Showing posts with label Batsheva Fance Troupe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Batsheva Fance Troupe. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Worse and Worse - Batsheva in the UK

I couldn't decide which was worse in this report.

Was it

a) the lack of adequate security?
...Pro-Palestinian demonstrators managed to bring to a halt the performance of the Batsheva dance troupe on three separate nights during one of the country’s biggest arts festivals...during their final performance on Saturday night, up to 20 protesters entered the Edinburgh Playhouse auditorium and “ran amok” during performance, forcing security staff to eject them at least nine times.
b) that the dancers presented a rather timid and cowed charcater, very un-Israeli:
Witnesses reported that on each occasion the dancers stood stock still on stage, the curtain was lowered and the house lights brought up until the protesters were ejected.
c) that the audience seemed to be uninvolved accept for a post-demo cheer:
At the end of their performance, the highly-regarded, ethnically diverse contemporary dance group was greeted with enthusiastic applause and standing ovations...One audience member told The Daily Telegraph: “A few audience members, including a group including several children, left after the first disruption but other than that the audience remained calm and seated.
d) that the police ignored a criminal act and permitted threatening behavior::
More than 200 protesters have also rallied outside the theatre and have been seen shouting abuse at patrons as they left. No arrests have been made.“As we left the protesters simply screamed and yelled angrily, behind a line of police.”
e) or that they included the music of the German anti-Semite - and banned in Israel - Wagner:
During their three one-hour performances of “Hora”, they danced to a "mash up" including the Star Wars theme and music from Richard Wagner, the renowned German composer.
f) or the scurrilous and fascist attitude of certain 'persons of the spirit'
Leading up to the festival writers and artists including Iain Banks, Tom Leonard and Al Kennedy called for the festival's artistic director Jonathan Mills to axe the Israeli dance troupe. 
g) or the craven response of the festival spokeswoman, who viewed the protest and the dance performance equally and who said: 
"The festival supports freedom of expression and people's right to protest. “It welcomes constructive criticism, regularly facilitates debates and recognises the right to peaceful and orderly protest in any public place including outside its theatres. Equally the festival defends the rights of all artists, irrespective of nationality, creed or culture to have their voices heard."
h) or that the most robust and confrontational counter-attack came from...Brendan O'Neill who I presume is not Jewish:

Boycotts of everything Israeli have well and truly crossed the line from political campaigns into expressions of bigotry against the people and produce of Israel...This highly intolerant effort by one group of artists to have another group of artists banned – or perhaps quarantined at the borders until they renounce their home country and everything it stands for – is part of a bigger chattering-class trend to ghettoise Israeli culture...they practise cultural apartheid against Israelis...But there is nothing political about these censorious efforts to keep everything Israeli out of Britain. It is just an acceptable form of bigotry, a way of advertising one’s own moral decency by contrasting oneself to an inferior, infected people from Over There.


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