Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Judith Brin Ingber Season 1 Episode 9

Judith combines a rare articulate sensibility in dance and in
writing, specializing in Jewish dance. Her career has been
documented in the Performing Arts Archives of the Special
Collections of the University of Minnesota and in the Dance
Library of Israel. 


The papers she donated to the Dance Library of Israel cover
her work for the Batsheva-Bat Dor Dance Society from 1972-1977,
letters with Sara Levi-Tanai, Yardena Cohen, Rivka Sturman, and
Felix Fibich as well as drafts of her "Dance Perspectives issue
called 'Shorashim: The Roots of Israeli Folk Dance'" published in
1974.


She grew up in Minneapolis and began her dance training with
Lillian Vail. Her beloved ballet teachers were Lorand and Anna
Andahazy, de Basil Ballet Russe dancers who settled in Minnesota.
With them she had her first experience performing in their Ballet
Borealis on the famed Northrop stage at the University of MN in
"Scheherazade" accompanied by Antol Dorati conducting the
Minneapolis Symphony.


To broaden her education she moved to New York where she
studied dance (and earned her bachelor's degree) at Sarah
Lawrence College. There she was a student of the famed dance
composition teacher Bessie Schönberg. In New York she also
studied at the Martha Graham Studio, with Margy Jenkins and at
the Merce Cunningham Studio, performed with Meredith Monk and
Anne Wilson, taught children with Marilyn Wood at Downtown
Community School and worked as the editorial assistant at Dance
Magazine for Lydia Joel and Doris Hering from 1967-1969.


When Judith returned to Mpls in 1970 she was assistant to
programmer Suzanne Weil at Walker Art Center (before the words
Performing Arts Curator came into use). Judith proposed a new
program: that she search out young MN choreographers to
participate in a new dance concert to be produced by Weil at
Walker, known for presenting nationally famous modern dancers
including Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp (Tharp's dance "Sue's
Leg" was an ode to Suzanne Weil's unique residencies enabling
choreographers to spend extended time at Walker to create new
dances and to teach). Judith's program was a huge success and the
“Young Choreographers Evening” surprisingly sold out with such an
overflow that Weil decided to on the spot to hold a second
performance that night. Walker has continued to produce the
highly successful program for more than 45 years, now called the
Choreographers Evening. Presented annually during the
Thanksgiving weekend, still with its signature 7PM and 9PM times,
countless MN choreographers have gotten their start through
Judith’s invention, the Choreographers Evening.


She lived in Israel from 1972-1977. During that time she
taught apprentices of the two modern dance companies at the
Batsheva Bat Dor Dance Society and choreographed a program for
young audiences for the Batsheva Dance Company. The program was
filmed for Israeli television and ran often in the '70s. Some of
the company dancers in her program included Laurie Freedman and
Zvi Gutheiner. Judith also served as the assistant to the
founder/director of Inbal Dance Theatre, Sara Levi-Tanai. Judith
co-founded the first Israeli dance magazine, the Israel Dance
Annual with Giora Manor. She continues to return often to Israel
to research, lecture and teach.


When she returned to Minneapolis, Judith was the first
director of the dance program of the University of Minnesota's
Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. She taught dance history
for twenty years there and now guests there and in the
University's School of Journalism. She frequently teaches when on
tour with her book or dance programs including several summers in
England at Machol Europa (see United Kingdom Israeli Dance
Institute), twice for Jacek Luminsky's international dance
festival in Bytom, Poland, and often in Israel (in December 2011
she taught at the Western Galilee Co