Anna Sokolow was an American dancer and choreographer. Sokolow's work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality. Throughout her career, Sokolow supported of the development of modern dance around the world, including in Mexico and Israel.
Dame Alicia Markova DBE was a British ballerina and a choreographer, director and teacher of classical ballet. Most noted for her career with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and touring internationally, she was widely considered to be one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the twentieth century. She was the first British dancer to become the principal dancer of a ballet company and, with Dame Margot Fonteyn, is one of only two English dancers to be recognised as a prima ballerina assoluta. Markova was a founder dancer of the Rambert Dance Company, The Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and was co-founder and director of the English National Ballet.
Pearl Lang was an American dancer, choreographer and teacher renowned as an interpreter and propagator of the choreography style of Martha Graham, and also for her own longtime dance company, the Pearl Lang Dance Theater. She is known for Appalachian Spring (1944), American Masters (1985) and Driven (2001)
Ohad Naharin is an Israeli choreographer, contemporary dancer, and creator and teacher of a unique system/language/pedagogy of dance called Gaga. He served as artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company from 1990; he stepped down in 2018.
Alicia Alonso was a Cuban prima ballerina assoluta and choreographer whose company became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1955. She is best known for her portrayals of Giselle and the ballet version of Carmen.
Jewish dance is dance associated with Jews and Judaism. Dance has long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Dancing is a favorite pastime and plays a role in religious observance.
Diana Viktorovna Vishneva is a Russian ballet dancer who performs as a principal dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet.
The Batsheva Dance Company is a renowned dance company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild in 1964.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Dance in Israel incorporates a wide variety of dance styles, from traditional Israeli folk dancing to ballet, modern dance, ballroom dancing and flamenco.
Carmen de Lavallade is an American actress, choreographer and dancer. For many years, she was associated with and married to Tony Award-winning actor, dancer, and director Geoffrey Holder. In 2017, she received the Kennedy Center Honors award for lifetime achievement and contributions to American culture.
Bessie Schonberg was a highly influential dancer, choreographer and teacher of the 20th century. She was at the center of contemporary modern dance from her beginning at Bennington College up until her death in 1997. Her career spanned sixty-five years and she helped mold a new generation of modern dancers including Lucinda Childs, Elizabeth Keen, Meredith Monk and Carolyn Adams (dancer).
Capturing a sense of the life and work of Bessie Schonberg is possible if one evokes the image of a prism, a multi-face crystalline object which cannot be perceived in its entirety, but can be appreciated and understood by catching glimpses of light from its different sides.
Henning Rübsam is a choreographer and dancer based in New York City. He is the artistic director of SENSEDANCE, a faculty member of The Juilliard School and Fordham University, and a visiting guest professor at Texas Academy of Ballet. He is the dance curator for Arts at Work and a resident choreographer for Hartford City Ballet.
Yaron Margolin is an Israeli dancer and choreographer.
Ze'eva Cohen is an Israeli American dancer and modern/ postmodern dance choreographer who founded and directed the dance program at Princeton University between 1969 and 2009.
Vertigo is an Israeli modern dance company. It was established by Noa Wertheim and Adi Sha'al in Jerusalem in 1992. The company's first performance was a duet featuring Wertheim and Sha'al called Vertigo. Following the group's appearances in various festivals in Israel and around the world, Vertigo has received recognition, positive reviews, and several awards from professionals and local and international audiences. The group mainly presents works by Wertheim, but it also showcases pieces by independent choreographers from within and outside the company. The company's studios are at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem and at Kibbutz Netiv Halamed-Heh, where it established an ecological arts village in 2007. Vertigo's main focuses are modern dance, Contact Improvisation and the classic ballet technique.
Errand into the Maze is a Martha Graham ballet based on a poem by Ben Belitt set to music by Gian Carlo Menotti. The surrealistic set was designed by Isamu Noguchi, the costumes by Graham herself. The dance uses the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur to explore the theme of conquering one's inner demons, more specifically the fear of sexual intimacy. The piece premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on February 28, 1947, with Graham as the protagonist, a sort of female Theseus, and Mark Ryder as the Minotaur-like character.
Kazuko Hirabayashi was a dance teacher and choreographer. She was born in Japan, where she completed her college education before going to New York to enroll in the Juilliard school.
