Ohad Naharin

Ohad Naharin, born in 1952 on Kibbutz Mizra in Israel, became one of contemporary dance's most transformative choreographers. His mother was a choreographer, dance teacher and Feldenkrais instructor; his father was an actor and psychologist. Naharin joined Batsheva Dance Company in 1974 with comparatively little formal training. During his first year, Martha Graham invited him to her company in New York, where between 1975 and 1976 he studied at the School of American Ballet and Juilliard and with Maggie Black and David Howard. He then spent a season with Maurice Béjart's Ballet du XXe Siècle before returning to New York at the end of the 1970s.

Naharin made his choreographic debut in 1980 at the Kazuko Hirabayashi studio and formed the Ohad Naharin Dance Company with dancer Mari Kajiwara, his first wife and close artistic collaborator. Throughout the 1980s he created work in New York and accepted commissions from Batsheva, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and Nederlands Dans Theater—a decade of independent making that preceded his later prominence.

In 1990 Naharin became artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company and founded its junior division, now known as Batsheva – the Young Ensemble. He led the main company for nearly three decades, stepping down as artistic director in 2018 while continuing as house choreographer. His works during this period include *Kyr* (1990), *Anaphaza* (1993), *Yag* (1996), *Naharin's Virus* (2001), *Mamootot* (2003), *Three* (2005), *MAX* (2007), *Hora* (2009), *Sadeh21* (2011), *The Hole* (2013), *Last Work* (2015), *Venezuela* (2017), *2019*, *MOMO* (2022) and *ZŌ* (2025).

Naharin developed Gaga, an innovative movement language that grew from his research into sensation, imagination and unfamiliar movement habits. Rather than a fixed syllabus, Gaga is an evolving practice centered on improvisation and teacher-mediated exploration. It became Batsheva's daily training and later expanded into formats for trained dancers and the general public. His recurring project *Decadance*, begun in 2000 to mark ten years at Batsheva, is not a frozen anthology but an evolving collage where excerpts are reworked, recombined and reinterpreted by changing casts. The section *Echad Mi Yodea*, widely circulated online, originated within *Anaphaza* and later appeared in *Decadance* contexts.

Music is integral to Naharin's authorship. He trained in music as a child and collaborated with composers including The Tractor's Revenge on *Kyr*, Avi Balleli and Dan Makov on *Anaphaza*, and Ivri Lider on *Zina*. Under the pseudonym Maxim Waratt, he composed music for *MAX* and worked on soundtrack design and mixing for *Mamootot* and *Hora*. His honors include the French Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998 and Commandeur rank in 2023, the 2005 Israel Prize for dance, the 2009 EMET Prize, the 2009 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, an honorary doctorate from Juilliard in 2013 and the Israel Ministry of Culture lifetime achievement award in 2016. His work has been documented by filmmaker Tomer Heymann in *Out of Focus* (2007) and *Mr. Gaga* (2015).