A newcomer to Batsheva’s main company, 23-year-old Amalia Smith is quickly learning how to keep her body safe and supple during Ohad Naharin’s rigorous rehearsals and world tours. Fatigue has become both a hurdle and a teacher. “Decadance is pretty much a marathon, and the new piece Venezuela is such crazy cardio I nearly had […]

When Katrina Lenk says her feet never touched the ground in her Broadway debut, as a replacement in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, she’s not telling you how deliriously happy she was—though she was. Lenk is being literal: Playing Arachne, the show’s magical spider-woman, she was suspended in a gigantic web throughout. Her ability to […]

Elvira Lind’s documentary Bobbi Jene took the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival by surprise last spring, sweeping the awards for Best Documentary, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. For those of us who have watched Batsheva and Bobbi Jene Smith’s career, the film’s success is not unexpected. It is a validation of what we already know: Bobbi […]

“Start with less.” Those are the first words that Keren Lurie Pardes says as she guides her fellow dancers through a pre-rehearsal class in New York City. They have recently arrived to make their debut at The Joyce Theater as members of L-E-V, the small, intriguing company founded in 2013 by Israeli artists Sharon Eyal […]

Choose an improv method that will challenge your weaknesses. Freedman (left) practices a phrase in the studio. Photo by Anna Maynard, Courtesy Helen Simoneau. Often, the key to growing as a dancer is getting out of a mental or physical rut. One solution? Improvisation. Its unpredictable, uncomfortable challenges can help dancers find their voices while […]