Batsheva Dance Company performed “Hora” at BAM with absolute impeccable coordination and choreography. The simply set stage transformed into the background of an incredible machine, with the dancers forming the gears. However, the machine must have been designed by a mad engineer; the gears hardly seemed to fit, one could practically see springs and rivets jumping off, and the whole thing jerked and creaked along. Yet in the end, the machine ran beautifully, every part doing its own little dance that made everything fit together.

Eleven dancers, dressed simply in cotton shorts and tank tops, stayed on stage for an hour, either dancing or sitting along a long wooden bench in the back. The whole arena was a green box that dimmed or brightened in accordance to the choreography. Dancers shifted their bodies in jerky movements around each other, occasionally interacting. However wildly set the dancers, we could see the vision of the creater Ohad Naharin. The dance, at parts, was almost surgical; every movement was deliberate and carefully arranged. Occasionally motifs would emerge; the dancers would form a wave pattern as they held out their arms, bent at a precise angle.

The program starts with a short musical piece that fades into ten minutes of silence, where the feet of dancers are clearly heard, as well as every other sound in the theatre. However, the music quickly turns cinematic, most notably bringing in Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” and the themes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars: Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra” and John Williams’ “Main Title.” The dancers don’t quite match the pieces in tempo and occasionally dance opposite to the rhythm, but they do match the enormous energy of the cinematic pieces.

“Hora” might have nothing to do at all with the traditional Jewish circle dance and might instead refer to the Latin word for hour, the length of the piece. However, “Hora” will captivate for an hour. The dance can be painfully surreal during the silence and lulls in the action, but when the music builds up and the dancers frantically jump and contort themselves across the stage, then “Hora” becomes incredibly enthralling. Yet in the end, we discover that warmth and happiness is found nowhere in the dance, only a cold machine.