Letter from Israel - Inbal dance company of Israel is closed

Dance Magazine, Oct, 1996 by Ora Brafman

Inbal's favored' position in Israel was threatened with the first visit of a prominent dance company to Israel--the Martha Graham Company. This encounter with a professional company and its well-trained dancers changed all criterion, introducing new standards and raising interest. It led to the sprouting of other professional companies, among them Batsheva Dance Company.

Inbal then underwent decades of turbulence, its members often feeling the company was misunderstood by its diminishing audiences in Israel. It was the target of cynical remarks from some critics and public officials. Difficulties occurred as Sara worked over old works for long months, and did not produce new work at a rate that satisfied the officials in charge of the meager budget for dance companies. The slow rate of upgrading the technical level of the dancers, and the too fast turnover of talent who found greater challenge working elsewhere, were obstacles.

Personal conflicts between Sara and innumerable administrators took their toll. Many a time the company faced voices calling for drastic changes, or for closing down the company. Every time there was an attempt to do so, the company's lobby raised hell, resorting to street demonstrations, petitions to Knesset members, and suggesting that those who would change or close the company were motivated by racial prejudice. Politicians of Yemenite ancestry were enlisted to postpone drastic action, and save Inbal for a few more years. It always worked.

The final curtain fell on Inbal slowly. In 1992, the octogenarian Levi-Tanai was forced to retire. She did, but not without a good fight. To smooth her exit, she was offered the title of company president, and promised a small office at Inbal's center and the right to use the facilities and dancers for rehearsing two new works per year. As part of her retirement agreement, she was assured by officials at the Ministry of Education that her old works would be revived with her help. The company administrator was in accord with this agreement.

The reality was harsher: Sara has, in this correspondent's opinion, been treated as a persona non grate, without adequate working conditions. The company allots neither time nor space for her to rehearse and no budget, and she has no say in the company she founded and ran for over forty years. Her replacements failed to keep the company on an even keel.

Israel's director of arts administration during this period, Yossi Frost, has realized that the era of Inbal and what it stood for are gone.

Politically, it was the worst time to close Inbal, as the country was being rocked by revelations involving possible government mistreatment of Yemeni immigrants in the 1950s. (Allegations have risen that during the airlift of Yemenite Jews, some sick infants were treated in hospitals and then not returned to their parents. The allegations include that some were reported dead, only to be secretly given to well-to-do families.) The director decided to close down Inbal as a dance company, and replace it with an ethnic center open to ail art forms. Inbal's budget and additional funds were promised to the new entity. The move was made stealthily, with some members of Inbal's board of directors not realizing they were signing off on the end of Inbal.