Rina Schenfeld: Israel’s Queen of Dance

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Rina Schenfeld dancing in a 2018 production (photo credit: RONI DADON)
Rina Schenfeld dancing in a 2018 production
(photo credit: RONI DADON)
MOST WORLD-FAMOUS people are difficult to locate and almost impossible to interview, unless the boot is on the other foot and they need the publicity.
Not so Rina Schenfeld, Israel’s prize-winning “Queen of Dance,” who has been hailed by dance critics around the world for her unique choreography, her sensitivity, her sense of drama, her technical ability, her lightness of movement, her creativity and all the other superlatives that can apply to a contemporary dancer with a classical background. She’s a prima ballerina but not a prima donna.
Schenfeld was accessible at first try and amenable to an interview the following week. It also didn’t bother her that her interviewer showed up at her Tel Aviv home earlier than scheduled, and instead of sending an assistant, Schenfeld opens the door herself.
Only months away from her 80th birthday, Schenfeld is still dancing. She remains as limber as ever, and while demonstrating a point about agility, from her seated position, casually but elegantly stretches her right leg into the air, so that her knee is level with her cheek bone.
Although she has appeared on some of the most prestigious stages in the world, Schenfeld is both nervous and excited about her projected September-October performance at the Palais Garnier National Opera House in Paris. She has danced in Paris before, and has won acclaim, as she has elsewhere in the world, but she has never performed at the grand Palais Garnier.
In the world premiere production of Berenice composed by Michael Jarrel and directed by Claus Guth, she will be acting as well as dancing. All the cast will be speaking or singing in French, but Schenfeld will deliver her lines in Hebrew. The title role will be played by Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan whom Schenfeld considers to be “the greatest singer in the world.” What they have in common is a preference for contemporary over classical, while still acknowledging the importance of classical; and both women have the ability to step fearlessly into experimentation and improvisation.
Schenfeld confesses that she used to hate opera, “because everything about it was so artificial.” But after her first exposure to contemporary opera, she became enamored.
The interview takes place in Schenfeld’s own dance studio just below her home in north Tel Aviv. On one wall are rows of cassette tapes, boxes of masks and other objects that she uses in dancing and some of the costumes that she wears.
When she was a small girl, Schenfeld had no particular ambition to be dancer. She knew that she wanted to do something in the arts and wanted the freedom to express herself but she had not decided on the direction in which she should go.
Like many children in the Tel Aviv of her youth, she spent much of her time in Dizengoff Circle, and because she was born with a naturally elastic body, was able to show off with back bends and by doing the splits.
Another girl who watched her told her that she must become a dancer. By the time she got home, the idea had crystallized and taking her father by the hand told him that he must immediately enroll her in a dance studio.
She was 12 years old at the time, an age that today she considers to be the wrong age at which to start learning. She thinks that every child should learn to dance as soon as he or she can walk.
Aside from anything else, she believes that learning to know one’s body and to move properly is beneficial to a person’s wellbeing.
But what happens when a child has two left feet and can’t dance? In Schenfeld’s opinion, everyone can dance if they start early enough and are taught properly.
“People can and should dance,” she insists.
Schenfeld herself has studied under several great teachers and has worked with many outstanding dancers and choreographers beginning with Mia Arbatova, and amongst others Martha Graham, Anna Sokolov, and Pina Bausch. She feels privileged she says, to have danced in roles created by Martha Graham, Glen Tettley, Jerome Robins John Butler, Sophie Maslow, Moshe Efrati and several other superb artists. But the dancer and choreographer who influenced her most was someone with whom she did not work, but whose performances she saw and whose books she read with avid delight.
Avant-garde dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham who worked closely with composer John Cage, was considered to be one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century, and one of the most influential figures in the world of contemporary dance. It was from Cunningham that she learned about chance operation which has become integral to her dancing.
Depending on mood, circumstance and audience, she can do the same steps to different works of music, changing costumes and wearing masks or using different objects to create something different while maintaining the same steps.
She saw Cunningham in performances in Caesarea and Tel Aviv. He used the same material in both, but changed, the costumes, the lighting and the music. Schenfeld found this intriguing and has introduced change of this kind into her own work.
One of her most acclaimed works is “Jacob’s Dream,” which started out with a trio of dancers, then became a duet and finally a solo performance. Dancing to the same steps, she has performed this work to the music of Bach, Chopin and Leonard Cohen adding drama with the use of a parachute.
Like Cunningham, Schenfeld has cooperated with artists from other disciplines in her creative adventures, sometimes being inspired by them and sometimes contributing to their inspiration.
She has also ventured into other disciplines herself and is a poet, actress, and painter.
Recognized at home and abroad for her impressive contribution to contemporary dance, Schenfeld has been awarded many prizes throughout a long and admirable career during which she has been a source of great pride to Israel. Among her awards is the EMET Prize, the Israel equivalent to the Nobel Prize.
A 2003 laureate, she was honored “for being a dancer, a teacher, prolific and innovative choreographer and an inquisitive researcher who has contributed greatly to Israeli dance through her unique character as a dancer and created a new standard for excellence, diligence and innovation.”
After five years of studying classical ballet with Arbatova, she saw the dancing of Martha Graham, whom she calls “my spiritual mother” and became so entranced that she felt the need to change her own style and switched from classical ballet to modern dance.
“It’s adding to the basics,” she explains.
“You don’t throw it away.”
A keen advocate for change without abandonment, she says that “every generation adds something.”
Like one of her teachers Anna Sokolov, Schenfeld does not regard dance as purely entertainment.
It may be for some people she says, but not for her.
At the time of the interview, she was preparing a lecture about dance . to deliver in a synagogue. The theme was dance as a prayer, dance as a gift, dance as a religion and dance as a ritual. “That’s what dance is for me,” she said. “Dance is a language, a way of expression and living. The human body is a temple and we have to study it and learn it. All the wisdom is in our bodies.”
While conscious of change in people’s lives, Schenfeld does not accept excuses such as being betrayed by one’s body. “Everyone says your body betrays you, but it is you who betray your body.”
She can’t understand why knowledge of the body is not part of the compulsory school curriculum.
She teaches body awareness to children aged 4-9. Schenfeld and her husband Uri Figenblat, a shoe designer, have a daughter, and a son. Her daughter used to dance with her but has switched to dance therapy. Her son is a school principal.
Fervently opposed to hypocrisy and constantly searching for truth, Schenfeld remains an eternal student of life who is currently delving into Japanese aesthetics, and is studying Wabi Sabi, a Japanese philosophy in which the focus is on acceptance of transience and imperfection.
These days, Schenfeld – following Wabi Sabi teachings – is less concerned with beauty and showing off than she was in her younger years. “In the west, we are so agitated about beauty. Today I say no to all this and yes to humanity, simplicity, trust and the search for truth.”
She also prefers to perform for smaller more intimate audiences so as to facilitate a relationship with them that is simply not possible in a large theater. “I want more direct contact with the public,” she says.
Asked to define her own contribution to Israeli culture, she unhesitatingly pinpoints continuity. Many of the dancers and choreographers who have been trained by her have formed their own companies, opened their own studios or have become internationally recognized performers – which are all indicators that the dance goes on.