Ohad Naharin, Batsheva Dance Company Artistic Director, Is Stepping Down

Image by Quim Llenas/Getty Images

By Talya Zax July 18, 2017

Ohad Naharin, the longtime artistic director of Tel Aviv’s Batsheva Dance Company, will step down from his post in September 2018.

As The New York Times reports, Naharin will be replaced in his position by Gili Navot, a former dancer and rehearsal director with the company. Naharin will stay on as Batsheva’s house choreographer.

Ohad Naharin, photographed in Tel Aviv in 2005. Image by Dan Porges/Getty Images

Naharin took the reins at Batsheva in 1990. Over the subsequent decades, he has built a formidable reputation in the world of contemporary dance. Having created the movement language of Gaga, he has been recognized with numerous awards, including the American Dance Festival’s Samuel H. Scripps Prize for lifetime achievement and an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from The Juilliard School. He was the subject of the 2015 documentary “Mr. Gaga.”

Reviewing Batsheva’s performance of Naharin’s “Last Work” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this past spring, the Forward’s Jake Romm called the work “nothing short of a revelation.”

According to the Times, Naharin announced his resignation as artistic director in a letter sent to Batsheva’s subscribers and donors late last week. In the letter, he expressed his intention to focus, after his departure, on choreographing new works and continuing to develop Gaga.

Watch a sample of his choreography for Batsheva, below.

Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at zax@forward.com or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO