Bolero X

In one evening, on the stage of the Israeli Opera, forty dancers and The Revolution Orchestra come together to reexamine three canonical works that transformed the face of music and dance in the 20th century: The Rite of Spring | Afternoon of a Faun | Bolero.

This performance invites the audience on a dramatic journey — between ancient rituals and contemporary sound and movement, between continuous hypnosis and delicate orchestral textures, between body and sound.

Part I – The Rite of Spring

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) is regarded as the work that shook the history of music and dance — both through its primal, ritualistic subject matter and its unprecedented compositional language.

Inspired by it, choreographer Shahar Binyamini creates a new dance piece in close collaboration with The Revolution Orchestra and composer Ariel Blumenthal. Blumenthal was invited to write an original response — not an adaptation, but an entirely new composition that converses with Stravinsky, orchestrated with contemporary colors including electric guitar, synthesizer, and unique percussion.

The result: a contemporary stage ritual — polyrhythmic, physical, and hypnotic — performed by the company’s resident dance ensemble.

Part II – Afternoon of a Faun

Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) is considered a milestone of Western music — a turning point where composition ceased to tell a story in the dramatic terms of Romanticism, and instead revealed itself as a state of mind built from color, movement, resonance, and memory.

Rather than a clear narrative structure, Debussy offers a musical image that flows like breath — rich in shades, allusive, and open to personal interpretation.

The piece inspired Vaslav Nijinsky’s groundbreaking choreography for the Ballets Russes, which became a symbol of aesthetic revolution in dance as well.

Here too, Binyamini creates a new choreographic layer, in collaboration with Blumenthal, who was asked to engage in dialogue with Debussy’s masterpiece and bring forth a new musical interpretation performed live by The Revolution Orchestra. The choreography unfolds on the border between movement and dream.

Part III – Bolero

The evening culminates with Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928).

Originally conceived as a full ballet, its structure is deceptively simple: a single rhythm and a single melody repeating over and over, constantly shifting in orchestral color, intensifying toward a sense of ecstasy.

Bolero is one of the most iconic works in the history of dance — thanks to its hypnotic structure, gradual build-up of intensity, and the obsessive, almost feverish momentum it generates.

BOLERO X, choreographed by Binyamini for fifty dancers, became an international sensation, performed on major stages across Germany, Canada, France, China, and beyond. Now, for the first time in Israel, the work will be performed with live orchestra — a version that brings the depth, rhythm, and hypnotic repetition of Ravel’s score into the body of dance itself.