With “Freedom Sonata”, the Israeli choreographer offers to explore in the same room the seventh album of the American rapper and the last sonata of the German composer. A piece with eleven remarkable dancers which extends more than 30 years of choreographic work for Emanuel Gat.
If there is a dancer and choreographer appreciated by Montpellier Danse but also by the public, it is Emanuel Gat. The Israeli, who arrived in France in 2007, has been performing his plays in our city for a long time now. His first was Silent Ballet / Sixty Four in 2008. The artist could also be the choreographer most programmed by Jean-Paul Montanari who for a time made him an associate artist. Enough to seal a relationship, which has become as stimulating as it is comforting.
Beethoven et Kanye West
Gat has been creating choreographic pieces for over thirty years. He has more than fifty on the clock. If the premiere in 1994 was a solo, his last creation, Freedom Sonataperformed over two evenings at Corum (Wednesday and Thursday), revolves around eleven dancers – veterans of the troupe and new ones – animated by great energy, and an eclectic soundtrack. On one side, the megalomaniac rapper Kanye West and on the other, a little deaf, the German composer Ludwig Von Beethoven. A big gap.
The relationship with Emanuel Gat’s music has always been ambiguous. There was Bach, Puccini but also Tear For Fears recently for Lovetrain. His immersion in popular musical culture is therefore not new. But still Kanye West? Why not. The American rapper put classical ballet in his music video Runaway.
L’album The Life Of Pablo in full
This is the album The Life Of Pablo dating from 2016, the American’s seventh album, which is offered in full but split into two parts. They surround the portion dedicated to Beethoven during which the German composer’s final sonata, No. 32, plays by Mitsuko Ushida on the piano. A singular, very technical work, ignored at its beginnings and which contains only two movements.
Virtuoso dancers
“Freedom Sonata is the next chapter in a constant, ongoing study of how groups and individuals within them behave, function, and strive to find a state of balance and fulfillment.” says Emanuel Gat when he presents his new piece. The word Freedom in the title of the piece nourishes the choreography. It animates the dancers, more taken for self-determined individuals who come together rather than a united group. As always, there is virtuosity in these dancers, a technical quality which does not erase the emotion, and a plasticity in relation to the lights which go so far as to plunge the stage into shadow. “I don’t expect to be understood at all.” once said Kanye West, who tends to proclaimed himself a genius. Perhaps a phrase that Emanuel Gat could use, whose choreographic approaches are sometimes difficult to fathom. The main thing is to let yourself be carried away.
