Ohad Naharin

Ohad Naharin (born 1952) (Hebrew: אוהד נהרין) is an Israeli contemporary dancer, choreographer and dance company artistic director.

Biography

Ohad Naharin was born in 1952 in Kibbutz Mizra. Raised in an artistic home, he wrote stories, composed music, and painted as a child. His father was a psychologist specializing in psychodrama and an actor who performed with Habima and the Haifa Theater. His mother was a Feldenkreis instructor, choreographer and dancer. Nevertheless, Naharin did not start dancing until age 22. During his first year with the Batsheva Dance Company, Martha Graham visited Israel and invited Naharin to join her dance company in New York. He attended Juilliard and the School of American Ballet.

In 1978, he married Mari Kajiwara, a native New Yorker and an Alvin Ailey dancer. In 2001, she died of cancer at age 50.

He is now married to Eri Nakamura, a Batsheva dancer with whom he has a daughter.

Batsheva Dance Company

In 1990, Naharin was appointed the artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, thereby launching the company into a new stage. The company is international in nature, made up of individually unique dancers from Israel and abroad. Dancers are encouraged to affirm their distinct creative gifts, as creators on their own.

Batsheva Dance Company

The Batsheva Dance Company (Hebrew: להקת בת שבע) is an internationally acclaimed dance company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva De Rothschild in 1964.

Batshva's inception was marked by Israel's growing interest in American modern dance, mainly Martha Graham and Anna Sokolow, and classes in Graham technique began being offered at the time. Some of these classes were taught by Rina Schenfeld and Rena Gluck, who were the company's principal dancers for many years. Bethsabee de Rothschild withdrew her funding in 1975, and the company began to gradually shed the Graham aesthetic that had dominated during the company's early years. It was during this transitional period that the company began to include the works of emerging Israeli choreographers into its repertory.

Soon after Ohad Naharin was appointed artistic director in 1990, he founded the youth company, Batsheva Ensemble, for dancers aged between 18 and 24. Its graduates include the choreographers Hofesh Shechter and Itzik Galili. The ensemble toured the United Kingdom and performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2012.

Ohad

Ohad (Hebrew: אֹהַד‎) was the third son of Simeon; he is mentioned in Genesis 46:10. His name means "will sympathize", or "united" and "power" (both rare interpretations). It is also a common name for boys in Israel.

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Dance

Dance is a performance art form consisting of purposefully selected sequences of human movement. This movement has aesthetic and symbolic value, and is acknowledged as dance by performers and observers within a particular culture. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire of movements, or by its historical period or place of origin.

An important distinction is to be drawn between the contexts of theatrical and participatory dance, although these two categories are not always completely separate; both may have special functions, whether social, ceremonial, competitive, erotic, martial, or sacred/liturgical. Others disciplines of human movement are sometimes said to have a dance-like quality, including martial arts, gymnastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming and many other forms of athletics.

Performance and participation

Theatrical dance, also called performance or concert dance, is intended primarily as a spectacle, usually a performance upon a stage by virtuoso dancers. It often tells a story, perhaps using mime, costume and scenery, or else it may simply interpret the musical accompaniment, which is often specially composed. Examples are western ballet and modern dance, Classical Indian dance and Chinese and Japanese song and dance dramas. Most classical forms are centred upon dance alone, but performance dance may also appear in opera and other forms of musical theatre.

Company

A company is an association or collection of individuals, whether natural persons, legal persons, or a mixture of both. Company members share a common purpose and unite in order to focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to achieve specific, declared goals. Companies take various forms such as:

A company or association of persons can be created at law as legal person so that the company in itself can accept Limited liability for civil responsibility and taxation incurred as members perform (or fail) to discharge their duty within the publicly declared "birth certificate" or published policy.

Because companies are legal persons, they also may associate and register themselves as companies – often known as a corporate group. When the company closes it may need a "death certificate" to avoid further legal obligations.