The duet loom was organized according to two principal polarities: breathing in and out, giving and receiving. In Ply, these movements originating at the body’s core, are extended to the very edges of the kinesphere (the space around the body that can be reached with fully extended arms or legs). The exchange between two individuals opens out into a wider space, with more complex movements, also expanding to include five dancers.

As in No play hero and loom, Ply was created to American music. But in this case the collaboration between Yuval Pick and composer Ashley Fure was conceived as if it were a score for four hands. Working from the blank page of the empty stage, the two artists invented a movement and sound lab, each proposing material that would be organized in various strata or layers, all of which would communicate with each other, through their analogies as well as through their counterpoints and tensions. The space between the dancers in Ply and the silences in Ashley Fure’s music are very important in the work: the dance and the acoustic composition are almost in danger here, to the point of rupture or a fall.

Ply begins with several “grains” of music, with the dispersed solitude of dancers moving, each in his or her own space. These grains begin to multiply, combine, extend... the bodies of the dancers begin to brush against each other, making them aware of each other, and prolonging their respective movements. Next, a few couples, then a group, begin discreetly echoing, furtively exchanging shapes, linking to each other in fragmentary attempts.

At the individual as well as at the collective level, Yuval Pick creates onstage obstacles to uniformity, seeking other ways of being together, so that when there is indeed a unified form, this neither here-nor-there of relationships plays out in bursts, starts, oscillations, irregular movements... the movements resonate with each other and forge relationships that neither crush nor cancel the uniqueness of each body in the space, its open inventiveness.

Through dance, Ply asks an important question: how to create common spaces; how to create a group without losing either one’s individuality or subjectivity.

Jean-Emmanuel Denave