Compañía Nacional de Danza

With the sound of the zesty and zany waltzes, the dancers and spectators find themselves enveloped in a whirlwind of gang, sarcasm and color. A parody on the theatre, opera, the bourgeois, and dance. It is one of Ohad Naharin’s most colorful and surprising works, with costumes by Rakefet Levy and lights by Bambi. The piece was written in 1992 for the Grand Théâtre de Génève and since then has been performed by numerous dance companies in Europe with tremendous success.

In Israel, Perpetuum has been performed on special occasions such as the inauguration of the Festival of Israel, in 1992, and the opening of the Centre of Performing Arts in Tel-Aviv in 1993. The Batsheva Dance Companystaged Perpetuum again in 1999 in co-production with Austria’sSt. Polten Festpielhaus. “In the first place I am captivated by movement and action. I’m also exploring the proximity of form and content. I’m intrigued by the uncertainty arising from the grey zones between the pure and the corrupt, between the expected and the unexpected, between the intended and the final results.”

Perpetuum is a piece showing that my work often deals with casting off weight, and that I consider levity a virtue, not a defect (Ohad Naharin, May 2002).