"I always knew that I would create a choreography inspired by the book 'The Lover' by Marguerite Diras," shares the German choreographer Marco Gecka ahead of his upcoming performance in Israel, and after many successful runs of the show at the Hanover Opera House.
"It's a very Hollywood story. I had to add a little salt to it," he emphasizes, so that the viewers are not busy looking for the plot lines, but in the atmosphere that surrounds the story.
"It would be stupid if people thought it was like a classical ballet piece, which has a clear storyline. I don't want to give answers or information to people who are looking for who are the winners and who are the losers. That's how the world works now, and I'm strongly against that."
Geka is a seasoned choreographer with a distinct movement language who created for many ensembles in the world, until he agreed to a persistent offer and was appointed the house choreographer of the European Theater.
He is considered a creator whose feet are deeply rooted in ballet, and indeed - the 27 dancers in the troupe are endowed with particularly virtuosic classical abilities.
He brings up the long lines, the symmetry and the movement ambition, as motifs that are identified with the ballet with the intention of creating a heavenly experience - the dancers disrupt during the work into a broken and fragmented movement, as a kind of decisive stuttering.
Marco Geka in the studio, photo: Robert Robinson
The virtuosity in this performance exists precisely in its minimalism, in Geke's insistence on milking the maximum from each movement section.
Watching the troupe's rehearsal reveals a touch of his stubbornness and the grooves of the dancers in search of the chosen movement, when a young dancer performs a quick turn and Gaca tells him "What if you do that?"
and demonstrates to him the addition of sending the hand forward.
Then again "What if you do that?", and he adds two surprising weight shifts.
And so on and so forth, dozens of times, until the perfect version of the passage is found.
Gakka's dancers always run to the stage.
For the most part, their hands are close to their hips and their fingers are pointed.
They are in a hurry, doubt chased doubt chased.
Are you in high school - running away from the gospel?
Getting ready for a life-changing event?
hiding?
Lifeguards?
This is where the characters, the atmosphere and the experience merge, and there is no need for one correct answer.
"What's so interesting about Diras' book is that when she says something - she doesn't say much," says Geka, referring to the way he reads her book.
The movement of the dancers and the words that accumulate into sentences are full of information and mesmerizing, but watching them does not coalesce into a feeling of satisfaction and understanding, but rather into tragic anguish.
The beauty that is present on the stage makes up for it and allows for enchantment, and indeed - it is difficult to take your eyes off what is happening.
Gakka wonders about the future of dance, fears about its continued existence and claims that it is an outdated medium.
In the past, he spoke with typical frankness about the anxieties that have accompanied him for years.
He shares that like everyone else, he too is afraid of the monsters lurking under the bed.
Even behind the theater screen, he adds, you never know what awaits us, the viewers.
"The Lover" will be performed at the Opera House in Tel Aviv from March 2.
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