Batsheva Dance Company

For their first guest appearance at the Paris Opera, this celebrated Israeli company will present Three on the stage of the Palais Garnier. The piece was created in 2005 by Ohad Naharin, the company’s artistic director since 1990. Based in Tel Aviv since its founding, the Batsheva Dance Company was created in 1964 by the American choreographer Martha Graham and its namesake, Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild. Currently at the vanguard of contemporary Israeli dance, the company has played host to numerous key figures including Mats Ek, Angelin Preljocaj and William Forsythe. It also performs regularly on the stages of many of the world’s greatest theatres. Its artistic director Ohad Naharin has introduced a series of techniques known as Gaga dance to emphasise a greater individual comprehension of the body and its limits in order to enable each performer to transcend them. This highly original method spurs the dancers in the company to liberate both their bodies and their personalities.

Originally trained at the Batsheva Dance Company and continuing his studies first in the USA, then at Maurice Béjart’s Brussels-based company Mudra and subsequently at Jiří Kylián’s Nederlands Dans Theater, Ohad Naharin has devised a ballet in three parts: Bellus, Humus and Secus, in which seventeen dancers explore the stage with an almost animal physicality.