Dance

Jewish women made overwhelming contributions to the creation of the field of Screendance.  Maya Deren, Amy Greenfield, Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, and others have created a legacy of socially conscious dance for the screen that collectively exhibits and performs principles of Jewish ritual and practice. Many of these artists share a focus on social justice and a collective approach to what might be called a feminist Jewish art form.

A dancer, choreographer, educator, writer, and collaborator, Liz Lerman is among the dance field’s prominent public intellectuals, bringing deeply researched ideas about dance and community across fields as diverse as genetics, history, ethics of justice and reconciliation, and the science and religion of the origins of the universe. She draws consciously on the Jewish value of tikkun olam—healing the world—in her work.

Jewish women in Mexico have undertaken numerous activities in dance. They have made inroads in amateur and professional spaces within and outside their community and made contributions to the performance, creation, education, promotion, and research of several forms of dance and body techniques, all of which often involved breaking through barriers imposed by their communities.

Wendy Perron is a dance writer, educator, teacher, performer, and choreographer. Across her thirteen-year tenure at Dance Magazine, Perron contributed nearly 1,000 individual pieces of dance journalism.

While fewer Jewish women went into ballet than into modern dance, those interested in ballet studied with gentile classical teacher-choreographers, such as Mikhai Fokine, Michael Mordkin, and Adolf Bolm. They performed in the main ballet companies, including the American Ballet Theatre, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and even Radio City Music Hall’s ballet company.

Ze’eva Cohen is a Yemenite-Israeli-American dancer and choreographer who redefined what it means to be a Jewish performer. She was a leader in the world of postmodern dance in New York between the 1960s and 1990s, a founding member of Dance Theater Workshop, and founding director of the dance program at Princeton University. She choreographed for companies all over the world, performed in the work of countless contemporary choreographers, published articles in English and Hebrew, and influenced generations of dance students.

Hester Rose Martínez Nardea is a Mexican dancer, teacher, choreographer, director, promoter, and administrator. She is currently the director of the International Festival of Extremadura Dance-Contemporary Language and is the founding director of WIROMA Circle Dances.

Cecilia Baram is one of the few Jewish women who became a professional dancer in Mexico between the 1950s and the 1980s. She lives in Mexico City, where she had a brilliant career in nationalist modern dance performing with government-sponsored companies, as well in contemporary dance performing with independent companies.