Gideon Avrahami

Gideon Avrahami was born in 1941 in Tel Aviv.

He moved to a boarding school in Kibbutz Ein Shemer at age 12, where he started learning folk dancing. As a teenager, the kibbutz granted him a scholarship for dance studies with Gertrud Kraus, Naomi Aleskovski and Arie Kalev. After his military service he returned to the kibbutz and worked as a shepherd. At age 22, he left Ein Shemer and danced in Giora Godik’s musical My Fair Lady, where he met Rina Shaham and went on to dance in her company and in Anna Sokolow’s Lyric Theater. In 1965, he joined Batsheva where he danced for two years.

In 1968, after the company’s European tour, Avrahami stayed in the UK and joined the Rambert Company under the artistic director Norman Morris. He remained with the company for seven years and danced lead roles in choreographies by Marie Rambert, Glen Tetley, Antony Tudor and others. In 1975, he retired from dancing to concentrate on teaching, including at the Leicester Polytechnic. He also choreographed for various companies, including the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and established a company of his own which was active for a short period.

At the same time, he began taking an interest in Pilates and studied with Alan Herdman in London. Upon his return to Israel in 1986 he specialized in the Pilates and Alexander techniques, and is still active as a senior instructor in both.