Impressions of: "Mr Gaga" -- A Documentary on Ohad Naharin and Batsheva Dance Company

The award-winning Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin explains why he began to dance in MR. GAGA, the documentary made about him with feverish relish by Tomer Heymann. In the film we learn that Naharin's grandmother discovered that the artist's autistic twin brother would become engaged when she danced for him; so, when his grandmother died in a car accident, Naharin felt compelled to assume her role. Heymann shows the grandmother dancing and a very young Naharin dancing (alone), flitting about with scarfs and a flag, when the family still lived on a Kibbutz.

 

Later in the film, Naharin discredits the twin/grandmother story, claiming that he had fabricated it for an interviewer.

 

Heymann, who has made fourteen films, found MR. GAGA the most difficult: agonizing over what frame should open and close the work; wondering how to convey the multiple layers of Naharin’s art along with the depth of confusion this choreographer often stirs up; and, sussing out how to capture the drama in a form as abstract as dance. Heymann wrestled with his three editors about the story of the autistic twin, finally deciding for its inclusion because the incident says a lot about the manipulative nature of the artist.

The director approached this documentary, made painstakingly over nine years, as a weaver of fine and rough threads. We see Naharin push his dancers to repeat a phrase, particularly a fall, until he sees their complete release. Dancer/Choreographer Reggie Wilson says that being one of Naharin's dancers in the 1980s was tough, yet everyone stuck it out because of a collective sense that they were mining something important. Naharin's first wife, Mari Kajiwara (1951-2001), to whom the movie is dedicated, understood what he was aiming for and could express it to his dancers.

As with so many documentaries, archival footage are the jewels of MR. GAGA. It is fascinating to witness the uncanny ease of Naharin, the untrained dancer, tumbling on his lawn or to see him later warbling in a New York tub, with his guitar going for a swim at the end of the song. We observe the 50th anniversary of the founding of Israel when his dancers refused to perform because of a costume dispute, and see Kajiwara, in Joyce Tristler’s solo Journey. Then there is the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing in Naharin’s compelling Minus 16, and the battling duet, Sixty a Minute, in which Naharin jams Kajiwara against a keyboard, then flips over the back of the piano.

 

Thoroughly memorable and intriguing, MR. GAGA begins his theatrical run at the Film Forum on February 1, 2017 (where it runs through Feb. 16th) as arranged by Distributor/Executive Producer Diana Holtzberg of East Village Entertainment, in conjunction with the U.S. tour of Batsheva Dance Company at BAM February 1-4, 2017.
 

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