Ohad Naharin
| Ohad Naharin | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Native name | אוהד נהרין |
| Born | 1952 Kibbutz Mizra, Israel |
| Citizenship | Israeli and american |
| Occupation | Contemporary dancer, choreographer and dance company artistic director. |
| Employer | Batsheva Dance Company |
| Style | Gaga |
| Title | Artistic Director |
| Spouse(s) | Mari Kajiwara |
| Partner(s) | Eri Nakamura |
| Children | 1 daughter |
| Awards |
2010 dance magazine award 2013 honorary doctor Juilliard school |
2010 dance magazine award
Ohad Naharin (born 1952) (Hebrew: אוהד נהרין) is an Israeli contemporary dancer, choreographer and dance company artistic director.
Ohad Naharin was born in 1952 in Kibbutz Mizra. Raised in an artistic home, he wrote stories, composed music, and painted as a child. His father was a psychologist specializing in psychodrama and an actor who performed with Habima and the Haifa Theater. His mother was a Feldenkreis instructor, choreographer and dancer. Nevertheless, Naharin did not start dancing until age 22. During his first year with the Batsheva Dance Company, Martha Graham visited Israel and invited Naharin to join her dance company in New York. He attended Juilliard and the School of American Ballet.
In 1978, he married Mari Kajiwara, a native New Yorker and an Alvin Ailey dancer. In 2001, she died of cancer at age 50.
He is now married to Eri Nakamura, a Batsheva dancer with whom he has a daughter.
In 1990, Naharin was appointed the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, thereby launching the company into a new stage. The company is international in nature, made up of individually unique dancers from Israel and abroad. Dancers are encouraged to affirm their distinct creative gifts, as creators on their own.
Naharin’s signature style and technique has developed during his time with Batsheva. His style is “distinguished by stunningly flexible limbs and spines, deeply grounded movement, explosive bursts and a vitality that grabs a viewer by the collar.” His dancers do not rehearse in front of a mirror. This enables them to move away from self-critique and feel the movement from within. Naharin is known to be a reserved and private person, and this is apparent in the studio as well. He does not get angry or raise his voice, but comments constructively and calmly. Since he has also been musically trained, Naharin sometimes collaborates on the compositions used in his pieces.
During his time directing and teaching the Batsheva Company, Naharin developed Gaga, a movement language and pedagogy that has defined the company's training and continues to characterize Israeli contemporary dance. A practice that resists codification and emphasizes the practitioner's somatic experience, Gaga is importantly labeled a movement language rather than a movement "technique". Many have noted that Gaga classes consist of a teacher leading dancers through an improvisational practice that is based around of a series of images described by the teacher. Naharin explains that such a practice is meant to provide a framework or a "safety net" for the dancers to use to "move beyond familiar limits".The descriptions that are used to guide the dancers through the improvisation are intended to help the dancer initiate and express movement in unique ways from parts of the body that tend to be ignored in other dance techniques. One example is the image of "Luna", which refers to the fleshy, semi-circular (like the moon, hence "luna") regions between fingers and toes. As part of the ideological insistence on moving through sensing and imagining, mirrors are discouraged in a Gaga rehearsal space.
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