Reviewed by Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We went to see Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company at the Ohio Theatre where they performed their evening-length piece, Oyster. We found ourselves engaged and entertained like the rest of the audience, watching and laughing at every little movement of this madcap, eccentric troupe. Mutated, rendered grotesque, sometimes barely human, by their makeup and costume they nevertheless retained an overall sweetness and good humor.
Despite the fact that Oyster has been frequently performed and reviewed since its creation in 1999, it’s a difficult show to describe. It’s easier to say what Oyster is not.
We expected Pinto and Pollak to be more of a ballet company, but Oyster does not have many truly balletic elements. Most of their dancers are trained as contemporary dancers rather than ballet dancers and many of their performers are actors or mimes. True, one of the performers in Oyster wore pointe shoes — though she scarcely danced a step in them — and several of the women appeared in funny tutus. But ballet this was not.
Nor was Oyster gymnastics or acrobatics; such stunts punctuated Oyster but it maintained our interest by different means.
Nor were Clevelanders like us helped by comparisons with Pina Bausch, late of Tanztheater Wuppertal, never seen hereabouts, although the Wim Wenders documentary, Pina — in 3D and on the short list for Best Documentary Feature Oscar — will be at the Capitol Theater on Fri 2/10. (Click here.)
Like Aszure Barton and Artists, which DanceCleveland brought to Cleveland recently (See our CoolCleveland review here), Pinto and Pollak’s Oyster was a variety entertainment, one short bit after another that somehow took us happily through 60 minutes without an intermission. We suspect that it shared many features with European tanztheater and cabaret performance, and with contemporary Jewish theater. Unlike Barton whose ballet chops carried much of her show, the unclassifiable dancing in Oyster was more what American Vaudeville used to call “eccentric dancing.” For Oyster’s tuxedo-clad, mime-faced men especially, this translated to one rubber-legged flash dance after another. That must have been hell on the bodies.
Much of Oyster took place on a tiny stage decorated with strings of bare light bulbs, which suggested a makeshift performance in the boondocks, and that was what Oyster worked hard to look like. For all of Artistic Director Pollak’s post modern musings on “process” and “investigation” during the post-performance Q&A, and for all the performers’ training in dance and drama, Oyster’s performers managed to look untrained in any nameable skill but somehow entertaining by dint of quirky physicality, humor, wit and — apparently — lots of rehearsal.
So Oyster opened with one of the women, foot in hand, hopping deftly and comically forward and back displaying extension that many ballet dancers would envy. Her tuxedoed partner made with the rubber legs, as impossible to ignore as a train wreck.
Then two of the women in blonde wigs and tutus danced on leashes held by two of the men. Two guys in one overcoat. Two more dancers in flyer harnesses 12 feet above the stage. A bunch of short acts on the tiny stage punctuated by stylized applause from, among others, the two guys in the overcoat. A chorus of ancients in baggy pale flesh-colored clothing — not tights — entered to dance a mambo consisting entirely of tremors.
The recorded soundtrack was every bit as eclectic and unpredictable as the dancing. Wind sounds. The musical chestnut of all musical chestnuts, Werner Muller and his Orchestra play Jalousie. A paso doble. A couple of big band era torch songs. Mongolian throat singers accompanied by wild fiddles — imagine what the men’s chorus did with that number.
All of it was indescribable… but impossible to look away from. See a clip of Oyster here.
Learn about DanceCleveland’s next offering, Ballet Memphis (presented on Sat 3/10 and Sun 3/11), here. Presented by DanceCleveland, Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollak Dance Company performed at the Ohio Theatre on Sat 1/28 and Sun 1/29/2012.
[Photo credit Tim LaChina]
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.