HOFESH SHECHTER COMPANY

27 october
Auditorium Conciliazione

Two years after his debut in the 2009 Festival, Hofesh Shechter returns to the Rome stage with his latest choreography: “Political Mother”, a parable on social and political dynamics; an inspirational work of physical energy accompanied by a live soundtrack with a heavy rock base, written by the same Israeli choreographer. 

“Political Mother” is the first “full-length” production by Shechter, born in Israel 36 years ago. He started his musical studies at an early age and contemporaneously, continued to cultivate his passion for the drums. In 2002 he moved to Paris and later to London where, after some initial experiments in choreography, he founded his own dance troupe in 2007. 

His first works—among which “Uprising” and “In your rooms” featured in the 2009 festival—contain his distinguishing characteristics which have contributed to his international acclaim. His work shows a innate sensitivity for group choreography in which the single dancers acquire the energy, momentum and motion of the entire group, often seen in “popular dance” but reinvented by Shechter from scratch. With an effective use of lighting—refined and spectacular same time—Shechter gives us an interesting and enthralling theatrical dance performance. Shechter creates a succession of backdrops, sometimes alternating and sometimes present simultaneously on stage. The choreography is accompanied by Shechter’s own soundtrack with a strong rock base. Indeed, the five percussionists and four guitarists create a live soundtrack which, at times becomes a veritable wall of sound for the ten dances and a single actor on stage.

Alternating between pure folly and movement in unison, prisoners without a cause dragged away by a dictatorial figure, samurais engaged in a delicate minuet, the choreographer this time seems to want to jump from one time period to another, from one place to another through fast paced editing following a logic of disassembly and so-called modernity. Restless and irritable with authority and authoritarianism, Shechter does nothing at all to hide it. What he unleashes is an “imaginary political scenario” which splinters and shatters into apocalypse with the aim of inflaming and provoking the spectatorwith the incendiary question: «in all of this, where are we?»