About the work
Half Life is a dance work by the Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal and her co-choreographer Gai Behar, created in 2017 for the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm and in the repertoire of the Staatsballett Berlin since 2018. To the hypnotic techno music of Ori Lichtik, Eyal — shaped by the legendary Batsheva Dance Company and Ohad Naharin's Gaga method — unfolds a minimalist, hypnotically pulsing image of movement.
Plot
The piece dispenses with a plot and works instead through the effect of a human kaleidoscope. Even with the curtain still closed, the music begins to pound like a heartbeat; then dancers appear in flesh-coloured leotards, performing endlessly varied minimalist movements in strict unison — a corps that seems almost militarily disciplined and at the same time like a single, writhing organism. Oscillating between precision and excess, discipline and ecstasy, collective and individual, Half Life creates an inescapable pull.
Cultural significance
With Half Life, Sharon Eyal shook up the Berlin ballet audience in 2018 and proved that great opera houses can be filled with more than classical ballet. Eyal, who leads the company L-E-V with Gai Behar, has taken European stages by storm with her unmistakable fusion of contemporary dance and club culture; Half Life is considered one of her most formative and popular works.