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Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance (Hardcover)

Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance Cover Image
By Judith Brin Ingber (Editor), Sara Levi-Tanai (Contribution by), Felix Fibich (Contribution by)
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Description


A comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary Jewish dance.

In Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance, choreographer, dancer, and dance scholar Judith Brin Ingber collects wide-ranging essays and many remarkable photographs to explore the evolution of Jewish dance through two thousand years of Diaspora, in communities of amazing variety and amid changing traditions. Ingber and other eminent scholars consider dancers individually and in community, defining Jewish dance broadly to encompass religious ritual, community folk dance, and choreographed performance. Taken together, this wide range of expression illustrates the vitality, necessity, and continuity of dance in Judaism.

This volume combines dancers' own views of their art with scholarly examinations of Jewish dance conducted in Europe, Israel, other Middle East areas, Africa, and the Americas. In seven parts, Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance considers Jewish dance artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; the dance of different Jewish communities, including Hasidic, Yemenite, Kurdish, Ethiopian, and European Jews in many epochs; historical and current Israeli folk dance; and the contrast between Israeli and American modern and post-modern theater dance. Along the way, contributors see dance in ancient texts like the Song of Songs, the Talmud, and Renaissance-era illuminated manuscripts, and plumb oral histories, Holocaust sources, and their own unique views of the subject. A selection of 182 illustrations, including photos, paintings, and film stills, round out this lively volume. Many of the illustrations come from private collections and have never before been published, and they represent such varied sources as a program booklet from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and archival photos from the Israel Government Press Office.

Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance threads together unique source material and scholarly examinations by authors from Europe, Israel, and America trained in sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, Jewish studies, dance studies, as well as art, theater, and dance criticism. Enthusiasts of dance and performance art and a wide range of university students will enjoy this significant volume.

About the Author


Judith Brin Ingber is a performer, teacher, and choreographer who has written and lectured extensively on Jewish dance. She co-founded the Israel Dance Annual magazine and the chamber performing arts troupe Voices of Sepharad and has been an adjunct faculty in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance and in the School of Journalism at the University of Minnesota since 1978.

Product Details
ISBN: 9780814333303
ISBN-10: 0814333303
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Publication Date: June 15th, 2011
Pages: 472
Language: English
Series: Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology