This anxious dance work about Jewish/Arab relations is equally a satire of contemporary dance
There is an urgent anxiety to Hillel Kogan, the choreographer and writer of We Love Arabs. He has, he tells us with the rattling stream of thought of someone caught up too much in his own head, been thinking about his artistic process.
Wherever your body is in space, he says, there is a totally specific way your body should move. A choreographer, then, cannot simply impose themselves and their preferred movement into a space: they must listen to that space, and respond. And sometimes, he says, this means the space will reject you. You, your body, your movement, is not what this space needs.
What this space needs, he says, is an Arab. But a choreographer cannot simply find someone in Tel Aviv who is both an Arab and a trained dancer. No no no, it is much more complex than that. Or at least, Kogan tells us, it should be – until Adi Boutrous appears, and suddenly there is an Arab in the space. Where Boutrous came from, Kogan isn’t sure. But never mind: he is here now. Kogan can proceed.
Read the full review by Jane Howard at Time Out.