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

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel pursues how embodied acts of dance on stage as well as acts of dance philanthropy affect Jewish memory, peoplehood, and institutions across gendered, racial, and geographic lines. Together, these papers demonstrate how theatrical dance establishes a tangible location to enact Jewish histories and migrations. How, in particular, do the investments of Jewish women working in dance--as makers, movers, or philanthropists--actively shape both Jewish histories and dance legacies? In our papers, we ask: In what ways might restagings of dances about the Holocaust serve as vital acts of memory and commemoration in relation to shifting historical contexts? How does unveiling the sapphic investments of significant historical figures change how we understand the bedrock of Israeli theatrical dance institutions? How does American reception to Ethiopian Israeli dance companies signal Jewish peoplehood across racial and ethnic difference within intradiasporic Jewish contexts? By locating evidence in the body and the archive, these papers offer corporeal methodologies that expand historical methods for Jewish studies and make a feminist intervention in Jewish histories.

Sub Unit

• Gender & Sexuality Studies

Chair

• Laura Levitt, Temple University

Individual Presentations

• Recurring Dreams: Restaging Holocaust Performance as Commemoration - Rebecca Rossen, University of Texas at Austin

• “I don’t like things which you would call in Hebrew balagan”: Dance, Desire, Diplomacy, and Diasporic Dreams in the Baroness de Rothschild’s Politics of Patronage - Melissa Melpignano, The University of Texas at El Paso

• Ethiopian Jewish Dancing and Revised Israeli Archetypes: Eskesta Dance Theatre’s 2002 US Tour - Hannah Kosstrin, The Ohio State University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 05