Ethiopian Jewish Dancing and Revised Israeli Archetypes: Eskesta Dance Theatre’s 2002 US Tour

• In Event: Embodied Acts: Dance and its Impact on Jewish Memories, Peoplehood, and Institutions

Abstract

In 2002, Eskesta Dance Theatre toured the United States from Israel. The company, founded by Ruth Eshel and comprised of Ethiopian Jewish students from the University of Haifa who migrated to Israel during Operations Moses and Solomon, presented theatrical dances based in eskesta dancing (Amharic shoulder dancing) and Ethiopian Jewish traditions and experiences. In different venues than the prominent theaters in which American presenters toured Israeli companies like Batsheva Dance Company or Inbal Dance Theater, Eskesta was presented through Jewish educational channels of university Hillels, Jewish Community Centers, Jewish day schools, and Jewish museums. The tour pursued a goal of student-to-student cultural exchange because the Eskesta company members were themselves university students. American presenters used Eskesta’s performances and master classes to engage an intercultural Jewish peoplehood by connecting Eskesta to Jewish communities as well as connecting Jewish communities with non-Jewish Black communities. Moreover, this tour occurred during the Second/Al-Aqsa Intifada; reception that manifested desires to celebrate in Eskesta’s performances an ancient Judaism provided American Jews an alternative narrative of Israeli culture with which they could align outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its criticisms on the Left. Eskesta also adjusted American audiences’ understanding of Black experience outside circum-Atlantic histories, and reception to Eskesta, as well as the Eskesta dancers’ experiences of cultural exchange, demonstrate dually diasporic experiences of Jewish and Black peoplehood. Building on archival materials—photographs, reviews, itineraries, correspondence, programs, videos of master classes and performances—and interviews with Eshel, company member Dege Feder, and a faculty member at one of the presenting schools, I argue that Eskesta’s performances shifted the geopolitical landscape for conceptions of Israel by establishing Ethiopian Jewish embodiment as a location within global Jewry. Eskesta’s tours (the company returned to the US in 2006 and 2010) provide an example for how American audiences understand Israel through the dance that they see; Eskesta’s performances engendered Jewish peoplehood outside the Ashkenazi-based New Jew archetype. As such, this paper contributes to scholarship on racial configurations among global Jewry by showing encounters between Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Black American, and Ethiopian Jews, and revises dominant narratives about Israeli dance and Jewish peoplehood.

Author

• Hannah Kosstrin, The Ohio State University