Senses of Relationship

Their dance is invested in relationship, starting with their own. Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber are not just high-profile dancers and choreographers who often co-create in projects around the world: they are also a couple, sharing a home in New York with their six-year-old daughter. As well, as part of their creative process, the duo builds relationships with the dancers in the studio: “with the people in the room,” as Smith puts it in more everyday terms. Being in relationship with others helps bring a sense of reality to the rarefied realm of theatrical dance. So does Smith’s apparently fearless honesty: she performs nude in A Study on Effort, which includes a scene on the effort of pleasure, in which she orgasms onstage. In a 2017 documentary by Elvira Lind, Bobbi Jene, Smith ...