Yardena Cohen: creating Hebrew dance in Mandatory Palestine

Abstract

Yardena Cohen (1910–2012), a dancer, choreographer and teacher, is considered one of the founding mothers of Hebrew dance. After studying in Austria and Germany, Cohen began developing her dance career in the early 1930s in Mandatory Palestine by creating and performing solo dances, and later on by creating festivities for the kibbutzim and teaching dance. This article investigates Cohen’s unique action and contribution to the development of Hebrew culture within the context of shaping and formulating a nation-state and a national culture for the new Jewish Yishuv. By way of doing so, it will explore Cohen’s employment of ancient materials stretching back to biblical times combined with formal frameworks inspired by German dance expressionism in an attempt to determine whether and to what extent she conformed to the Yishuv’s ideology or found a way to express her unique, and sometimes non-conformist, voice.