Appropriation

Award-winning choreographer and performer Hillel Kogan returns to Batsheva Ensemble, where he danced in 1995-96 – this time, as a choreographer. His works We Love Arabs (2013) and THISISPAIN (2022) were a tremendous success both in Israel and worldwide, positioning him as one of the most distinctive dancemakers currently working in Israel.

In his works, Kogan travels through various artistic worlds as a fascinated “tourist”, exposing how art in general and the dancing body in particular serve as sites of political and cultural constructs.
In the ballet “Appropriation” he visits the “dance company” institution, sending Batsheva Ensemble dancers on a quest full of conquests, quotes, tributes, and countless spectacular references to a bounty of cultures near and far – waiting to be plundered, decorated, erased, and eaten away.

Kogan’s ballet is a masquerade ball, where the lines of political correctness are crossed in the name of artistic and physical freedom, a carnival of body and flesh. The material (dancer) yields to the hands of the maker and the eyes of the viewer. His dancing body is virtuosic, seductive, and unattainable, elevated above the masses, sacred, and cool.