© Dieter Hartwig 'K626' reviews recent Emanuel Gat reviews more Rachel Straus reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

Gat’s ability to design three-dimensional space like an architect is remarkable. But his decision not to respond to Mozart’s Herculean-shaped melodic vocal lines is curious. Did Gat not hear Mozart’s architecture or did he defy it in order not to be drowned in its power? Indeed Gat’s space-devouring, fast-footed athletic choreography had little to do with the first words sung in Requiem—“Rest eternal.” And I believe that’s the point. While Mozart’s last composition, made before his death at age 35, was his epitaph. Gat’s career is just beginning his career: He made K626 when he was 36. Consequently, in the last moments of his hour-long work, none of the dancers were close to their deathbeds. Their leopard-like, pouncing, primal energy continued unabated. Before they strutted into the darkness, they kicked their back leg in unison as though shaking off their mortal coil.

In minimalist black, calf-length tunics, Gat costumed his dancers like a good modernist. Like a celebrity architect, who demands to be in control of all visual elements, Gat also created the lighting plot and conceived the set, which had no exits—like death. With the lighting, he cast his makeup-less group in shadows rather than the brilliant light of heaven. But toward the end of K626, Gat raised the house lights and left the dancers to sharply turn around themselves and angrily gesture in silence. Suddenly K626 looked as unfinished as Mozart’s Requiem, which was passed off as finished after Mozart’s widow had hired various collaborators in hopes of recouping her losses. Correspondingly, in this awkward-looking section, Gat’s dancers covered their mouths and outstretched their arms accusingly. They hopped across the stage, holding one foot in their hand as though an invisible door had slammed them. Gat’s taste for cruel humor slipped though in other moments. To the chorus’s words “O Lord,” they rolled their hips and shimmied their shoulders. Was this sacrilege? Oh, yes.

Though K626 defied God, death and maybe Mozart, it remains a significant work for its well-crafted phrases and its full exploration of ideas rather than just its rebelliousness. With one image, Gat developed entire musical sections. He took the idea of a body falling apart—first the hips, then the chest and finally the head buckling—and directed the dancers to repeat it in every direction, level and speed so that they became one organism, shaking the stage apart like an earthquake. Though Gat didn’t offer narrative, he gave his dancers their humanity. Each performed a short solo and then faced the audience for one long-drawn breath so we could see into their eyes. This moment and others were powerful. In K626 Gat communicated a secular prayer, one without entreaties to the beyond and through a spirit of someone very alive. Like Mozart in his healthy prime, Gat revels in his rebellion. Here is a choreography who knows how to bend tradition with craft.