Yesterday & tomorrow: Jewish choreographers grapple with their heritage.

"I don't think of myself as religious," says Bay Area choreographer Nina Haft, "but I feel some sense of longing to connect with my Jewishness." Likewise Maryland-based choreographer Liz Lerman says she has "an ongoing internal struggle with any idea of God," but has made several pieces with Jewish themes. Los Angeles dance artist Dan Froot doesn't practice religion, but is interested in being a provocateur by "interrogating Jewishness in the 21st century."

More and more Jewish choreographers are exploring cultural and religious identities in their work. Some have created entire dances with Jewish themes; others weave in gestures that are considered Jewish or core moves from Israeli dance, such as the grapevine step. Still others allow the traditional Jewish way of questioning and interpreting to penetrate their choreographic process. Dance Magazine talked to 10 choreographers, all of whom have had multi-faceted careers, about how they incorporate their Jewish heritage into their work.

To those who are familiar with Judaism in the United States, the association with Jewish dance stems mainly from weddings. Usually the hora comes to mind, where guests hold hands and dance in a joyous circle around the bride and groom, who then are lifted up on chairs. But this dance originally came from European folk dance, and became a way to express Israeli national identity, not Jewish identity. And it is certainly not the type of movement that most contemporary Jewish choreographers, who may be trained in classical ballet and modern, are using in their work. Which begs the question: What is "Jewish" dance?

This is precisely what choreographer and dance historian Rebecca Rossen explored in her 2000 solo (later performed by David Dorfman) Make Me a Jewish Dance. The piece weaves contemporary modern dance with humorous Yiddishisms ("I am shvitzing [sweating]--that is very Jewish," says the character). There are also a number of Jewish gestures such as shrugs and throwing hands up the air as if to say "Oy vey!" and even the not-so-flattering rubbing together of fingers, indicating a desire for money. The piece explores and exaggerates stereotypes and in the end discovers that there is not necessarily such a thing as a "Jewish dance."

Choreographer Julia Adams doesn't use mime or stereotyped gestures, but draws on her Jewish sense of ritual. In 2004 she created a piece for the Houston Ballet called Ketubah (a legal Jewish marriage document), which centers around a Jewish wedding. While she uses traditional pirouettes rather than the hora, thematically the piece is unquestionably Jewish. A billowing swath of sheer fabric first represents the mikvah, the traditional ritual bath Jewish women take before getting married; then the dektikhl, the bride's veil; and finally the huppa, a Jewish wedding canopy.

Minneapolis-based Judith Brin Ingber, a historian as well as a choreographer, creates dances with biblical themes and sometimes even uses Hebrew chants from the Torah. A piece called The Argument (2002) was a portrait of Sarah arguing with her husband Abraham about taking their son to be sacrificed. While this narrative was taken from the Old Testament, it was also something she felt any mother sending their child off to war could relate to.

The Holocaust is another theme--if an unusually daunting one--that is alluded to by many Jewish choreographers. Carolyn Dorfman, in her 2001 piece Mayne Mentshn (my people), moves through different aspects of joy and pain in Jewish life, including discrimination and persecution. As a child of Holocaust survivors, she acknowledges that her attraction to the work of Doris Humphrey and Jose Limon, known for their fall-and-recovery technique, is not an accident. "It's about the rise and fall of life," she says. "It's an ultimate belief in the human spirit."

Dan Froot, in his portrait of Jewish gangsterism, Shlammer (2002), features a live klezmer band complete with violin, euphonium, and accordion players. Froot does more talking than dancing, pontificating practically nonstop about why his bar mitzvah didn't turn out right, how to learn Yiddish, and what it means to be a Jewish American--all with a slapstick, vaudevillian flair.

New York choreographers Risa Jaroslow and Neta Pulvermacher also use text in their Jewish-oriented pieces, but they are not as focused on humor. In A Jew in Poland (1994) Jaroslow is having a conversation with an imaginary older family member who is questioning her identity and purpose in life. "Who are you?" asks the older figure (played by Jaroslow). "A choreographer," responds Jaroslow as herself. "A what?" responds the elder. "A choreographer. I make up movement ... to say something," Jaroslow explains. "I especially try to say something about the fact that you can feel more than one way about the same thing. You can even love and hate God," she says. "Sounds very Jewish," says the elder.

Israeli-born Pulvermacher's use of text is a bit more abstract. In Good-bye & Good Luck (1994), a piece inspired by the old synagogues on the Lower East Side, one character repeats the phrase "Wherever you go, whatever you do, always remember that you are a Jew." This fragment of conversation relates to the fragmented essence of the Diasporan Jewish soul that Pulvermacher feels in the dilapidated, history-filled synagogues.

