So You Think You Can Choreograph?
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
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.
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.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
