Batsheva Dance Company

Batsheva Dance Company has been critically acclaimed and popularly embraced as one of the foremost contemporary dance companies in the world. Together with Batsheva – The Young Ensemble, the Company boasts a roster of 34 dancers drawn from Israel and abroad. Batsheva Dance Company is Israel’s biggest company, maintaining an extensive performance schedule locally and internationally with over 250 performances and circa 100,000 spectators every year.

Hailed as one of the world’s preeminent contemporary choreographers, Ohad Naharin was appointed Artistic Director in 1990, and propelled the Company into a new era with his adventurous curatorial vision and distinctive choreographic voice. After almost thirty years of leading Batsheva, Naharin stepped down as Artistic Director in 2018, and continues to serve as the Company’s House Choreographer. In September 2018 Gili Navot assumed the role of Batsheva’s Artistic Director.

Naharin is also the originator of the innovative movement language, Gaga, which has enriched his extraordinary movement invention, revolutionized the company’s training, and emerged as a growing international force in the larger field of movement practices for both dancers and non-dancers. The Batsheva dancers take part in the creative processes in the studio and even create their own works in the annual project “Batsheva Dancers Create” supported by The Michael Sela Fund for Cultivation of Young Artists at Batsheva.

Batsheva Dance Company was founded as a repertory company in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild who enlisted Martha Graham as its first artistic adviser. Since 1989, Batsheva Dance Company has been in residence at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv.