At Batsheva, dancing to one man’s tune

Perhaps the best way to watch dance is through the eyes of children, especially those who have never experienced the sinuous flexibility of dancers onstage.

That’s the idea behind “Decal’e,” the 55-minute-performance of the Batsheva Dance Company’s Ensemble — its junior company — which offers a taste of modern dance to the younger set.

It includes snippets of dance pieces from 20 seasons of the company’s history, and is reviewed every six months, as dancers and performances change and shift.

The dancers even disperse themselves into the audience, each one inviting one of the middle-aged mothers, and some fathers, onto the stage for couple dancing, the parents waving to their kids from the brightly lit stage.

Performed during school vacations — as it was during the recent intermediate days of Sukkot — it is short and snappy, with bits of ballet, some jazz, a little hip-hop and enough humor and mystery to keep kids as young as five going for nearly an hour.

The troupe also took advantage of their Sukkot performances at “home” in Tel Aviv’s Suzanne Dellal Center to perform “The Hole,” director and choreographer Ohad Naharin’s 2013 piece that includes an elevated, octagonal stage, which is only used at their Suzanne Dellal studio.

And as with nearly every Batsheva performance, Naharin sat in the audience, fielding questions and adoring glances from budding dancers afterwards.

“Ohad almost always attends,” said Mira Beinart, who handles PR for the company, currently celebrating its 50th year.

Naharin, the sinewy, seasoned dancer who has been with Batsheva for most of his own career, is the backbone of this company.

He’s the core of the company’s ongoing jubilee celebrations, which includes a new piece that will be unveiled in May 2015, and their upcoming tour in the US, starting October 25 in Miami, Florida, and taking them through Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, five nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and two nights at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

“We’re a company that has had different phases and leaders, and choreographers, but we’re all so connected to Ohad,” said Batsheva dancer Rachael Osborne, who has been with the company for the better part of a dozen years. “The feeling of Batsheva and Ohad’s work are very connected.”

Osborne, from Canberra in Australia, is a lead dancer in the troupe, and first met Naharin and the Batsheva troupe when they were on tour in her home country. She ended up coming to Israel to join the junior company, and soon was invited to become a dancer in the senior company.

She never intended to stay in Israel for so long — and did briefly leave to join the Sharon Eyal dance company — but returned to Batsheva last year.

“There’s something about the virtuosity, the abandon, the explosiveness, the way Batsheva dancers move,” she said. “Being with Batsheva informed me as much as my other training.”

• Batsheva will perform “Sadeh21” on October 17 at 2 p.m. and on October 18 at 9 p.m.
• The ensemble will perform “Decadance” on October 23 at 9 p.m.; October 24 at 2 p.m.; and October 25 at 9 p.m. Go to the Batsheva website for ticket prices and information.
• For Batsheva’s international schedule, see the list of performances on the troupe’s website.