Mirali Sharon

Mirali Sharon (1931-2017)

Born in Kibbutz Ein-Harod, she studied with Rivka Sturman. In 1947-1949, she performed with Israeli representative folk dancing companies in youth festivals in Prague and Budapest. In 1950, she studied with Gertrud Kraus and Tehila Resler and performed with the Israeli Ballet Company on pieces by Kraus and American choreographer Talley Beattie. In 1951-52 she studied at the Cameri Theater’s School of the Dramatic Arts and performed in the musical Queen of Sheba.
Sharon was a member of the Movement Quartet under Noa Eshkol’s management, and performed with it throughout Israel in 1952-55. As a student, she took part in formulating the Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation together with Avraham Wachman. In 1954, she began choreographing for theater plays and musicals, including Five for HaOhel Theater and Yerma for Cameri Theater.
In 1958, Sharon was invited by the Israeli Consulate in New York invited for a performance tour in the US and Canada to celebrate Israel’s tenth anniversary. She stayed in New York and became Merce Cunningham’s first Israeli student. At the same time, she taught dance at the New York City Dramatic Arts Workshop. Upon her return to Israel in 1960, she began teaching at the Nisan Nativ Acting Studio. She also taught dancing in her studio, choreographed for high-school performances and taught summer dance courses for foreign students of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In a joint initiative with Lea Port, Head of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Culture Administration, the ministry’s Dance Department was established.
Sharon won a scholarship for a one-year choreography course at the Henry Street Playhouse under Alwin Nicholais and stayed in New York in the years 1963-69. During those years, she performed with Nicholais and Murray Louis’s company, and also created her own company which performed for about a year.

In 1970 Sharon was invited to Batsheva as a choreographer and returned to Israel. She choreographed five dances for the company, and also designed costumes for two of them: Transitions (1971), Lyric Episodes (1972); the other three were Taltela (1974), Monodrama (1975), and Memories (1976), which was not staged due to program changes following the appointment of a new artistic director. In 1976, she began working with Bat-Dor and by 1981 she choreographed six dances for the company. In 1980 she represented the Israeli art of dance at the Centre Georges Pompidou as an independent choreographer.
Over the years Sharon taught dance lessons and lectured at Tel Aviv University, Kibbutzim College of Education’s School of the Arts and Dance and the Dance Library of Israel. She was active in promoting dance in Israel and was among the founders of the Israeli Choreographers Association, and appointed as its chair. She was a member of various committees, as well as the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. In 2002 she won the Ministry of Culture and Science Lifetime Achievements Award for her contribution to all the aspects of the dance art and for being one of its pioneers in Israel.