BOLERO X – Shahar Binyamini

In one evening, on the Israeli Opera stage, 40 dancers and an orchestra meet to re-examine three canonical works that changed the face of music for dance in the 20th century:
The Rite of Spring | The Afternoon Rest of the Faun | Bolero.

Conductor: Roy Oppenheim | Composer: Ariel Blumenthal

A dramatic journey between ancient rituals and contemporary sound and movement, between sustained hypnosis and orchestral subtlety, between body and sound.

Part One

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) is considered a work that shook the history of music – both in its choice of ritualistic and wild theme, and in its unprecedented compositional language.

Composer Ariel Blumenthal was invited by the Revolution Orchestra to compose his own response to the work, especially for this performance. This is not a reworking, but a completely original work, which corresponds to and draws its inspiration from Stravinsky, and is built through a contemporary orchestration that also includes electric guitar, synthesizer, and unique percussion.

Based on Blumenthal’s work, choreographer Shahar Benyamini is creating a new work, in close collaboration with the composer and the Revolution Orchestra, performed by the House Dance Company.

The result: a polyrhythmic, physical, innovative and hypnotic ritual.

Part Two

Claude Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun (1894) is considered a milestone in Western music—a moment when a work ceases to tell a story in the dramatic terms of Romanticism, and begins to emerge as a state of consciousness constructed of color, movement, resonance, and memory. Instead of a clear narrative structure, Debussy offers a musical image that moves like breath—rich in tone, suggestive, and open to personal interpretation.

The work inspired Nijinsky’s groundbreaking choreography in Russian ballet, and became a symbol of an aesthetic revolution in the world of dance as well.

Here too, composer Ariel Blumenthal was invited to correspond with the original work and bring a new interpretation, in a live performance by the Revolution Orchestra, and with a new choreographic layer by Benyamini that continues to walk the intriguing border between movement and dream.

Part Three

To conclude, the piece Bolero by Maurice Ravel (1928) will be performed.

The work was originally written as a complete ballet, and its structure is almost outrageously simple: one rhythm and one melody that repeat themselves over and over again, with constant changes of orchestral colors, which gradually increase in intensity to the point of a feeling of ecstasy.
This is one of the most famous works in the world of dance, thanks to its hypnotic structure, gradual accumulation of intensity, and the almost obsessive feeling it evokes, which grows stronger with each passing moment.

BOLERO X, created by Shahar Binyamini for 40 dancers, has been performed on leading stages around the world – including Germany, Canada, France and China.

Now, for the first time in Israel, the work will be performed accompanied by a live orchestra, in a version that brings the depth, rhythm, and hypnotic repetition of the bolero from the score into the movement.