A TRIBUTE TO SARA LEVI-TENAI


Israeli folk dance choreographer, and founder of the Inbal Dance Troupe, Sara Levi-Tenai was born in Jerusalem to Yemenite parents. In 1949 Levi-Tanai founded the Inbal Dance Troupe which was primarily Yemenite in choreography and in style. Levi-Tanai received many prizes for her work with Inbal, as well as the Israel Prize in 1973 for her contribution to dance in Israel.

Some of her dances still performed in IFD groups include Shibolet Basadeh and Harishut

See the following link for a list of her dances:
http://israelidances.com/search.asp?S=A&intPageNo=1&ChoreographerName=Sara%20Levi%20Tanai

 

Bat Amanoot is proud to bring you the following insight into the life and works of Sara Levi-Tenai written by author, dancer, performer and choreographer Judith Brin Ingber*

Fred Berk with Sara from the biography of Fred Berk, "Victory Dances," by Judith Brin Ingber,
published by the Israel Dance Library, 1985. 


Thoughts on Sara Levi-Tanai  by Judith Brin Ingber  

              Sara Levi-Tanai’s artistry was remembered at a special presentation at Inbal’s theater at the Tel Aviv Susanne Dallal Dance Center last winter, coinciding with a new CD called “El Ginat Egoz” (To the Walnut Grove, a reference from Song of Songs). Singers veteran and young stars plus Inbal Dance Theatre performed her songs and dances Sara Levi- Tanai.  She died  October 3, 2005, near Tel Aviv, a dance artist of distinction, unparalleled in Israel, full of paradoxes: Mizrahi-Yemenite, born in Jerusalem  though most Yemenites were airlifted in Operation Magic Carpet-on Wings of Eagles in 1949.  Her family had come in the 1880s but suffering through World War I, starvation and epidemics, Levi-Tanai became orphaned. Educated by Ashkenazic teachers in an orphanage she was without a  traditional Yemenite community and her education was in the classics of Western Europe; of the Levant but universal as an artist--she created dances and music out of the Yemenite tradition that stood for the new Israel for audiences throughout the US, Europe, Australia, South America and the Far East.

              Sara Levi-Tanai’s life and work are full of paradox and tensions: of Mizrahi origin (Jews from Arab lands), nevertheless broadly Jewish; from the Yemenite-Jewish community but also a universalist; an outsider in her own ethnic community because of her broad education; a traditionalist yet innovatively modernist; a nursery school teacher by training and never a dancer, yet a world-renowned choreographer.

              She was never a dancer but the first major choreographer in Israel, who worked first in folk dance—creating some of the important folk dances and folk songs such as “El Ginat Egoz,” but she left all that accessibility for theatrical dance; she toured the world with her theater dance company Inbal, but she preferred to stay in Tel Aviv; Composer of folk songs but couldn’t read or write music.

              In 1973, Levi-Tanai received the Israel Prize, the country’s highest honor, for her work as founder and choreographer of Inbal Dance Theatre (Inbal means tongue or clapper of the bell in Hebrew.) In addition to her choreography and the company, Levi-Tanai was also recognized for her songs, some of which have become classic Israeli folk songs and others are beloved children’s songs.

              Her parents came to Palestine at the end of the 19th century with other Jews who had bravely traveled on foot, settling in Jerusalem.  Perhaps she was born in 1910 or 1911 and was one of 12 children.  Sometime during World War I the ruling Turks moved the family to the border between Tel Aviv and Jaffa in the old Yemenite neighborhood. (Ironically, that is now the site of the Ethnic Multicultural Center that houses the Inbal Theatre, part of the popular Suzane Delal Dance Center of Tel Aviv.) Later the family was then expelled to a refugee camp where a severe outbreak of cholera killed everyone in the family but Sara and her father.  In an autobiographical essay printed in a book called Barefooted: Jewish Yemenite Tradition in Israeli Dance she writes, “my mother was a mourner.  I don’t recall the sound of my mother’s voice. I do recall the sound of her silence…I am a mourner like my mother.”

