An adventurous, collaborative ensemble, L-E-V creates cross-disciplinary works that fuse intense, provocative movement with music, fashion, art, technology, and lighting, bringing exceptional artistry to the stage. In HOUSE, the dancers wear nude body-stockings that show the fierce technicality, astonishing flexibility, and subtle articulation that is required of them.
Source: North Hampton Arts Council
L-E-V is thoroughly original and unusual: there is nothing like this company anywhere in the world. L-E-V means ―heart in Hebrew. It’s a fitting name for this troupe. The energy, power, and daring of the dancers; the theatrical atmosphere that is created by the lighting, sound, and costuming all work together to make a total experience. HOUSE is like encountering a new tribe in an exotic land. It’s impossible to be neutral about it. – Ella Baff, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
Often they move as a pack, a horde, with drugged slowness or with mechanical precision. Single figures drift away briefly for solos. Sometimes they dance in couples or hold hands. The mood is cold but also intense. They grab at their own faces and stick out their tongues. They scream with and without sound. Sex appears in hip-swaying sensuality and violent eruptions. The dancers periodically seem to be praying.
Source: NY Times
Ms. Eyal spent 23 years with the Batsheva Dance Company under the artistic director of Ohad Naharin, whose Gaga technique she has adopted as the foundation of her own. All of the dancers in her company come from Batsheva or its junior troupe. L-E-V is an offshoot colony, travelers from Planet Batsheva who have left for a new home.
Much of L-E-V’s distinct aesthetic can be ascribed to its other founder, Gai Behar, a producer of raves. “House” looks and sounds something like a rave. Ori Lichtik’s score, manipulated live, has a techno throb amid contrastive elements. Avi Yona Bueno’s lighting, with its crisscrossing beams and mysterious dimness, would go over big in a club, though its sickly greens might induce a bad trip.
Maa’yan Goldman’s costumes adorn monochromatic unitards — already a company signature — with touches like pink collars and platform heels that highlight a fashion-model hauteur in the choreography. The unitards emphasize the movements’ androgynous and inhuman qualities, the dancers’ resemblance to aliens or robots or zombies.
Source: NY Times