Lisa Traiger


A Twist of Israel in Pennsylvania

By Lisa Traiger

A Twist of Israel in Pennsylvania
Choreographer Ronan Koresh is marking his 20th anniversary in Philadelphia. He is known for abrasive critiques, but tears come to his eyes when dancers get their moves just right.Read More


Polish Play About Anti-Semitism Debuts in America

By Lisa Traiger

Polish Play About Anti-Semitism Debuts in America
Warsaw-based playwright Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s “Our Class,” is about neighbors becomming enemies, and is the most controversial play in contemporary Poland. Now, it debuts in Philadelphia.Read More


Separating the Dancer From the Dance Exchange

By Lisa Traiger

Separating the Dancer From the Dance Exchange
Liz Lerman, whose choreography has long grappled with issues of Jewish identity, is stepping down after 35 years at the helm of the Dance Exchange.Read More


Stepping Into the Future

By Lisa Traiger

Stepping Into the Future
At New York’s 60th annual Israel Folk Dance Festival, held in April, a few dozen dancers at the opening session circled to their favorite Hebrew songs, those that recalled a time when Israel was a vibrant new nation. With plenty of gray heads and bottle brunettes among them, the middle-aged and older crowd didn’t bode well for a festival meant to convey the youth, vitality and creativity of Israeli dance in the 21st century. Only later that Friday evening, in the 92nd Street Y’s second-floor Buttenweiser Hall, when nearly 100 teenagers from Caracas, Venezuela and North Miami Beach showed up clutching shopping bags and cell phones, did the program step up the pace.Read More


From Zero to 4,678 in 80 Short Years

By Lisa Traiger

From Zero to 4,678 in 80 Short Years
In 1924 there was just one Israeli folk dance, “Hora Agadati,” created in Tel Aviv. Within a year of gaining statehood, Israel could boast 75 folk dances. And by 2005 there were 4,678, according to Dina Roginsky, an anthropologist and lecturer at Yale University who has studied the growth of Israeli folk dance.Read More