Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing schools and have been active in Hebrew theater since the beginning of the 1980s. Some
well-known actors are Salim Dau, Muhammad Bakri, Salma Nakara, Makram Khouri, and
Mira Awad.
Since the beginning of theater in the new state, Israel has sustained a proportionately high
number of theatergoers compared to other Western countries.
DANCE
Dance in Israel has developed along two parallel paths — folk and professional. Dance per-
formances used to be a central element in holiday ceremonies, especially in the kibbutzim
and moshavim. However, in the pre-state years, the most popular folk dances were foreign
imports, mostly from Jews in Eastern Europe, such as the hora and the polka.
Not until the early 1940s did original Israeli folk dances begin to develop. The fi rst mile-
stone occurred at the initiative of Gurit Kadman and Ze'ev Havatzelet, two young visionaries
who organized the fi rst national folk dance convention in 1944 with 200 dancers from fourteen
dance companies; 3,500 people were in the audience. The second Dalia dance convention, held
in 1947, attracted 25,000 people. The convention is still held today, but now it is known as the
Karmiel Dance Festival and is the largest dance festival in Israel.
Traditional dances of the different ethnic groups that make up Israeli society, from Africa,
Eastern Europe — especially Russia — and India, also developed, joining dances belonging to
the Arabs, Druze, and Circassian subcultures already developed in Israel.
In addition to folk dances, dance in Israel also borrowed from the classical ballet and mod-
ern dance of Western Europe. The fi rst Israeli choreographer was Baruch Agadati. His dances
melded many styles. One of his folk dances became the one most emblematic of Israel in the
rest of the world; it became known as the “Hora Agadati.”
Another prominent choreographer was Sara Levi-Tanai, who created within the Israeli
dance form from the 1940s until the 1990s. She was considered the most original choreog-
rapher in Israel. Drawing from a wide range of sources, Levi-Tanai developed a new artistic
language and added depth to Israeli folk dance by making it more artistic. Levi-Tanai estab-
lished the Inbal Company in the 1940s, a group that focused on the dance of Yemenite Jews
and incorporated spoken or chanted words into the performance. In 1957, the Inbal Company
became the fi rst institutionalized and subsidized dance company in Israel.
Modern dance in Israel took off toward the end of the 1950s with the contributions of
three signifi cant fi gures: the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild and a young Israeli couple, Berta
Yampolsky and her husband, Hillel Markman, who returned to Israel after spending several
years abroad dancing with various international companies.
Batsheva de Rothschild's interest in dance came from her friendship with the American
choreographer Martha Graham. She decided to settle in Israel in 1958 after accompanying the
Graham Company on an international tour that included Israel. She founded the Batsheva
Dance Company, initially based on Graham's methods, in 1964. By the 1990s, Batsheva, under
the direction of Ohad Naharin, had turned to more contemporary styles, gaining international
recognition.
