stage, as the audience take their seats in Wellington’s St James Theatre, a solitary dancer, Shamel Pitts, quietly moves to barely audible music. With elastic gyrations, he slowly builds the tempo with masterful improvisation, mixing humour, slinky street moves and fluid, contained sequences. Gradually, he is joined by the full ensemble, each dancer revealing a distinctive personality.

It is this skill of taking simple movement and gesture as building blocks to mount a compelling human dialogue that gives Batsheva Dance Company its power. Deca Dance, choreographed by Ohad Naharin, is an outstanding composite programme of excerpts from works performed in recent years.

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This extraordinary company is a perfect choice for the opening night of the New Zealand Festival. Inventive, exhilarating, moving – it is everything that the festival aims to be and then some.

It comes as no surprise that Batsheva is recognised as one of the world’s leading contemporary dance companies. It is superb.

Artistic director/ choreographer Ohad Naharin takes contemporary dance to a whole new level. His choreography is astonishingly varied and inventive. The dancers soar, contract, roll, flick, shake, all with split-second timing in ways rarely seen before.

All 18 are phenomenal. They risk everything and hold back nothing. Their bodies are sublimely fluid, with magnificent upper body reach. But it is their absolute unflagging energy that takes one’s breath away.

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Power and power play are brought into sharp focus in this series of highly charged sequences from the past 20 years of works made for the Israeli company, Batsheva Dance by choreographer Ohad Naharin.

We enter the theatre to share the stark space with solo dancers moving immaculately and silently in their own groove of movement. A short script that speaks of beauty, style and suffering, inspired by Charles Bukowski communicates  literally to the audience and then leaves dance to be the communicator. And how they dance!

These are beautiful dancers with clean clear rhythmic moves that relentlessly deliver individual styles. United visually by the formality of suits and white shirts – the attire of business – gradually the stage fills and abruptly the curtain falls! An unexpected and mildly disconcerting moment as we the audience are shut out from this sinuous world of possibility.

When the curtain flies out again, eighteen formally clothed, hatted, asexual dancers on chairs form a semicircle and ritual folk dance gestures that connect these dancers to Israel and the Middle East gain speed and power. I am reminded of the opening image of The Green Table by Kurt Joos and the power play of the men at the imaginary and political bargaining table of life. The strength of unison and repetition in life is brilliantly portrayed and constantly re referenced as the life of both our world and these performers who dance on our behalf, disconnect. One dancer falls prostrate, another stands aloft on his chair – shoes are flung into the air – coats shed and clothes stripped as these people hunger for their own identity. 

Symbols of difference evolve and as the driving energy and sequences of Deca Dance unfold there is a constant under-current of forced cohesion – dancers in unison working together to break apart and reform. Minuscule movement and grand sweeping dynamics set against each other in a tightly controlled and considered choreographic vocabulary. The constant circles and kolos of folk sequences pull us into a vortex that never resolves and leaves us gasping.

There is a powerful pull of energy into the floor and when there is elevation it is explosive and momentary. The escapism and predictability that is showtime slickness livens the journey and provides fun when there is a gathering up of women from the audience (common denominator is the colour red). They join the stage in a social cha cha as partners or puppets? 

There is desperation in the haunted and hunted humanity of mankind’s struggle for survival. Water creates arcs of sheen in the light but it is the harsh reality of the water of survival caught in the contradiction of a beautiful moment that resonates. A sinister and evocative duet hints at shadows and gratification but not at love as a part of the relationship?

Persecution, manipulation, supplication, temptation, exuberance and always throughout the desperation of the need for communication in the world of human experience. Strong visceral command of every nuance of movement, and high tensile bodies that  are totally at their owners beck and call use unison and gesture to take us through an episodic series of universal stories.

The colour palette gradually moves from grey and monotones to glimpses of colour and a sense of today and the gaunt lines of the dancers faces ultimately find some expression of personal difference. The end is a crescendo of voice and childlike counting that holds the menace of a firing line and exposed  individuals desperate to find their chance of both psychological and physical freedom.

Music ranges  from the grandeur of Vivaldi to the accessibility of Over The Rainbow. The Beach Boys ‘You’re Welcome ‘ provides both foot tapping rhythm in the finale and irony in the contradiction of the message it so blithely delivers.  The political and the moral are darkly referenced. Life unravels and is re-stitched before our eyes, but the lean mean machine of this dance company that is Batsheva totally triumphs in an evening of superb dance to open the 2014 New Zealand Festival.

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