Batsheva Dance Company to Make The Music Center Debut with MOMO

The Music Center will continue its exhilarating Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center season on February 14–16, 2025, with Batsheva Dance Company, one of the world’s foremost contemporary dance ensembles. Performing for the first time at L.A.’s performing arts center, Batsheva will captivate Angelenos at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the U.S. premiere of MOMO, a bold exploration of masculinity, vulnerability and identity through the powerful lens of master choreographer Ohad Naharin. MOMO, which had its world premiere in 2022, has garnered critical acclaim for its raw emotion, mesmerizing choreography and boundary-pushing approach to dance. Inbal Cohen Hamo of Portfolio writes: “A rowdy, dreamlike, and chaotic space, MOMO is one of the most beautiful shows Ohad Naharin ever created for Batsheva Dance Company.”

“Batsheva’s performance of MOMO will be a breathtaking testament to the power of movement and storytelling. The dancers’ extraordinary skill and emotional depth will bring Ohad Naharin’s bold work to life in a way that is both exhilarating and deeply moving,” said Rachel S. Moore, president and CEO of The Music Center. “We are honored to support this incredible work, which bolsters our 22nd dance season’s rousing message to dance fearlessly. Batsheva pushes the boundaries of contemporary dance and will invoke all of us to reflect on the world around us.”

MOMO, conceived by Ohad Naharin with former Batsheva dancer Ariel Cohen and members of the Batsheva company itself, presents a shared passion of deep sorrow and beauty unfolding on stage. Eleven dancers will perform the breathtaking 70-minute piece to a soundtrack from the album Landfall by the iconic Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet, with additional music by Philip Glass, Arca and Maxim Waratt. “The dancers of Batsheva are tools in the hand of the creator,” writes Arian Bavelier of French newspaper Le Figaro. “They shape Naharin’s works with full, round, populated gestures. They are the only dancers in the world who manage to achieve such a quality of movement.”

According to the company, MOMO has two souls. “One sends long roots to the depths of the earth—a soul that embodies archetypes and myths of hardened, raw masculinity, and the other is in a constant search for an individual and distinct DNA; one moves within its own autonomous and independent force field, and the other is a constellation of elements that spin around the same nucleus—alternately drifting away and towards it, making room for necessary tenderness and catharsis.”

Batsheva Dance Company, founded in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, is critically acclaimed and popularly embraced as one of the world’s foremost contemporary dance companies. Ohad Naharin, hailed as a preeminent contemporary choreographer, was the company’s artistic director from 1990–2018 and currently serves as its house choreographer. Batsheva is a home for dancemakers who are collectively committed to ongoing research and adventurous exploration of new forms and ideas of our times. The company practices Gaga, the movement language developed by Naharin based on research into heightening sensation and imagination, becoming aware of form, finding new movement habits and going beyond familiar limits. Batsheva stages 250 performances annually and offers extensive educational activities for young dancers in its dance school and through a variety of courses and workshops.

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