The Plain Dealer – Images spark the works of fiery choreographer Ronen Koresh (Preview)

By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer

Israeli-born choreographer Ronen Koresh watches members of GroundWorks DanceTheater rehearse his newest work, “CoDa,” for premiere performances this weekend at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts.

Don’t expect Ronen Koresh to tell stories or reveal universal truths in his creations. The Israeli-born choreographer is more interested in taking dancers through a series of exciting kinetic images than in making narrative statements.

Koresh, artistic director of Philadelphia’s Koresh Dance Company, recently devised a personal brand of images for GroundWorks DanceTheater, the Cleveland modern-dance troupe that will give the world premiere of his newest work, “CoDa,” this weekend at the Breen Center for the Performing Arts.

“My interest is people,” Koresh said before a rehearsal. “I find human beings to be so complex — so brilliant or so stupid, so generous or so cruel. The complexity of the human mind and the emotional realm is infinite.”

Koresh himself is an admittedly complex figure who is as well-known for mentoring dancers, including students at the school his company runs, as he is for outbursts in the studio when things don’t live up to his standards.

The tension and intense physicality that are hallmarks of Koresh’s art — as well as their distinct amalgam of contemporary, jazz and balletic elements — are what initially prompted GroundWorks artistic director David Shimotakahara to engage him to choreograph a commissioned piece for his Cleveland company.

As he watched Koresh in rehearsal, Shimotakahara came to admire his guest’s total immersion in the creative process.

“He’ll just get in a room, and something happens,” said Shimotakahara. “He pushes in a certain way. He provokes his collaborators and challenges them.

“Roni has a way of working with the artists where he can get outrageous, yell and scream and be frustrated, but they’re not taking it personally. They’re with him because of the base line that it’s about the work.”

Koresh, 50, opts to provide few details about his creations as they unfold, preferring that observers come to their own conclusions. What he will reveal about the new GroundWorks piece is that it is set to instrumental music by French composer Rene Aubry that “gives you a lot of visual stimulation.”

But a piece “never begins with the music,” he said. “It always begins with an image. I always have an image of what I’m going to do. Music is the place. Dance is the people. Movement is the means of communicating with one another.”

Koresh began communicating in movement as a young dancer in Israel. He created his first piece at 16. When friends in the second company of Batsheva Dance Company, the acclaimed contemporary troupe based in Tel Aviv, told him they were headed to New York to study at the Ailey School, he applied for a student visa.

Once bitten by the Ailey bug, Koresh decided not to return to Israel. He studied at the school for a year before taking a job in Philadelphia with the Polish choreographer and painter Shimon Braun. He helped Braun create a big dance piece, “Waves.”

“I fell in love with the way he worked,” said Koresh. “It was an amazing atmosphere — just the way you envision. You heard the laughter and the playfulness. Through that, your creativity flourishes. Otherwise, it’s a dictatorship, and it’s stifling.”
At 22, Koresh was offered a faculty position at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, where he still teaches. He formed his company in 1991 after the first piece he created for students, “The Fifth Season,” caused a sensation.

“I just exploded!” Koresh recalled. “I thought everybody did what I was doing. I wanted to shout, ‘Here I am!’ That experience boosted my ego. I was very popular with the girls. It caught people’s attention. People came to see the next piece. I started to create a following.”

Soon the company had a school, which is directed by Koresh’s brother, Nir. (Another brother, Alon, is the organization’s executive director.) The brothers run the company and school on an annual budget of about $1 million. The company’s 10 dancers are employed 28-40 weeks a year.

Along with pieces by guest choreographers — such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s new artistic director, Robert Battle — Koresh creates a full-length work every season. Most of them, he said, come to life spontaneously, as the result of experimentation and images that trigger invention.

Koresh savors the ability to lead and inspire people. And he acknowledges that he is competitive, partly as a result of his heritage.

“Israel is a very competitive country,” he said. “That’s why they’re in the forefront of things — when you’re the underdog all the time. You have to rely on your imagination. When you don’t have anything, you have to create something.”