Out of Israel

92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival at The Ailey Citigroup Theater. Whew! When I was writing those damned "Footnotes" for The Village Voice, that would have taken up just about all of my word allotment! (Glad that's over!) Here are a few more words to throw into that mix: LeeSaar The Company & Netta Yerushalmy: Out of Israel. One work apiece by young Israeli choreographers of note.

Bilocale--come close please...,Yerushalmy's duet with choreographic collaborator Toni Melaas, benefits from the intimate arrangement of its audience around the edges of the theater's performance space. We feel the energy of the two women as they bound towards us or when one paints the other's back in slashes or dots of scarlet and slams her down onto a sheet of paper--surely an alarming form of printmaking. Over 25 minutes, the movement involves quirky, rubbery effects and various clinches and entanglements, suggesting volatile inner states and external connections. Boundaries will be violated. There will be blood.

For Geisha--presented by writer/actress Lee Sher and dancer-choreographer Saar Harari
--the audience is returned to conventional theater seating. There's no formal intermission between the companies--just a pause while our folding chairs are removed from the performing space. Keeping the audience seated that long doesn't work to the advantage of a piece that might be too long anyway. But Geisha has extraordinarily confident solo turns by Jye-Hwei Lin--topless in jeans and full of vivid, cinematic characters--who also duets with the always provocative and brooding (and identically-attired) Harari. Sher wears a kimono-like robe in her interspersed solos. Resembling a cross between Carrie Fisher and Celine Dion, she lipsyncs a couple of Israeli pop songs, regarding us with oodles of saccharine "sincerity" and strolling past the front row, grabbing our hands. Sher's tackiness stands in contrast to her equally showy yet cool and really out there colleagues. The lighting by Joe Levasseur on bare flesh is--no big surprise--terrific.

Out of Israel runs through Sunday afternoon, March 9. The festival continues through March 16. For a schedule and ticketing information, click here or call 212-415-5552.