Dancers of Israel

The rulers ceased in Israel, they ceased,

Until that thou didst arise, Deborah,

That thou didst arise a mother in Israel.

--Judges 5

On the darkened stage of a Manhattan theater, the ancient and moving story unfolded in stately dance and song: Deborah described how she led her nation to victory over Sisera, king of Canaan; praised Barak, the victorious general; sang of the heroism of Jael, wife of Hener the Kenite, who killed Sisera when he went to her tent. Then the bearded men and the dark, long-haired women ranged across the stage in a ritualistic dance of victory, chanting their praise of the Lord: "Then shall the people of the Lord go down to the gates." The startling vitality that coursed through last week's performance sprang from a living tradition: the performers were Yemenites, direct descendants of Jews who fled to southwestern Arabia in the first century B.C. Organized into an Israeli dance troupe that calls itself Inbal (the tongue of a bell), they were in the U.S. for a three-months' tour. Inbal's repertory includes eight major dance works drawn from the fabric of Yemenite and Israeli life--the shepherds before their campfires, wedded happiness (Shabbat Shalom), the seven-day Yemenite marriage ceremonies. The bearded male dancers bounded across the stage in exuberant leaps, snapped their bodies into harsh angularities of rage or exaggerated comic pantomime. The women in striped Yemenite smocks moved in sinuous arabesques. Mixed into the dances were chanted Hebrew or Arabic texts, the oriental-flavored sounds of flute, cymbal and drum.

Inbal and its repertory are the creation of a remarkable Deborah-like woman named Sara Levi-Tanai. Herself the daughter of emigrant Yemenite parents, she had no formal training in the drama or dance, picked up all she knows by staging school pageants as a kindergarten teacher, mostly in Tel Aviv. When the Jewish population of Yemen was flown to Israel in 1949, Teacher Levi-Tanai recruited 19 young people who had never danced professionally before, started constructing dances out of bits and scraps of native ritual.

One of Teacher Levi-Tanai's biggest problems: overcoming religious objections of Yemenite Jews to performing in public --most of the dances had been confined to the home or the synagogue. This gave them a cramped style. "The Yemenite Jew never danced in the open, so his movements are sharp as if they have no room.

But we must dance like Israelis, a free people. I say: 'Now we are in Israel, so we must be bold and strong.' "

Inbal was a success in Israel from the start. Workers in isolated settlements saw in the dances a reflection of the life they knew; city audiences, though made up of migrants from a dozen Western countries, sensed the touch of tradition. "I feel that it must be like the old Temple before it was destroyed," says Sara Levi-Tanai. "Like the days when the Temple had feasting and dancing."

U.S. audiences, regardless of their background, are likely to be similarly moved by the dancers from Yemen. Like the ancient Greek drama, the ritual pageantry of Inbal speaks in a basic tongue that everybody can understand.

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