Ashkenazi Dance

Today Ashkenazic dance is one of the most poorly documented and least understood dance traditions in the world. Ashkenazic dance showed a confluence of two radically different concepts—one deriving from early modern German popular and folkloric dance, and the other emerging out of the Jewish community itself. This latter emphasized expressivity of the entire upper body, including the hands and arms. These were in turn often connected with the gestures of the Yiddish language and the unique melodic movements of klezmer music.

Leading expert in Ashkenazi dance Walter Zev Feldman (New York) invites musicians and dancers to his professional master-class with live accompaniment by Yosef-Kapelye klezmer band.

Participation is free of charge, but only by individual invitation from the organizers. To apply please fill the online form no later than October 1, 2017.

Walter Zev Feldman is Visiting Professor of Music at New York University Abu Dhabi, Director of the An-sky Institute for Traditional Jewish Expressive Culture at the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (NYC), and Board Member of Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (University of Münster). Author of Music of the Ottoman Court (Berlin, 1996) and Klezmer: Music, History, Memory (Oxford, 2016).