Koresh’s ‘Aftershock’: The growth of an artist

Koresh Dance Company is back this spring with a new work entitled Aftershock, in which Ronen “Roni” Koresh, the company’s founder, revisits his own history.

As a young dancer, Koresh was well-known in Israel, performing with Martha Graham’s Batsheva 2 Dance Company, among others, but like everyone else he had to serve in the army. When he completed his service in 1983, he knew it was time to expand his art, so he came to the US to study with Alvin Ailey. Competitive by nature, he felt the dance world in Israel at the time was not a large enough world to explore his art, so he stayed here, and today he sees himself as an ambassador for his country, which has, he says, developed a strong dance presence.

"The sergeant"

Chatting with BSR during a recent rehearsal, Koresh laughs when he remembers starting to teach in this country. “They called me the sergeant,” he says, because the only way he knew to teach came from the discipline of his army experience. “Everything has to be done at one hundred percent.” That part hasn’t changed, he admits.

When Koresh founded the Koresh Dance Company in 1991, one of the first works he created for the new company, in 1993, was called Culture Shock. It reflected his experience as a new immigrant. Now, twenty years later, he is looking back and forward at the same time and wondering how far he has come. Aftershock looks at his growth as a person and as an artist during that period.

Change without anger

“Going to a new place brings you closer to your roots, or takes you away,” he says. For him it did both. With globalization, he sees the creation of a new culture, perhaps, that is more integrated socially, racially, and culturally. Using classical ballet as a foundation, the gestures he chooses grow out of the emotion of the piece, and so there is a sense of charging forward, with an almost military zeal, when he first arrives, then periods of happiness and stress.

For Koresh, the movement in dance relies on the expression of the emotional content. “The emotion changes the movement,” he says. In this new dance, there is anxiety and fear. “Fear of the new place, fear of the unknown, fear of change,” he says, “but there’s no angst. And no anger. It’s not an angry piece.”

Because the company is so often on tour, it’s a challenge for them to develop and learn a new work, but between trips they’re in the studio rehearsing and putting the work together. By opening night, says Koresh, they’ll have more than enough material. The new work includes music by Greg Smith and Jonathan Bowles and the poetry of Karl Mullen.

Koresh Dance Company’s Aftershock is coming up on March 26-28 at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre at Broad and Lombard Streets, Philadelphia. For tickets and more information, call 215-985-0420 or click here.

At right: another rehearsal shock from Aftershock. Photo by Bicking Photography.