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Jewish Folklore and Ethnology ReviewJ Vol. 20J Dance

THE YEMENITE DANCE MATERIALS OF SARALEVI-TANAI

Giora Manor

Nobody, even she herself, can be sure what ageshereallyis.This is not because of the usual vanityof grand ladies of the dance, who think they cancheattime but succeed only in making the life ofdance historians difficult. The true date of birthfor perhaps the most important Israelichoreographer of the last fifty years is unknown.SaraLevi-Tanai was born in Jerusalem sometimebefore the First World War to parents who hadcome from Yemen in the 1880s. They moved toJerusalemduring the era of the Ottoman reign andunder the Turks there were no official birthcertificates.When Sara was about four years old,her mother and siblings died in an epidemic,probably of cholera. Her father, who had severealcoholproblems, abandoned his daughter to herown fate. She was raised in an orphanage in theGalileeby teachers from Europe.

In 1949, one year after the foundation of theindependentState of Israel, she met with her truedestiny.She encountered a group of youngsterswho had just arrived from Yemen to settle inIsraeland began teaching them Israeli songs anddances. Her students were exceptionally giftedboysand girls and from them, she learned manyaspectsof the Yemenite-Jewish traditions. As the .ancientHebrew adage has it, "I learned from allmyteachers,but most of all from my pupils."

They would sing and dance for her in theirtraditional and exuberant manner, so differentfrom the European songs and dances she hadbeen taught in the orphanage. Sara beganexperimenting with the special traditionalYemenitedance steps, rhythms and melodies thatwereher students' expertise. She particularlynoteda stepping pattern they referred to as the Da'asa[editor'snote: she later discovered it is the bestknown step of the women's dances, sedate, yetconsisting of swaying the torso and hips gentlyforwardand back, progressing counter clock-wise,steppingin a 7/8 rhythm]. For Sara Levi-Tanai,the DaJasa became symbolic of walking in thedesert,of caravans, of the wide empty spaces thatshe so loves. She has utilized this and other

folkloric traditional patterns in many variations inher choreography.

Only when Sara became a student at theLevinskyTeachers Seminar in Tel Aviv in her lateteens, did she go to visit the Yemenite quarter,Kerem Hatrymanim. There she heard and sawYemenite song and dancing and encountered therich artistic heritage of her ancestors. As she hasoften said, " I knew Dostoyevski and Shakespearelong before reading the poems of the greatYemenite poet Shalom Shabazi ... "

In order to fully understand her work and itsrelation to ancient Yemenite folk traditions, it isnecessary to deal with several important points,including the contrast in her own backgroundbetween her Western and her Yemenite ancestry;the difference between a constructed Israeli folkdance and ethnic dance traditions; the Yemenite-Jewish dance tradition and how she changed thatin her work. Firstly, one should consider thecontrast between her education grounded inclassic European and English texts, as well asHebrew poetry and the Bible, with her ownYemenite background. Yemenite Jews are perhapsthe single Jewish ethnic group to possess afolkloric tradition comprising all aspects of artwith a distinct style of music, dance, poetry andvisual ornamentation (as seen in jewelry andcostume). To what extent this is similar to non-Jewish Yemenite folk culture is until now a mootpoint because of geo-political reasons. It has beennearly impossible for Israeli researchers to visitYemen. If one may make a comparison withJewish traditions in Eastern Europe to Yemenite,perhaps the answer is that just as Hasidic orklezmer music and dance is a variation of Slavicfolk art, used at distinctive Jewish events, so isJewish-Yemenite art, though this has yet to beproven. Be that as it may, Sara Levi-Tanai wasconcerned with a total experience and her dancers,especiallyin the beginning, sang and drummed aswell as danced, thereby affecting their audiencesinvery strong ways.

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Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, Vol. 20, Dance

In Israel there are many kinds of folk dance.One must distinguish between the ethnic dancebrought to Israel by different Jewish communities,the ethnic dance of non-Jewish groups living inthe area (such as the indigenous Arabs, Druze andBedouin), and the Israeli folk dance created fromthe 1930s to today. Israeli folk dance--very muchalive today and known all over the world-cis an"invented" folk dance style developed byprofessional choreographers, mainly those whocame to live in Israel in the 1930s. Many of thefolk dances in favor today were created forpageants and festivities, mainly in the rural,collective settlements (kibbutzim and moshavim)in the 1940s. Those that survived as social folkdances did so by a process of natural selectionthrough their use in schools, festivals, specialfestivities and other vehicles. Those that weredanced and liked by dancers and the dancingpublic became true folk dances, while otherssimplydisappeared. When SaraLevi-Tanaiworkedas a kindergarten teacher at Kibbutz RamatHakovesh during World War II, she composedsongs and dances such as her winning EI GinatEgoZ (To the Walnut Grove). This has become aclassicof both Israeli folk song and dance.

