Gaga: the Israeli dance movement that’s going global
Forget spin, and other self-conscious fitness fads: embrace the mindful art of letting go
At 9am on a winter’s morning in Tel Aviv, I find myself dancing in a room full of strangers. I am punching the air in front of me, experimenting with a loose swing and then a tightly wound jab as I move in time to the music’s insistent beat. Laughing, the eclectic group drop to the floor, limbs wildly shaking as we shift from horizontal to seated in a frenzied, marionette-style variant of a sit-up.
This is Gaga, a movement class that refuses to fit neatly into any of the commercial dance genres — such as hip hop or swing — currently in vogue. Developed by legendary Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, who presided over the Tel Aviv-based, internationally acclaimed Batsheva Dance Company — Israel’s largest dance company — for 28 years, it began in 1998 as a way for Naharin to find pleasure in his body after years of accrued dance injuries.
After the first classes in 2001, fans soon included Natalie Portman, who turned to the method to help her train for her Oscar-winning role as a prima ballerina in 2010’s Black Swan. And although Naharin has shied away from publicising Gaga, its following continues to grow in dance studios across North America, Europe and Japan.
In some ways, Gaga resembles a dance class. Over the course of an hour, the group of 80 is in constant motion, swaying rhythmically to the left and then to the right as we follow the instructions of Saar Harari, Gaga’s lean, scruffy-haired artistic director. But there are no mirrors in the studio. And the language that Harari uses — urging us to lift from our armpits and explore the undulation of our spine — encourages individual expression. By the time the class draws to a close, the atmosphere is giddy. The final minutes erupt into a boisterous dance party of teenagers, retirees and professional dancers in oversized sportswear.
While Gaga revolves around improvisation, it is underpinned by Naharin’s decades-long and exacting obsession with movement. Each Gaga teacher undergoes intensive training that includes daily classes with Naharin. They emerge equipped with a lexicon of instruction — such as the command to move like “spaghetti in boiling water” or to soften the hand, gently closing fingers inward in an imitation of a “baby palm”.
There is a liberating unorthodoxy to the practice, which discards the achievement-based, appearance-focused dictates of many traditional dance genres in favour of a more internal, unselfconscious experience. There’s a reason that mirrors are banned — if you could see yourself writhing around like spaghetti, you might feel too silly to continue.
“Being playful and letting go, not taking myself too seriously but taking what I do seriously — all these things are giving me cause to live a better life,” says Harari as we sip coffee after class. A dancer since childhood, Harari shifted gears when he spent six years serving in the Israeli military. He met Naharin when the choreographer was beginning to test out Gaga on a small group that met twice a week. After relocating to New York with his own dance company, LeeSaar The Company, he headed up Gaga’s US presence before returning to Tel Aviv as artistic director in 2018.
Central to Gaga is the practice of self-inquiry, termed “research”, that encourages students to tune in to their body. Along with the obvious benefits that come with dancing for an hour, devotees seem hooked on the more intangible experience of physical freedom. As Harari observes: “After a class, I think people always feel alive.”
Annabel Engels, an English marketing executive who relocated to Tel Aviv to head an international agency, credits Gaga with giving her more confidence. She had suffered from anxiety for years and had started to experiment with meditation and mindfulness-based movement as a supplement to conventional therapy. Her first class allowed her to let her guard down and move in a way that she hadn’t known she could. After that, she was addicted.
“We live in a world which is quite narcissistic,” she says. “But with Gaga, there are no mirrors. There are a lot of you in the room, but it’s a very individual experience. Like someone has handwriting that’s theirs, you find your own signature of movement.
“I went to some clubs afterwards, and danced, and I felt more confident within dance as a form,” she adds. “If you could say one line about Gaga, it’s about letting go. It’s such a simple but powerful tool.”
The bestselling novelist Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love, was introduced to Naharin’s work during a visit to Israel in 2010. It came at a period when she felt bereft of the pleasure and playfulness that had informed her earlier writing and was astonished to find in Gaga another iteration of this same search.
Since then, Krauss has religiously attended Gaga classes, both in Tel Aviv and at home in Brooklyn, watching the New York programme swell from its early days, when it was based in a pre-school auditorium, to a dozen weekly sessions across the city.
In addition to the physical exhilaration that accompanies a class, she often finds herself emotionally affected. “Sometimes it will be the way a class builds, sometimes it will be the way a teacher offers a metaphor in that moment,” she says, recalling the time Naharin asked the dancers to move first as if they were giving, and then as if they were receiving. “You would never stop to experiment with that.”
Over the years, Krauss and Naharin have become close friends. During his most recent visit to New York, the conversation turned to Gaga’s origins. Naharin explained that, to some degree, his injuries mean that he is always considering new ways to appreciate his body. Sometimes, he said, he’ll imagine a little marble perched atop his head. He lets it roll slightly to the right. What was the effect? He tries again, this time to the left.
“We had this whole discussion about which one he liked better,” marvels Krauss. “I just felt like it’s so fascinating to have a mind like that. And a mind like that leads to this entire language for people all around the world who are moving in these new ways.”