Dancing with a Yemenite accent

Review by Vered Lee in Haaretz of Story of a company, Gila Toledano's new book about the late Yemenite founder of the Inbal Dance company, Sara Levi-Tanai. (With thanks: Lily)

Story of a Company is not the first book about Levi-Tanai (Giora Manor's The Choreography of Sara Levi-Tanai preceded it), but it is unique in that it examines Levi-Tanai and her work from the perspective of Mizrahi identity and the approach of Israeli society to the art and culture of the Mizrahim - Jews originating in Arab lands.

Levi-Tanai's childhood memories are tattered and frayed. She never knew her date of birth. She was born in Jerusalem around 1910 or 1911 to parents who came from Yemen in the late 19th century. From the Neveh Zedek neighborhood outside Jaffa, they moved to a refugee camp in Kfar Sava, where the entire family died in an epidemic. "I don't remember how many we were," Levi-Tanai said in 1999, "but the only ones who survived were my father and I."

Levi-Tanai was (also) drawn to theater, but she was turned down in auditions because of her strong Yemenite accent. "I was rejected by both Habimah and Ohel," she told Toledano. "I was very hurt because I sensed that it was only because of my accent." In 1940, she moved to Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh, where, aside from working as a kindergarten teacher, she organized holiday ceremonies and kibbutz events.

Operation Magic Carpet, which brought masses of Yemenite Jews to Israel in the early years of statehood, set her mind awhirl. As a woman who had grown up far from her community and had received a Western education, she was entranced by the culture of the Yemenites and began to explore their special style of dance. Levi-Tanai was not the first to be captivated by Yemenite dance. Rina Nikova, a Russian-born ballerina, established a Yemenite dance company in Tel Aviv in 1933. But while Nikova only gave Yemenite dance a platform, i.e., she organized performances of authentic dances without changing them, Levi-Tanai observed the steps closely and made Yemenite dance hers.(...)

In her book, Toledano follows the progress of Inbal's reception in Israel and abroad. She compares the snobbish criticism of Levi-Tanai's work in Israel, where it was labeled 'folklore,' to the high praise meted out in the world?s leading newspapers. The blindness of the critics who dismissed her work as "preserving Yemenite culture," and failed to see the deeper levels in it, is surprising and hard to accept. Even when Levi-Tanai used the Yemenite step, she turned it into a novelty by doing away with the separation of men and women that was part of traditional Yemenite dance.

"I knew Tolstoy and Shakespeare long before I ever heard the name 'Shalom Shabazi,'"Levi-Tanai told Maariv in 1968, defending herself against the critics [Rabbi Shabazi was a famous Yemenite mystic and poet]. Later in the interview she is even more outspoken: "The aversion to Mizrahi culture you feel in the Israeli street today is connected to the fear of Arabization, the fear of Israel becoming part of the Levant ... I'm not afraid. We are a culture-rich people. This richness flows in my blood. I'm no more worried about turning into an Arab than I am about turning into an American."

Read article in full