Sara Levi-Tanai

Sara Levi-Tanai
Members of the Inbal Dance Theater troupe
Native name	שרה לוי-תנאי
Born	c-1910 Jerusalem
Died	3 October 2005
Citizenship	Israeli
Occupation	Choreographer and song writer
Awards	1973 Israel Prize

Sara Levi-Tanai (Hebrew: שרה לוי-תנאי‎; b. c-1910, d. 3 October 2005) was an Israeli choreographer and song writer. She was the founder and artistic director of the Inbal Dance Theater and recipient of the Israel Prize in dance.

Early life

Levi-Tanai’s parents emigrated to Ottoman Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century from Yemen. They settled in Jerusalem, where she was born in approximately 1910.

Later the family moved to the Neve Zedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv. During World War I, they fled to a refugee camp in Kfar Sava due to expulsion by the Turkish authorities. In this camp, an outbreak of typhus killed all the members of her family, except for her and her father. They moved to Safed, but she was later placed in a home for Jewish war orphans.

After the war, Levi-Tanai was moved to the children’s home in Meir Shfeya and was exposed to more western culture, literature, poetry and art, as well as to Hebrew literature. She continued to regard Shefeyah as her home and for many years she spent her vacations there, working with the pupils on theatrical productions.

In 1924, Levi-Tanai attended the Levinsky College of Education to train as a nursery-school teacher. She received a scholarship from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which also supported the Shefeyah home.

Career

Levi-Tanai’s first position was at a nursery school. Lacking adequate teaching materials, she composed poems and set her own and others’ poetry to music and created games. The material she created was presented at the Organization of Nursery School Teachers as a collection of words and music, with instructions on the pedagogical and didactic methods for their use.

Levi-Tanai dreamt of being an actress. As a teacher, she performed in the theater established by the Organization of Nursery School Teachers. She joined the acting studio of Zvi Friedland, a director at the Habimah national theatre, but was not cast in any roles, because her pronounced Yemenite accent was unacceptable to the Ashkenazi members who governed the theater, at the time.

At Friedland’s studio, she met Israel Tanai. They married in 1935. In 1940, her husband joined the Jewish Brigade and Levi-Tanai and her newborn baby daughter Michal moved to Kibbutz Ramat ha-Kovesh, where she worked in the nursery school until the end of the war and where her son Ya’akov was born in 1942. Here she began her major artistic work, becoming part of a movement of artists searching for a more authentic mode of expression in Jewish forms. She staged the holiday ceremonies in which the entire kibbutz community participated.^[1] She created her first major performance — Shir ha-Shirim (Song of Songs) — for which she composed the music. Some of the songs from this performance became famous Israeli songs, such as “El Ginat Egoz” (To the Nut Grove) and “Kol Dodi” (The Voice of My Beloved). Both adults and children of the kibbutz performed in this theatrical production.

The success of Song of Songs at Ramat ha-Kovesh led to an invitation from Kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon to create a performance celebrating their absorption of a group of Youth Aliya members. Based on the Book of Ruth, a production was staged in 1947. In 1950, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mishmar ha-Sharon, she created Bereshit (Genesis) with the composer Emmanuel Amiran Pougatchov. These productions established her as an artist with an original style. She was one of the principal contributors to the development of the folkdance movement that was established in the late 1940s. The uniqueness of Levi-Tanai lay in her interpretations of the Biblical texts and the wide scope of these creations, which included movement, text, music and a large variety of performers. This style was later the basis for her Biblical creations for the Inbal Dance Theater.

In 1945, when her husband was demobilized, they left the kibbutz and returned to Tel Aviv. In 1949, Operation Magic Carpet the mass immigration of Yemenite Jews to Israel, inspired her to seek out her own Yemeni roots.

Levi-Tannai recruited young people from the Yemenite community — from the newer and older immigrants. A small group of seven youngsters were the nucleus of the dance company that later became the Inbal Dance Theater. Through her work at Inbal, Levi-Tanai made a major contribution to Israeli culture. Many Israeli performers were influenced by her concepts and compositions, regardless of their origin.

Levi-Tanai died on 3 October 2005.^[2]

In 2005, she was voted the 168th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[3]

Prizes and awards

• In 1964, Levi-Tannai's Book of Ruth won an award from the Théâtre des Mondes in Paris.
• In 1973, she was awarded the Israel Prize, in dance, for her contributions in the field of performing arts.^[4][5]
• In 1984, she won the Moshe Halevi Theater Prize, awarded by the Tel Aviv Municipality.
• In 1986, she was the first recipient of the Israel Labor Federation (Histadrut) Prize for music and dance.
• In 1988, she was made an honored citizen of Tel Aviv.

References

1. ^ Kisselgoff, Anna (Oct.6, 2005). "Sara Levi-Tanai, Founder of an Israeli Dance Troupe, Dies at 94". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/arts/dance/06tanai.html. Retrieved June 8, 2010. 
2. ^ "Died – Sara Levi-Tani" (in Hebrew). Ynet.co.il. June 20, 1995. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3150665,00.html. Retrieved June 8, 2010. 
3. ^ גיא בניוביץ' (June 20, 1995). "הישראלי מספר 1: יצחק רבין – תרבות ובידור". Ynet. http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3083171,00.html. Retrieved July 10, 2011. 
4. ^ Cohen, Selma Jeanne (1998). International encyclopedia of dance. Oxford University Press. p. 155. ISBN 9780195123081. 
5. ^ "Israel Prize recipients in 1973 (in Hebrew)". Israel Prize Official Site. Archived from the original on January 18, 2010 by WebCite. http://cms.education.gov.il/educationcms/units/prasisrael/tashlag/tashmab_tashlag_rikuz.htm?dictionarykey=tashlag. 

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients

Persondata
Name	Levi-Tanai, Sara
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1910
Place of birth	Jerusalem
Date of death	2005-10-03
Place of death