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DEBORAH FRIEDES |
At the Suzanne Dellal Center, Israel’s main center for dance.
Hi everybody! I figured I should give you some context about how I ended up in Tel Aviv and weave in a bit of dance history while I’m at it (a habit of mine, as you’ll see).
I started to study dance history while I was an undergraduate at Brown University, and there I researched American choreographers who were born to Eastern European Jewish immigrants – choreographers like Helen Tamiris (a contemporary of Martha Graham and major figure in the founding of American modern dance), Daniel Nagrin, Anna Sokolow, and Sophie Maslow. Both Anna and Sophie worked a bit in Israel, as did many prominent Americans in the 1960s through 1980s including Martha Graham, Glen Tetley, Robert Cohan, William Louther, Donald McKayle, Talley Beatty, Paul Sanasardo, David Parsons, and Daniel Ezralow. In fact, when the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild founded the Batsheva Dance Company in 1964, Martha Graham signed on as artistic adviser and allowed the company to perform many of her masterworks. Learning about the links between American modern dance and Israeli modern dance sparked my interest in traveling here, and as my undergraduate years came to a close, I started wondering if I could get a Fulbright grant to fund some research in Israel.
What really got me excited, though, was seeing the Batsheva company perform Ohad Naharin’s Deca Dance in 2004 while I was studying for my MFA at Ohio State. I still remember the energy in the Mershon Auditorium when the performers pulled audience members onstage for some vigorous dancing; the fourth wall was clearly shattered, and it seemed that the entire crowd shared in a truly fun experience with the Batsheva dancers. I enthusiastically joined in the thundering applause at the end of the evening and marveled at how far the company had come from its roots in the Graham tradition. Over the next few years, I heard some buzz about other Israeli choreographers like Inbal Pinto, Yasmeen Godder, and Emanuel Gat, and so my curiosity about the entire Israeli contemporary dance scene grew. I finally applied for the Fulbright grant in the fall of 2006, and in September 2007 I got on the plane to begin my journey. 6 months, 57 concerts, countless contemporary dance classes, and dozens of dialogues later, I see what the buzz is all about. There is a LOT of dance in Israel – a country the size of my home state of New Jersey – and I’m happy to say, I think there’s a lot of GOOD dance here. Over the next few months, I will continue to take classes and workshops, attend performances, conduct research in archives, and interview Israeli choreographers and dancers. I am really looking forward to posting about my experiences here on The Winger!