Her work was often and, to my mind, quiteerroneously, labeled as folkloric. Herchoreography, as it developed for her company, ismodern, contemporary dance, using ancientmovement and rhythmic elements. Such great folkdance choreographers as Igor Moiseyev or AmaliaHernandez "domesticated" folk dance to fit themodern stage. Mainly, they solved the spatialproblem of many folk dances performed in acircle, thus excluding spectators from the centralarena. Unlike them, Sara Levi-Tanai has"dissolved" ancient folk dance traditions and builther own original choreographic structures fromthe basic folkloric components.

Sara Levi-Tanai learned the traditionalYemenite-jewish dance traditions to change andcontemporize them. In Yemenite-Jewish dancetradition there is a clear distinction between thedances of males, who usually dance in solo, duetsor trios, and the group dances of women. Themen improvise freely, entertaining the weddingguests and of course the bride and groom to songsfrom the liturgical tradition sung in Hebrew.[Editor's note: their dancing at the wedding is amitzpah, or religious duty, defined in the Mishnahand the Talmud, where everyone is obligated to

dance for and with the new couple at theirwedding to insure their happiness.]Women danceseparately from men to songs they improvise,often in witty verses sung in a Jewish-Arabicdialect, created on the spot by one of the women(Staub 1975and 1976).

Margalit Oved and Shlomo Haziz in "Shepherd Dance."Photograph by Abshalom Sela

Sara Levi-Tanai, from the very beginning ofher work with the Inbal Dance Theatre, abolishedthe tradition of separate dancing of men andwomen. On stage there was alwaysmixing of thesexes. Though there was an improvisational,spontaneous quality to the dances, she constructedher choreographic compositions according to thedemands of her dramatic, literary, or emotionalideas. The traditional Yemenite-jewish danceswere not narratives. She felt free to developdramatic and literary premises, perhaps because ofher Ashkenazic literary education.

By 1952, Sara Levi-Tanai had a groupperforming her own dances. That year JeromeRobbins came to Israel to report on the dancescene for the Norman Fund's American Fund forIsraeli Institutes, and was introduced to Sara andher work. Robbins found Sara Levi-Tanai's

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Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, Vol 20, Dance

choreography brilliant, original, and unique, andcalledthe mainly vertical dance movement of theYemenite men "Yemenite Gothic." He was alsofascinated with the softly bent knee of theYemenite dancer and regarded it as "the perfectderoi-plie."His report recommended supportingthe fledgling company, called Inbal Danceneater, and bringing technique teachers fromabroad to instruct its dancers, whom he foundfascinating but untrained. He specificallyrecommended that Anna Sokolow be sent toteachmodern technique and stagecraft, which shedid for many extended periods in the 1950s andearly 1960s. Robbins also suggested to theimpresario Sol Hurok that Inbal be brought ontour to America.

In 1956-57Hurok sponsored Inbal on its firsttour of the United States and Europe. The criticsand the audiences there and in Western Europewere enthusiastic, captivated by the bearded menand the lithe women who accompanied theirdance with singing and the playing of drums.Audiences saw Sara's inspiration from the Biblerealized on stage along with images effectively

..showingthe landscape of Israel, the desert as welli$poetry, especially that of the 17th century .>¥etnenitepoet Shalom Shabazi. Sara forged out ofthe Yemenite-Jewish ethnic materials a unique

\'ftlodem dance style all her own.. ;i,U;c. Sorne of her major works are: Song of Deborah·.~r955); Yemenite Wedding (1956), The Story of Ruth"@.?61 and revived in 1996), Carry us to the Desert~·J1~J)4),Jacob in Haran (1973) and Song of Songs

(1982, revived in 1996). Like many great artists,Levi-Tanai tenaciously resisted any attempt torecreate or restage her choreography. Only in1996, when she had become director emeritus ofInbal, were dances successfully re-staged byveteran Inbal dancers including Lea Avraham andIlana Cohen, who has been Inbal's artistic directorsince 1997.

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ReferencesBahat-Ratson, Naomi and Avner Bahat. "Some

Notes on Traditional Scriptural HandMovements of the Yemenite Jews." The WorldofMusic. Berlin, 1981.

Bahat-Ratzon, Naomi. Barefooted: Jewish YemeniteTradition in Israeli Dance. Tel-Aviv: Ele Betamarwith Inbal Ethnic Center, 1999.

Manor, Giora. "Inbal: Quest for a MovementLanguage." Tel Aviv: Inbal Dance Theatre,1975.

Manor, Giora. Sara's w,!), the biograpf?yof Sara Levi-Tanai, in manuscript

Seri, Sh. (ed.). Se'i Yona, Yemenite Jews in Israel TelAviv: Ele Betamar, undated. Note: sections aboutmusic and dance in Hebrew.

Staub, Shalom. "AMan Has Brains Until He GetsUp to Dance." Israel Dance Annual 15.Tel Aviv:The Organization for Dance in Israel, 1975.

Staub, Shalom. 'Just an Echo?" Israel DanceAnnual Tel Aviv:The Organization for Dancein Israel, 1976, p. 15.

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Id's "Shepherd Dance" from 1957. Publicity photo by Hurok Attractions.

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