Modernist Forms in a Jewish State

Abstract

Focusing on Sokolow’s work in Israel, this chapter highlights tensions between American Jewishness and Israeliness through critical response to her dances Dreams (1961), Opus ’63 (1963), Forms (1964), and Odes (1964). It introduces the term “sabra physicality” to describe the performative qualities of defiant vulnerability that dancers in Sokolow’s Israeli company Lyric Theatre introduced into her oeuvre. With financial support from the American Fund for Israeli Institutions (America–Israel Cultural Foundation), Sokolow was part of the North American influence building Israeli art and cultural institutions as postwar alliances formed between the United States and Israeli governments. This chapter further shows Sokolow’s role in disseminating American modern dance through the bodies of her students abroad, through her work with the Inbal Yemenite Dance Group (Inbal Dance Theater) and Lyric Theatre. In turn, the way those dancers performed Graham’s technique and Sokolow’s choreography changed American modernism.