Hadassah (dancer)

Hadassah Spira was born in Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, on December 30, 1909. and was particularly impressed with Ted Shawn, who was known for his Whirling Dervish. After her marriage in 1933, Spira's husband, Milton Epstein, encouraged her to familiarize herself with New York's theatre and dance culture. Spira Epstein began studying dance under Ruth St. Denis and Jack Cole, who both incorporated eastern ideas in their works. She also studied with La Meri, founder of the Ethnologic Dance Center of New York, and Nala Najan, the leading Hindu dance scholar in the United States. During the 1939 New York World's Fair, she studied with Javanese dancers who were performing there. She studied dances from the Court of Surakarta and received a teacher's diploma in Javanese dance from Radem Mas Kodrat and Radem Mas Wiradat. She also studied Japanese expressional dance with Kenji Hinoki. ==Career==

Hadassah decided to use her first name only for her professional career. She was first affiliated with the Kenji Hinoke Japanese Dance Company, with whom she made her New York debut in 1938. Hadassah and Company Hadassah started her own dance company, Hadassah and Company, which staged its first performance at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on June 4, 1950. Hadassah received good notices from critics; John Martin, dance critic for The New York Times, called her an "exceptionally gifted artist...One of the best!" In 1952, she choreographed an "Indonesian Suite" for the company, featuring "a trance section based on Balinese Sanghyang". Hadassah toured India and Israel in 1959–1960 on a Rockefeller Brothers Fund grant. She expanded her knowledge of classical Indian dance by studying Manipuri dance with Ritha Devi, Kathak with Damayanti Joshi, and Bharatanatyam with Raghavan Nair and Ram Gopal. The celebrated Indian dancer Balasaraswati gave her a private performance of the latter style. Hadassah also undertook research on the Bene Israel and Cochin Jews of India. In Israel, she visited the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel to observe "ancient ritual dancing and chanting". She performed on the Tel Aviv stage and before thousands of spectators in the Ein Harod amphitheater. She was asked to stay in Israel to teach dance, but wanted to return to the United States. Hadassah continued performing into the mid-1970s, displaying almost the same vigor in her senior years as she had in her prime. ==Dance instructor==

Hadassah taught Indian and Israeli dance at many locations in the United States through the mid-1980s. Her workshops included "classical Hindu, Moroccan, Persian and East Indian folk dance". She served as a faculty member, board member and chairperson of the Ethnic Division of the New Dance Group, the largest school of dance in New York. She also taught students at Dance Masters of America, The Dance Congress, Pennsylvania Association of Dance Teachers, Columbia University Teachers College, Jacob's Pillow, and Henry Street Playhouse. Her classes extended to Jewish community centers and residents at the Menorah Home for the Aged. ==Artistic style==

Hadassah's dances reflected many aspects and styles of ethnic and folk culture, including Hindu, Indian, Indonesian, Israeli, Balinese, and Korean. At the same time, her choreography expressed her deeply held spiritual beliefs, and what she perceived as a universal desire to connect to God. She specifically incorporated movements and gestures that were common to a variety of cultures to convey "a spiritual longing to connect with and honor the Source". These included the mudra hand gesture from Hindu culture; "a certain movement" which she had seen used by Punjabis, North Indian Muslims, and Dervishes; "an ecstatic Sufi movement"; and the positioning of the hands in Judaism's Priestly Blessing. Her concerts stressed the commonality and continuum of Hindu and Jewish dance forms as she first performed Indian dances and concluded the program with Jewish dances. In her Jewish interpretative dances, Hadassah freely incorporated traditional religious iconography. For example, her performance of the hora, set to vocals of a cantorial by Cantor Leibele Waldman, saw her garbed in "a stylized version of the four-cornered prayer shawl with fringes (zizit) at each corner". Combining her Eastern European ancestry with fluency in eastern dance forms, Hadassah projected ambiguity in nationality and ethnicity which defied attempts at categorization. One reviewer for Dance Observer perceived her as an "exotic" who performed Oriental dances, while another viewed her as a modern dancer who elevated "the authentic materials of the east into a contemporary theatre form". During her tours of India and Israel, critics in India referred to Hadassah as "a 'Jewish American' who had a feel for Indian movement, but was at her best when performing Jewish dances"; while critics in Israel depicted her as "an Israeli native returning to her homeland" or as "quintessentially American". Hadassah rejected her Hasidic upbringing by dancing in public, which is frowned upon by religious Jews. Her rejection of the religious laws "caused her great emotional turmoil". In response to her decision to pursue a career in dance, her father reportedly disowned her. However, one night after she had performed "Shuvi Nafshi", her parents visited her backstage and she felt they understood her need to express her spiritual beliefs through dance. ==Notable works==

Hadassah's signature dance was "Shuvi Nafshi" ("Return O My Soul"), a composition based on a verse in Psalm 116. For the Gandhi centenary celebration in 1969, Hadassah choreographed Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech as a dance/theatre work, reflecting the influence of Gandhi's philosophy on King. ==Personal life==

Hadassah married Milton Epstein, a painter and bookstore owner, in New York in October 1933. Besides encouraging her to study Asian dance, Epstein managed Hadassah's career and often lectured at her performances. In 1995, Milton Epstein donated her papers from 1938 to 1988 to the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at the New York Public Library. ==References==