Sheketak -- the tap dance, hip-hop, break dance, anything-is-percussion ensemble that bills itself as "the Israeli answer to 'Stomp!' " -- is having some fun with us even before a performance begins.
November 27, 2006 (Press Release) --
The word "sheket" means "silent" in Hebrew. For beyond anything, this international touring company, which played to packed houses at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance this weekend (part of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project's "Global Rhythms" series), is about making a big noise.
Sheketak's goal is clear: Make the beat the message, and find the message in the beat. This is the task at hand whether the troupe's nine dancers and three musicians are banging on illuminated steel drums or pots and pans suspended from an overhead beam; whether they are tapping out a slew of complex rhythms with drumsticks applied to the floor or using their hands to slap their own bodies as they turn themselves into drums; whether they are creating a low-tech piece featuring four birdhouses and hand puppets or a complex piece of high-tech rhythmic fun by way of video projection screen and computer-driven sounds and images.
Led by two Haifa-born dancer-drummers -- the fleet and funny Zahi Patish (a former member of Israel's superb Batsheva company) and the muscular Danny Rachom -- Sheketak speaks the international language of pop with fluency and humor. But what is missing from their new show, "Rhythm in Motion," is any distinctive sense of the troupe's roots.
The company comes from a region with such a rich multicultural rhythmic inheritance, it is difficult to understand why they didn't develop at least one segment in the 80-minute program to reflect those Middle Eastern roots. For all its high energy and spectacle, the show felt disappointingly homogenized. In addition, its vaudeville-style pacing -- with each "act" unrelated to the next -- gave it a scatter-shot feel.
One of the more ingenious sequences involved the roll-out of the show's set, with an animated video capturing the lickety-split construction of the prefab "house" of heavy metal scaffolding that served as a perch for Avi Barak (drums), Jonathan Levy (bass guitar) and Nadav Rubenstein (keyboards) and for the dancers' mischief.
Segments of the set became the robotic capsules for one long piece about cyber creatures manipulated by lab technicians -- a sequence that seemed designed to appeal to preteen boys. In fact, that seemed to be the ideal target audience for the show as a whole.
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS
Sheketak's goal is clear: Make the beat the message, and find the message in the beat. This is the task at hand whether the troupe's nine dancers and three musicians are banging on illuminated steel drums or pots and pans suspended from an overhead beam; whether they are tapping out a slew of complex rhythms with drumsticks applied to the floor or using their hands to slap their own bodies as they turn themselves into drums; whether they are creating a low-tech piece featuring four birdhouses and hand puppets or a complex piece of high-tech rhythmic fun by way of video projection screen and computer-driven sounds and images.
Led by two Haifa-born dancer-drummers -- the fleet and funny Zahi Patish (a former member of Israel's superb Batsheva company) and the muscular Danny Rachom -- Sheketak speaks the international language of pop with fluency and humor. But what is missing from their new show, "Rhythm in Motion," is any distinctive sense of the troupe's roots.
The company comes from a region with such a rich multicultural rhythmic inheritance, it is difficult to understand why they didn't develop at least one segment in the 80-minute program to reflect those Middle Eastern roots. For all its high energy and spectacle, the show felt disappointingly homogenized. In addition, its vaudeville-style pacing -- with each "act" unrelated to the next -- gave it a scatter-shot feel.
One of the more ingenious sequences involved the roll-out of the show's set, with an animated video capturing the lickety-split construction of the prefab "house" of heavy metal scaffolding that served as a perch for Avi Barak (drums), Jonathan Levy (bass guitar) and Nadav Rubenstein (keyboards) and for the dancers' mischief.
Segments of the set became the robotic capsules for one long piece about cyber creatures manipulated by lab technicians -- a sequence that seemed designed to appeal to preteen boys. In fact, that seemed to be the ideal target audience for the show as a whole.
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS
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