Dance Around the World

Ze'eva Cohen, an Israeli dancer and choreographer now teaching at the Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Program, will be performing Friday and Saturday night in Sanders Theater.

Ze'eva started dancing as a young child in pre-partition Palestine. Despite their poverty, her parents were determined to give her as much culture as possible. Fortunately the neighborhood dance teacher was Gertrud Kraus, once a well known dancer-choreographer in Europe. At the age of 16 she began to study and perform with Rena Gluck of the Graham School. When Anna Sokolow came to Esrael around 1958, Ze'eva performed in her Lyrical TTheater. Sokolow was so impressed by the young performer that she offered Ze'eva a ticket to the United States so she could study on scholarship at the Juillard School of Music in New York.

After graduating from Juillard, Ze'eva performed with Sokolow's company, the American Dance Theater at Lincoln Center, Dance Theater Workshop, the New York Shakespeare Festival, and as a guest artist with Pearl Lang and company. She formed her own solo dance program in 1971 and has since toured throughout the U.S. and in Geneva, London, Berne, Bonn, and Jerusalem.

She has also guest choreographed for various companies--including "Goat Dance" and "Rainwood" for the Boston Ballet.

During the academic year Ze'eva lectures at Princeton in Modern dance. At the Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Program she teaches an advanced modern dance class and a repertory class. Along with teaching she slips in on the bar work of at least one ballet class a day. And now of course she has rehearsals every evening.

Her performance this weekend will include "Escape," choreographed by Sokolow, in which she portrays the different stages of love in a woman's life and "Mothers of Israel," choreographed by Margalit Oved, in which she recreates the human personalities of the four Jewish mothers, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel.

Later this summer she will perform at Jacob's Pillow in Worcester. The Harvard Concert is free.