Letter from Israel.

Editor's note: Journalist and critic Ora Brafman directed the award-winning documentary Bare Feet, a profile of Inbal founder Sara Levi-Tanai.

HAIFA, Israel--When it's time to eulogize a dance company, a string of cliches comes to mind. Even though the phrase is overused, "the end of an era" is the only way to describe the demise of Inbal Dance Theatre, Israel's seminal modern company.

The official notice of Inbal's closure by the Ministry of Culture was never issued out loud. Instead, to lull any opposition, a new entity was formed. The newborn was at first called Inbal Dance Theatre--Ethnic Center. Sounds similar, but the intent and essence is vastly different.

Inbal strove to create a new art form through a dance language that, in the words of founder Sara Levi-Tanai, "drinks from the deep wells of ancient civilizations." The new incarnation, Multi-Disciplinary Ethnic Center--Inbal, is expected to fully clarify its identity and goals by the end of this year. Presumably, its existence will serve as an incentive to artists to plumb their ethnic roots, and provide a stage on which to show the results.

Sara Levi-Tanai was just a girl when the Turks ruled the land of Israel (then Palestine). She lost her mother and sisters during World War I, and was asked by her father to walk the narrow streets of Sefad in the Galilee and beg for food and small change from neighbors. With her powers of survival, rich imagination, intelligence, and optimism, she paved her own way. She was taken to an orphanage and later sent to boarding school in the Shfeya youth village, where she was educated by the best idealistic intellectuals. These were mostly newcomers who got out of Germany in time, recognizing at the first signs the rising power of Hitler's fascist National Socialist Party. Sara received a well-rounded classical education.

Sara, an artist of Yemenite descent, founded Inbal soon after Israel's War of Independence in 1948. She started the company when she was about forty years old. Inbal was the result of Sara's deep yearning to express an array of conflicting inner sentiments. She was educated in and lived in a Western-oriented society and turned to her ethnic heritage relatively late in life. She was drawn to this heritage first out of a romantic notion of the Eastern culture as seen from a European romantic standpoint. Later, when Sara learned more about her roots, she absorbed an appreciation of the writers, poets, and philosophers of the Eastern Diaspora.

Sara directed secular celebrations in the communal settlements called kibbutzim, and made a career as a kindergarten teacher. As she was never educated in dance and knew little of it, her first exposure occurred when she saw a performance by Gertrude Kraus, one of the few professional dancer-choreographers in Israel prior to independence. Sara's naive approach to dance-theater was unspoiled, for she had the right intuitive urge to form a way of expression incorporating movement, singing, reciting of biblical texts, and original music. This erupted out of her to form a unique manifestation, fresh and colorful at that barren time in our country. Unaffected by fleeting modes, she created her own unique voice unmarred by previous "knowledge."

Jerome Robbins, visiting Israel in 1951 as a young and curious choreographer, encountered Inbal in rehearsals. He was impressed, but realized the company could benefit from serious, methodical schooling. He asked his friend, Anna Sokolow, to work with Inbal. That, and his recommendation to the America-lsrael Fund to support Inbal, made the difference. It enabled the company to adopt professional aspirations, and pay the dancers--a rarity then.

Within a span of a few years, Inbal enjoyed it's "golden age," beginning in the mid-fifties with European tours that lasted months. The highlight was a grand tour under the patronage of Sol Hurok, who in 1957 introduced Inbal to audiences in New York and other major cities.

The critics raved, calling up grand images--one scribe pronounced Levi-Tanai the resurrection of the Queen of Sheba. Inbal had wild-looking, bearded men, with coal black eyes and unique mannerisms. The women were beautifully exotic and delicate, and had unusual singing ability. Onstage, they were dressed elaborately with grand headdresses by the best designers in Israel. It certainly didn't look like any other dance form seen before in the West. Inbal enjoyed a sympathy that echoed the warmth the United States felt for the new state of Israel, the embodiment of an ancient wish for the rebirth of a people.

Inbal in this period was also used as a political tool. The foreign office used it to stress the link of the new nation to this old land of our forefathers, thus bridging a gap of two thousand years. Inbal also became a symbol of the smooth integration of newcomers (in Inbal's case, the Yemenite Jews) in the melting pot. Some politicians pointed to Inbal as a sign of the easy adjustment of Eastern Jews to prevailing Western cultural codes.

Inbal's favored' position in Israel was threatened with the first visit of a prominent dance company to Israel--the Martha Graham Company. This encounter with a professional company and its well-trained dancers changed all criterion, introducing new standards and raising interest. It led to the sprouting of other professional companies, among them Batsheva Dance Company.

Inbal then underwent decades of turbulence, its members often feeling the company was misunderstood by its diminishing audiences in Israel. It was the target of cynical remarks from some critics and public officials. Difficulties occurred as Sara worked over old works for long months, and did not produce new work at a rate that satisfied the officials in charge of the meager budget for dance companies. The slow rate of upgrading the technical level of the dancers, and the too fast turnover of talent who found greater challenge working elsewhere, were obstacles.

Personal conflicts between Sara and innumerable administrators took their toll. Many a time the company faced voices calling for drastic changes, or for closing down the company. Every time there was an attempt to do so, the company's lobby raised hell, resorting to street demonstrations, petitions to Knesset members, and suggesting that those who would change or close the company were motivated by racial prejudice. Politicians of Yemenite ancestry were enlisted to postpone drastic action, and save Inbal for a few more years. It always worked.

The final curtain fell on Inbal slowly. In 1992, the octogenarian Levi-Tanai was forced to retire. She did, but not without a good fight. To smooth her exit, she was offered the title of company president, and promised a small office at Inbal's center and the right to use the facilities and dancers for rehearsing two new works per year. As part of her retirement agreement, she was assured by officials at the Ministry of Education that her old works would be revived with her help. The company administrator was in accord with this agreement.

The reality was harsher: Sara has, in this correspondent's opinion, been treated as a persona non grate, without adequate working conditions. The company allots neither time nor space for her to rehearse and no budget, and she has no say in the company she founded and ran for over forty years. Her replacements failed to keep the company on an even keel.

Israel's director of arts administration during this period, Yossi Frost, has realized that the era of Inbal and what it stood for are gone.

Politically, it was the worst time to close Inbal, as the country was being rocked by revelations involving possible government mistreatment of Yemeni immigrants in the 1950s. (Allegations have risen that during the airlift of Yemenite Jews, some sick infants were treated in hospitals and then not returned to their parents. The allegations include that some were reported dead, only to be secretly given to well-to-do families.) The director decided to close down Inbal as a dance company, and replace it with an ethnic center open to ail art forms. Inbal's budget and additional funds were promised to the new entity. The move was made stealthily, with some members of Inbal's board of directors not realizing they were signing off on the end of Inbal.

Sara's followers were promised an effort would be made to revive her old works. A core of five Inbal dancers was kept on to help with the reconstruction, which took place last July. Veteran Inbal dancer Ilana Cohen reconstructed Song of Songs and The Story of Ruth, and Sara was invited to a gala evening in her honor. Leaving the small hall, packed with 400 people, she looked hurt, and asked me why they did not let her work instead of giving her honors.