Edinburgh International Festival 8th-31st August 2008

‘Dancing that pulls viewers right out of their seats.'

- The New York Times

Deca Dance 2008. It's all about PLAY. Even the name (based on the tenth anniversary of choreographer Ohad Naharin taking the top job at Batsheva Dance Company) becomes - in English - a play on the word decadence.

Decadent, though, Deca Dance is not. Naharin keeps the eclectic collection of vignettes incredibly bare, doing nothing ostentatious with sound and light, preferring the movement of the 22 dancers to transport the audience to a place of, well, juvenile fun.

And what fun it is. There's a lot based on repetition and building, including a brilliant segment with a booming voice counting and movements that correlate to the numbers, though the clear high-point is a magical sequence that really shouldn't be spoiled.

There are occasionally noticeable mistakes, though herein lays the beauty. This isn't always a show of finesse but of constant passion, which should be seen by both aficionados of both dance and entertainment alike.

- EIF Critic Alexander Gandar

Surly the single most exciting dance event of the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival, Ohad Naharin's 'best of' decagonal extravaganza. Demonstrating the original arrangements that made Naharin one of the most pioneering choreographers working today, Decadance boasts all of the force and inventiveness of modern conceptual dance with none of the pretentiousness that so frequently comes with the territory.

Batsheva Dance Company's dancers are as talented as they are willfully unkempt and asexual, sporting a carefully cultivated just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-into-some-random-attire-I've-found-in-my-attic chic which seems a perfectly appropriate fit to their artistic director's asymmetrical movement philosophy. Naharin, through a host of progressive techniques such as barring the use of mirrors in his rehearsals, is able to draw raw, emotive motion and vulnerability from his terpsichoreans rather than conventionally suppressive body consciousness.

Although some of the numbers do go on for slightly too long, Decadance is a veritable tour de force of Dada influenced world dance with that oh-so-rare quality called humor. An assortment of Indian chants, pop harmonies and blaring biblical texts serve as a platform for a mix of ballet, tango, pantomime, synchronized swimming on parquet and the robot dance. It reminds one that the closest thing to true magic we can experience in real life is what happens when an artist sets movement to music in a seemingly unmanageable yet utterly exhilarating way.

- EIF Critic Max Ribitsky