On October 21 at 7:00 PM at Lucky House of Cinema ONE DANCE WEEK will present the biographic movie MR. GAGA created by the director Tomer Heymann. The movie is a beautiful cinematographic traveling through the life of Ohad Naharin – renowned choreographer and artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company, who redefined the language of contemporary dance.
Free entrance.
MR. GAGA, eight years in the making, captures the elusive beauty of contemporary dance and immerses the audience in the creative process behind Batsheva’s unique performances.
The seeds for this film were planted about 20 years ago, when I first saw Naharin’s Batsheva Dance Group on stage. My head and my heart experienced a giant upheaval, like a superb cocktail of alcohol and drugs, but without the alcohol and without the drugs. A continuum of movement, music, energy, sexuality, sensuality, and dancers you could fall in love with without knowing why. From that evening on, I became an obsessive consumer of Batsheva’s art of dance. Naharin is a tough nut to crack, very complex and a contradictory character, which makes him a fascinating subject for a documentary film.
The movie has been presented at a number of festivals throughout the world and has a lot of nominations and awards among which Best documentary at Sofia International Film Festival.
ABOUT BATSHEVA
Batsheva Dance Company was founded as a repertory company in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild who enlisted Martha Graham as its first artistic adviser. Since 1989, Batsheva Dance Company has been in residence at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv.
Batsheva Dance Company has been critically acclaimed and popularly embraced as one of the foremost contemporary dance companies in the world. Together with Batsheva – The Young Ensemble, the Company boasts a roster of 34 dancers drawn from Israel and abroad. Batsheva Dance Company is Israel’s biggest company, maintaining an extensive performance schedule locally and internationally with over 250 performances and over 75,000 spectators every year. Hailed as one of the world’s preeminent contemporary choreographers, Ohad Naharin assumed the role of Artistic Director in 1990, and propelled the company into a new era with his adventurous curatorial vision and distinctive choreographic voice.
Naharin is also the originator of the innovative movement language, Gaga, which has enriched his extraordinary movement invention, revolutionized the company’s training, and emerged as a growing international force in the larger field of movement practices for both dancers and non-dancers.
OHAD NAHARIN
Born in 1952 on Kibbutz Mizra, Ohad Naharin began his dance training with Batsheva Dance Company in 1974. During his first year with the Company, guest choreographer Martha Graham singled out Naharin for his talent and invited him to join her own company in New York. Whilst in New York, Naharin studied on a scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation at the School of American Ballet, The Juilliard School, and with Maggie Black and David Howard. He went on to perform one season with Israel’s Bat-Dor Dance Company and Maurice Bejarts Ballet du XXe Siecle in Brussels. Naharin returned to New York in 1980, making his choreographic debut at the Kazuko Hirabayshi studio.
His works have been performed by prominent international companies including Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet Frankfurt, Lyon Opera Ballet, Compania Nacional de Danza (Spain), Cullberg Ballet (Sweden), the Finnish National Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, Bale’ da Cidade de Sao Paulo, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (New York), Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Les Grand Ballets Canadiens de Montreal, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Atlanta Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, Le Ballet de l’Opera National de Bordeaux (France) and more.
The screening of MR.GAGA is supported by Embassy of Israel in Bulgaria.