Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

So You Think You Can Choreograph?

Crossposted from Haaretz

Every young dance artist striving to establish himself as a choreographer dreams of the moment when the manager of a theater or cultural institution offers him funding and a framework to produce a full-length work. This is exactly what happened to Anat Yaffe after Emmanuel Witzthum saw a short duet she created. The artistic director of Maabada (The Lab), a performing arts center in Jerusalem, spotted an unusual talent in Yaffe and invited her to create a full-length piece as part of a new program to encourage young artists in Jerusalem.

Image by Daniel Tchetchik

For Yaffe, however, her response to this offer was not entirely obvious.

“I deliberated for a long time,” she acknowledges. “First of all because I really like to dance in pieces created by others, to be the simple laborer who does their best within the framework of what is asked. And on the creative side, I like to work at my own pace. Suddenly there was talk of putting together a performance to fill an entire evening, with a deadline and a commitment.

Read more at Haaretz.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.