Concise history of Israeli dance

Abstract

When we talk about Israeli dance, we are not referring to an ancient type of dance like the Jewish religion. Unlike this, it is a form of cultural expression that is historically almost as recent as the State of Israel, founded in 1948. The beginning of the evolution of Israeli dance can be located at the end of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, shortly after the first massive immigration of Jews to Israel began, mobilized by the Zionist movement, which had as its central idea the need for these people to return to their land of origin. What is called Israeli dance are the dance forms that were constituted within the region of Israel, both those derived from the various places from which Jewish immigrants came, and those referring to non-Jewish ethnic groups, which also inhabit that territory. It is a large ensemble that encompasses a plurality of types of dance. The recognition that there is a form of dance expression specific to Israel (although resulting from the mixture of information from other places) is the result of the efforts of a group of choreographers, who sought to consolidate a cultural identity for this new State. They did this by investing in the structuring and dissemination of harkadá (Israeli circular dances) and organizing festivals that brought together the different types of dance typical of each ethnic group that inhabited Israel and the new national forms of dance that were emerging in that territory,