Swan Lake Samba Girl - Latest Comments in Batsheva’s MAX

Re: Batsheva’s MAX

siupakcat — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:32:08 -0000

I saw this in Bruges last weekend. What an endurance test of pretentious, self indugent nonsense. Of our group of four, three were finding it hard to suppress giggles at how silly it all was, and the fourth fell asleep!

The "soundtrack" was annoying, minimal and rarely rhythmic or musical. The stage/lighting design minimal, and the performance really could have benefitted from some intentional humour. So you were left with just the movement...and in this case that was not enough.

I even felt that the choreographer decided to have the dancers repeat their movements over and over ("Uno, Duo, Trea...") simply to pad out the running time.
Strangely, though, I don't regret going as I haven't laughed so much in ages, and we all had fun discussing and mimicking this "lets walk really slowly....THEN SPASM!" nonsense.

Re: Batsheva’s MAX

SwanLakeSambaGirl — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:42:12 -0000

Thanks you guys. That's interesting. I don't know Hebrew (obviously) but knew it was a language I didn't know, although the numbers at first sounded to me like a combination of French and Spanish or Italian. But then I couldn't figure out why he was mixing them up (huit, for example was there but was not the eighth number, etc.), so I figured it wasn't a combination of languages, but was one I just didn't know. Now it makes sense that it wasn't actually a language but just meant to be gibberish, although I agree, Meg, that the voice was definitely meant to be counting numbers. It sounded like a countdown or something. At first I thought it was a countdown to the launching of a bomb or missile or something (maybe because I've recently seen Doctor Atomic) but then it became too comical and light for that. It's interesting to me though that it was all gibberish; I really thought the earlier parts were in a specific language. I wonder what he meant by putting it in "gibberish" -- that you don't need a specific language to have meaning, that a certain intonation, along with movement still contains a kind of meaning, that humans don't need to speak the same language to connect? Hmmm. It's interesting.

Re: Batsheva’s MAX

Meg — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:19:48 -0000

The counting, to me, sounded like there was some Spanish and French in there, with a bit of Latin proper thrown in ("sex," after all, is the Latin word for 6, which as far as I know isn't the case in any of the modern Romance languages). At the end of the day I think all that mattered is that they were recognizably numbers though.

Re: Batsheva’s MAX

viewer — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:10:19 -0000

I am a native Hebrew speaker. For the record: There was no Hebrew on the sound track of MAX, and most of it did not even sound like Hebrew, except for the first segment, which sounded Hebrew in diction and accent, was was all gibberish. The rest was made to sound (and I have to assume was gibberish, too) like Russian, some Slavic language and/ or maybe a Scandinavian language. The counting was Latin-based, but was not Latin proper, and it certainly was not Hebrew.

Re: Batsheva’s MAX

Deborah — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:58:59 -0000

I'm glad you got to see "MAX," and your perspective - the contrast to "Deca Dance," the comparison to the "Revelations"-like huddle - is great to read (my associations have been so shaped over the last year and a half of being in Israel, so reading others' reviews gives me a glimpse of the work through fresh eyes again).

By the way, the counting is actually not in Hebrew; from all the accounts I've heard, it's a made-up language. But it is catchy!