If not using specifically Jewish themes, some choreographers recognize something about the way that they work or their artistic intent that is distinctly Jewish. A concept in Judaism known as Tikkun Olam, or healing the world, is interpreted by many Jewish Americans as social activism or community building. MacArthur Fellowship recipient Liz Lerman is well-known for this type of work. She and members of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange visit schools, senior citizen homes, and workplaces to guide people on how to come together, create, and heal through dance. Recently Lerman has been working with members of her synagogue to explore what it means to be a Jew through movement. She has also made several explicitly Jewish-related dances including The Good Jew (1991), in which a religious leader is on trial to determine if he's a good enough Jew; and Shehechianu (1995), a reinterpretation of the central Jewish prayer referred to in the title.

David Dorfman (no relation to Carolyn) is another choreographer who connects his Jewish background with a sense of humanity. In 1992 he made a piece called Dayenu, alluding to the Passover prayer meaning "It would have been enough." Traditionally the prayer is used by Jews to thank God for allowing them to escape from slavery in Egypt. Even if God had helped them with only one thing, the prayer goes, it would have been enough--but God did more and more. Dorfman interprets this prayer differently. After watching his mother's long losing battle with multiple sclerosis and several friends die of AIDS, he argues with God as if to say, "It is not enough."

In a way, Dorfman's reinterpretation of the Dayenu prayer is traditional, because Jewish culture encourages questioning and developing individual understanding of the teachings. Nina Haft recognizes this aspect of her Jewish identity in how she creates her dances. "There's a religious Jewish tradition of finding multiple interpretations of the text, and there's a way that I make dances that's very much about building it as a text," she says. "If you change the music and the costumes, for example, you can interpret the choreography as two lovers having a fight, or as a father and daughter going to a funeral. You can look at something a number of different ways and find the meaning you're looking for. That's a Jewish approach."

While the essence of Judaism manifests differently for each choreographer, there is a common thread amongst them all--a commitment to self-exploration and questioning. And while some of them go to synagogue to pray on the holy days, most of them still find that their true spirit resides in the studio. As Lerman says, "Ritual is supposed to take somebody from one point to another by experiencing something. I think that's what happens with choreography."

TRADITION, TRADITION

While choreographers of Jewish descent in the United States have not drawn on their heritage nearly as much as those of African or Asian descent, the history of such dances reaches back to the early days of modern dance. In the 1920s the Neighborhood Playhouse in Lower Manhattan, where Blanche Talmud taught dance, cultivated many socially conscious Jewish choreographers including Helen Tamiris, Sophie Maslow, and Anna Sokolow. It later became the nexus of Alwin Nikolais' creative experimentation and teaching.

In 1936 the 92nd Street Y (Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association), a pillar of the city's cultural life, established its Dance Center. With the advice of New York Times dance critic John Martin, the center provided a theater for not only the big names--Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman--but also many others. For years it was the only theater to produce modern dance. Its teaching staff, in addition to Graham and Humphrey, included Hanya Holm and Bonnie Bird. Its Jewish Dance Division was led by Austrian refugee Fred Berk, who toured with Jewish-themed dances and was the gateway to Israeli folk dance. He influnced choreographers like Meredith Monk and Jeff Duncan (who later was a co-founder of Dance Theater Workshop).

Pearl Lang, a major choreographer who emerged from the Martha Graham Dance Company, choreographed many dances with Hebraic themes. Perhaps the best known was Shirah (1960), above, based on a mystical Hasidic tale. Two other major figures who had danced with Graham--and were also nurtured by the Neighborhood Playhouse--were Anna Sokolow and Sophie Maslow. Sokolow created Kaddish (1946), based on the prayer for the dead; Maslow, inspired by Sholom Aleichem's stories of the old world, made The Village I Knew (1950).

Later choreographers who delved into their Jewish past were Eliot Feld, with Tzaddik and Sephardic Song (both 1974); Meredith Monk in her master, piece Quarry (1976); Amy Sue Rosen s Discipledom (1992); and Anna Halprin with The Grandfather Dance (1995), in which she wears pajamas that belonged to her grandfather, a cantor.

The Dybbuk, S. Ansky's play about a bride possessed by a disembodied spirit, fascinated many choreographers, including Pearl Lang and Jerome Robbins. Lang created The Possessed in 1975, and Robbins made Dybbuk in 1974, which was restaged by San Francisco Ballet last year.

Of course, the blockbuster hit about Jewish heritage was Robbins' musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on some of Sholom Aleichem's writings, which opened an Broadway in 1964 (and is currently enjoying a revival). The pathos of a persecuted people, the double-edged sword of tradition, the spirit that rises in the face of hard times--these elements go beyond the Jewish American context to become universal. Plus, when those men dance with bottles on their heads, who can look away?

RESOURCES:

Converging Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y, by Naomi M. Jackson (Wesleyan, 2000).

Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890-1920, by Linda J. Tomko (Indiana, 1999).

Stepping left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942, by Ellen Graft (Duke, 1997).

Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, by Deborah Jowitt (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

Shayna Samuels is a writer and yoga teacher living in New Mexico.