Theodore Allen Heinrich, Introduction to “Etrog: Painting on Wood/ Sculptures/ Drawings”, Gallery Moos, Toronto, 1959, unpaginated
“La Dance” exemplifies Sorel Etrog’s masterful marriage of the organic and the mechanical in his art practice. The intertwined sinuous bodies of the dancers rhythmically curve and undulate in balanced symmetry to one another, linking at their armatures and torsos thus unifying two bodies into one.
Etrog was inspired by the performing arts and regularly imbued his sculptural and painterly works with fluid musicality. Designing avante-garde costumes for dance productions and collaborating with musicians, dancers and writers deepened the artist's understanding and love of music and the limits of bodily expression within the wider discussion of art. Theodore Allen Heinrich wrote: “[Etrog] has a strongly musical sense for rhythms, balances and silence. He has a profound capacity for experiencing and conveying emotion. His work is imbued with poetic fantasy... Above all he has something to say. The adventurous art of Sorel Etrog is centred on increasingly simple but constantly more meaningful form in conjunction with intricately subtle balances of movement, weight and colour.”
“La Dance” speaks to the human condition and relationships to others. The link motif functions as a visual representation of a psychological state regarding the interconnectedness of the body to itself and others. The link can bind opposites creating both tension and balance of these elements within the sculptural form.
