Celebrating 80 years ...

The headline in the April 4, 1947, Jewish Western Bulletin was “The Haggadah in Dance.” Lillian Weinberg began her article with the proclamation, “A new crusade is under way in the field of dancing! Two young artists, Katya Delakova and Fred Berk, in an effort to awaken American dancers to the wealth of interpretive material that lies in Hebrew culture and history, have been using the United States as a testing ground for their new dances, which they hope eventually to present to the Palestinian people. Stressing the universality of the Hebrew heritage, these ‘displaced Palestinian’ dancers are trying to point out that artists of any faith can find dramatic and inspiring subject matter in the folklore of the Jews.”

One the couple’s new creations was “The Haggadah.” The story of the Exodus, wrote Weinberg, “is closely akin to their own flight from Nazi Europe.” They were well known across Europe and had several dance schools. They came to America in 1942, where they toured and became directors of the dance department of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the Hebrew Arts Committee.

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