              Levi-Tanai had hoped to make a career of acting in the National Theatre, but her pronounced Mizrahi accent was deemed unacceptable for the more European-based actors and audiences. In Tel Aviv she trained to be a teacher, and taught at a teachers’ seminary where she was so creative that she provided curriculum of her own songs, ditties and dances.  She later taught aspiring musicians at the Tel Aviv Seminary for Music Teachers.  It was there that she worked with Ovadia Tuvia, the Israeli composer, who introduced her to a choir of newly arrived teenage Yemenite Jews. 

              She formed the nucleus of her company from these Yemenite immigrants, including Margolit Oved, who went on to become Levi-Tanai’s muse.  Oved (for years on the faculty of the University of CA –Los Angeles dance department and also a choreographer) said recently “We would sing and dance and drum in the Yemenite tradition for her. Then, like the biblical Miriam, she led us out of Egypt into a whole new life. We had left Yemen with an ancient longing to go to this new land and every bit of what we encountered was a miracle.  Sara was so powerful that she convinced us we could do everything, singing and drumming and dancing on stage. She incorporated everything from the land – whether shepherds in the countryside or influences from all the different nationalities walking down the street, or biblical stories or the landscape of the desert.  The ‘Shepherd Dance’ was my most favorite. But there was the magical ‘Story of Ruth’ or the amazing ‘Queen of Sheba.’ She could whip us into a frenzy of creativity and her genius was to interpret everything for us in a new way.  She was our conductor and we were her instruments.”

              By 1950, when Jerome Robbins visited the two-year old country of Israel, he was enthralled with Levi-Tanai’s work. He arranged for Anna Sokolow, the American dance-theater choreographer, to come to Israel and help professionalize Levi-Tanai’s company. Through Robbins, the company was connected to Hurok who arranged worldwide tours for the troupe. Inbal was the first Israeli dance company to tour the US, South America, Asia, and Australia. “Yemenite Wedding” was a favorite on tour and was also filmed by Australian television. 

              Levi-Tanai created more than 70 ballets, some with figures of women from the bible, choreographed before the emergence of any popular feminist movement drawing attention to the role of women in the bible or in life.  In 1964 her “Book of Ruth” won the Théǎtre des Mondes first prize in Paris.  Her dance “Nashim” (Women), still in the company’s repertoire, shows the performers doing gestures of women’s work, grinding and sifting wheat while chatting, arguing and singing. Going from kneeling to sitting to rising and dancing in unison, they express the anomaly of submissive and independent traditional Yemenite Jewish women. In many of her works Levi-Tanai also created the sound scores, as well as collaborating with major Israeli visual artists (including Anatol Gurewitch, Dani Karavan, D. Sharir) and musicians (such as Ovadia Tuvia). 


              The long time company manager and close friend of Levi-Tanai has written a new book about Levi-Tanai’s work and life. The author, Gila Toledano, delves deeply into the conflicts and challenges faced by Levi-Tanai in her long and productive life.  The book in Hebrew is called Sipora Shel Lahaka (The Story of a Company, Sara Levi-Tanai and Inbal Dance Theatre), published by Resling, Israeli Center for Libraries, in 2006. Sara’s Way: Sara Levi-Tanai and her Choreography is a coffee table book with gorgeous color illustrations partly in English by the late Giora Manor, published in Tel Aviv in conjunction with the Inbal Dance Theatre, the Ethnic Multicultural Center in 2001.


Photo of Tenai "Courtesy of the Israeli Dance Institute, New York City”
Thanks to Ruth Goodman for her assistance


  
Judith Brin-Ingber

*A complete story on Judith Brin Ingber may be found in Bat Amanoot archives,  http://www.batamanoot.com
Edition 4, Vol. 2
 
Ruth Goodman

A complete story on Ruth Goodman, and the Israeli Dance Institute, New York, may be found in Bat Amanoot Archives, http://www.batamanoot.com Edition 2, Vol. 1

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