For Bobbi Jene Smth a Principal Dancer with the acclaimed Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, her impending 30th Birthday was going to be the time for big life changes. Most of which were of her own choosing, but very few of them she was about to undertake were going to be executed with a willing heart .
In this fascinating new documentary from filmmaker Elvira Lind that picked up three prestigious awards at the Tribeca Film Festival , we get a very intimate look at Smith’s personal and professional life. She first met the Batsheva’s legendary choreographer Ohad Naharin ten years ago when she at Juilliard in New York. She became infatuated with both the man and his unique form of contemporary dance and secured a position with the Company and moved to Israel, which was in fact the very first time she had even left the U.S. A decade later she had worked her way to the top of the Company’s ranks and even though she and Nahari had stopped their brief love affair, the two were still extremely close.
Now with her dancing days possibly numbered she wanted to fulfill a passion to develop her own work as a choreographer, which she rightly judged she would need to do on her own and away from the reaches of Naharin. Beyond obtaining a six month teaching residency at Stanford University, Smith had very few firm plans which was even more obvious when she was back in U.S. and being advised by a dance expert exactly what she would need to do to get commissions and work.
If leaving her beloved Batsheva after all this years wasn’t bad enough, there was the situation with fellow dancer Or Schraiber to deal with. Despite the fact that the handsome Israeli was 10 years her junior, the two of them were very obviously madly in love. Schraiber was just at the very start of his career, and in fact in a similar situation as Smith was in when she first turned up in Israel as a complete unknown all those years ago. Despite his commitment to their relationship, Schraiber had no desire to settle in the US or leave his extended family whom he was very close too.
Having been a star at Batsheva brought Smith a certain amount of credibility in NY but as work opportunities were not as plentiful as she may have hoped, there is one very poignant scene when she realistically discusses the career/life limitations of being a contemporary dance professional. It makes her absence from Schraiber even tougher to tolerate no matter how intimate they get on their regular Skype calls. On the rare times one of them flies to be with the other, they can hardly take their hands off each other.
Then there is Smith’s very impassioned performance piece that she has been commissioned by the Jewish Museum which becomes the focal point of this documentary. In this a naked Smith forcefully throws herself around the room with very violent movements landing on a sandbag where she literally climaxes with a self-induced orgasm. It certainly is a big risk on her part but the select crowd of art-lovers who make up the audience hail her as a genius. Even Naharin is effusive in his praise.
It is at this point that Smith has realized that no amount of
success however is worth it unless she can share it with Schraiber on a full time basis, something they seem to be moving closer towards, but we will need a sequel to see if it pans out like she would like.
Natharin himself had been the subject of his own documentary last year Mr Gaga (which refers to his style of dance/movement) which was a very firm favorite with the dance community and beyond. Bobbi Jene lacks the same intensity and content as that, as after all Natharin is a superstar when it comes to choreography. What this new film has however, thanks to cinematographer Adam Nielson who is never reluctant to stick his camera right in the middle of the most intimate of scenes, is this raw unrehearsed life that is much more about the physical and emotional price an artist like Smith has to pay. Now as she tries to ‘have it all’ we actually get invested much more in the outcome of her relationship as she exposes herself more as a women in love than she does as a naked avant-garde dancer.
Labels: 2017, biography, dance, documentary
