about the production
Inbal Pinto created a magical world, which is colourful and bizarre, full of light and darkness at the same time, like the world of bustling showbiz people. By the simplicity and abundance of varied scenes and emotions, she won over even the most demanding audiences, children in the audience who, enraptured by the extraordinary performance, watched motionless.
Matina Kaltaki Ependytis, 18 December 1999
Oysters may be a non-kosher food, but as a theatre metaphor devised by Israeli Inbal Pinto Dance Company, they are full of visual pearls. Oyster, the company's second show to reach Britain, transports you to a fantastic temporal loop, deep in the geography of the mind, where shadowy figures perform a succession of numbers that might belong to a surreal circus or a dumb show.
Independent, 5 April 2001
(...) a multi-dimensional and extremely interesting production...a show which, in a masterly fashion, combines dance with the technique of classical ballet, the art of vagrant street acrobats and the theatrical technique in artistically perfectly designed scenery... the audience watched entranced until the last burst of applause.
Thessalia Volou 13 December 1999
Pinto has always wonderful ideas. She manipulates its ensemble almost as a puppeteer manipulates his puppets. Her movements are a charming comedy. Her brilliant humour is her greatest triumph.
Elyakim Yaron, Ma’ariu
I, together with dancers, strive to explore what they are and what I expect of them. What kind of emotions and movements, and what all they may put in a created performance.
... On the stage it is human beings that are significant for me. There is no division into dancers and actors. All participate in something that is coming into existence, starts to exist and is being created. We all share the same reality.
The starting point of the performance was the question of how people learn to do this or that. It starts a bit as if we were puppets. We are born somewhere and someone teaches us to do certain things. It is as if the atmosphere of an environment built our life.
Inbal Pinto
The production of Oyster was awarded a special Israeli Theatre Award for the best production of the season 1999/2000.
creators
choreography: Inbal Pinto
directed by Avshalom Pollak
set: Inbal Pinto, Avshalom Pollak
costumes: Inbal Pinto
lighting design: Yoann Tivoli
cast: Michal Almogi, Talia Beck, Gwyn Emberton, Zvi Fishzon, Rotem Gadot, Noga Harmelin, Bosmat Nossan, Ron Oren, Inbal Pinto, Rina Rosenbaum, Yuval Sussler
Co-production of: Haifa Municipal Theater, Maison de la Danse, Lyon and Suzanne Dellal Center – Curtain Up International Exposure 1999.
director
Avshalom Pollak (1970)
Avshalom Pollak was born in Haifa in 1970. He studied at the Nissan Nativ Drama Studio. In 1994 he began co-operating with Inbal Pinto and actor and director Yossi Pollak in making the production of Chance for 100.
In 1997-98 he took part in film productions in the U.S. and England, and, as an actor, he also appeared in the film Gantilla. As a theatre actor, Avshalom Pollak has played in several theatres, such as Habima, Cameri and Gesher. Currently he is with the Haifa Municipal Theatre, where he has played in several productions of Shakespeare’s (Othello and Romeo and Juliet).
choreography
Ibal Pinto (1969) is a young, talented and creative choreographer. She is a skilful and fear-less narrator of charming and humorous stories, which are sometimes full of sarcasm. Her mysterious, enchanting and magical elements employed in choreographies influence a story, thus producing exceptional visual and scenic beauty.
She began studying dance when she was thirteen. At the age of 21 she, in co-operation with her teacher Sally Ann Friedland, produced her first choreography Dov Hoz, which was presented in the competition of young choreographers Shades in Dance. In 1991, she, as a dancer, joined the famous Bat Sheva Dance Company. In that period, she began studying graphic design at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, and at that time she also produced her second choreography Dio-Can, which won second prize in the Shades in Dance competition and brought her invitations to Italy, Germany and different towns in Israel to present her show. In 1994, together with ac-tor and director Yossi Pollak and actor Avshalom Pollak, she made the production Chance for 100 and prepared the choreography Versus a Video Dance for the Bat Sheva Ensemble, with which she successfully presented herself in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.