The electric company: when Koresh Dance Company performs, audiences leap to their feet

Dance Magazine, August, 2004 by Miriam Seidel

Ronen Koresh leans forward as nine company dancers run through his Backtracks, the explosive piece that often cuds their shows. Intensely intimate couplings ballistic kicks, feral pounces and feisty rolling hips raise the energy level in his Philadelphia rehearsal studio into the red zone. Though the piece premiered two years ago, the hard-driving Koresh is still playing with it. The Israeli-born choreographer fingers his shoulder-blade-length mane of curly brown ha r re ling it into a bun and their freeing it again as he considers new possibilities. "I was thinking of having them throw rose petals into the audience at the bow," he says, as a way of connecting with the audience. Not that he needs to worry about audience response The company's home season programs regularly sell out to an enthusiastic following, sometimes garnering standing ovations, and reactions on the road are similarly fervent.

Backtracks will be on the program when the Koresh Dance Company travels to Cleveland this month to perform at Cain Park in a 2,500-seat outdoor amphitheater that's often used for visiting rock bands. That performance will follow a touring season that includes slops in twenty-one cities. The company's peripatetic schedule is only one measure of the distance it's traveled since Koresh founded it in 1991. It is impressively stable, offering ten dancers a paid thirty-two-week season--putting it, locally, in the select company of the Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadanco, and Rennie Harris PureMovement. Its repertoire of more than forty works, primarily Koresh's own, includes pieces by Donald Byrd, Brian Sanders, and a number of company members.

Its physical space has recently expanded, with the rental of a second, larger studio complex around the corner from its original Center City home to handle a growing program of classes. Recent auditions to fill a few spaces in the company attracted over 100 aspirants from seven states, ranging from New York through Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, to as far away as Washington State. They were drawn not only by the chance to be part of a working company, but by Koresh's rigorous training and choreography, an integration of jazz, ballet, and modern into what he calls modern jazz.

Considering where he began, 42 year-old Ronen Koresh has come a long way. In his hometown of Yehud, then a modest village near Tel Aviv, he started dancing the Yemenite folk dances that were part of his family's heritage, and was competing in dance clubs by age 13. His first dance teacher, Alida Gera, brought him to the attention of Batsheva Dance Company, the Tel Aviv-based group co-founded by Martha Graham in the 1960s, where he studied jazz and ballet in addition to Graham technique. At 18, having joined Batsheva's second company, Koresh was called tip for compulsory military service.

Desperate to continue dancing, Koresh fought the army hierarchy, finally convincing a commanding officer to reassign him to a base closer to home and dance classes, He recalls how, after finishing each day's work shift, "I would climb through a fence, run to a highway, and hitchhike to get to the studio in Tel Aviv. Sometimes I couldn't even change to tights, so I would take ballet classes in my uniform, with ballet slippers."

Leaving for New York right after his discharge, Koresh studied for a year at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater before moving to Philadelphia to join the jazzdance company Waves, led by fellow Israeli Shimon Braun. He has taught at the University of the Arts since 1986, and has recruited about 75 percent of his dancers from there.

His choreography is technically demanding, high-keyed, and sexy. Intense leg work, with breathtaking six-o'clock extensions often performed by longtime lead dancer Melissa Rector, is a hallmark, but always embedded in strong, clear groupings. "Choreographic chops--he's got 'cm," says producer Nick Stuccio, who has presented Koresh at Philadelphia's DanceBoom! festival. "He can move folks around a stage. He has a talent for space." Koresh freely acknowledges wanting to offer audiences a good night's entertainment. His larger works however, also embody his earnest reflections on such big-ticket themes as war (in his Exile, a narrative of an embattled community), the roots of violence (the Biblical fable Of God and Evil), and insanity (Erratic, in development for next season). While his work is grounded in Luigi technique, and Both Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins come up in conversations about his work, another key to his sensibility may be Martha Graham. In place of her characters flora Greek mythology, he has offered biblical and other archetypes that allow him to explore primal themes.

Critics have lauded the company for its technical prowess, though some observers have expressed a wish for a break from the pounding intensity that seems to be its default selling. Dance critic Merilyn Jackson hopes to see more variety in Koresh's repertoire and musical selections; if he accomplishes this, she says, "Koresh could give Hubbard Street and River North a run for their money."