In an old neighborhood in the southern town Beer-sheva, “The Municipal Center for the Art of Dance – Bat-Dor Beer Sheva”, one of the best ballet schools in the country, has been active for over 20 years. Many girls who dream of becoming ballerinas start their dancing there at an early age. For them, ballet school is a place filled with hopes and frustrations. It is your whole world, until it shuts you out because you’re not good enough, because your body isn’t perfect. This film’s director, Michal Kesten-Keidar, was one of those girls. This was the place where her dream was formed, and the place where it was shattered.
Now she returns to her childhood dreams, to the pink tutu skirts, the tough drills and the harsh teachers.
The film follows Daniella Shapira, the school’s director, who made Bat-Dor into a kind of “European oasis” in the dusty and sweaty city, and documents the stories of two young girls who dance at the school, fighting to keep dancing in the big world. This is the story of young girls with big dreams, girls from Beer Sheva, who dream of breaking their way through to the Israeli opera house in Tel-Aviv, and from there to maybe conquer the big stages around the world. This is a story of the distance between childhood dreams and growing up, and having to face the reality surrounding us, the body in which we live.
