Nira Paaz

Nira Paaz (1935-2021)

Born in Petach Tikva, she moved with her family to Tel Aviv at age 12 and started studying with Gertrud Kraus and dancing in her company. Later on she also studied with Mia Arbatova, Dvora Bartonov, Ruth Harris, Yehudit Orenstein, and Jerome Robbins. In 1955, she moved to New York, where she studied at Ballet Arts in Carnegie Hall and started dancing in City Music Hall, on Broadway musicals (including Shaike Ophir’s pantomime performances) as well as many TV productions. In 1962, she was admitted to the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, where she worked, among others, with Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, and Antony Tudor. A year later she became a solo dancer and continued dancing with the company for seven years. In 1970 she returned to Israel and danced in Bat-Dor under Jeanette Ordman in 1971-1974. In 1975, she joined the Israeli Ballet Company under the management of Berta Yampulski and Hillel Markman, first as a dancer and later as a rehearsal director and teacher. She was a solo dancer in many performances, including Serenade by George Balanchine.

In 1977 she joined Batsheva where she danced until her retirement from the professional stage in 1982. During those years, she danced in many works, including Dreams, Step by Step with Haydn (1978); Wilderness, Swamps & Forest, Stravinsky Dance Circus, Lunch, Recollections of a People (1979); Nymphaeas (1980). In addition, Paaz was the artistic director of Batsheva 2 in 1981-1986.

After her retirement from the company, Paaz taught classical ballet and technique at the Jerusalem Music and Dance Academy, in the Tel Aviv Dance Center Bikurey Ha‘itim and the Kibbutzim College. In 1989, she cofounded the Mia Arbatova Association for the promotion of classical ballet in Israel, together with Yair Vardi and Hezi Laskali. Paaz is a member of several public culture and art committees, including those of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Omanut Laam and the Suzanne Dellal Center, and served as a judge in ballet contests in Israel and worldwide.

Paaz won the Kinor David Dancer of the Year Award for her Final Curtain solo choreographed for her by Yigal Peri, and was listed as an outstanding dancer by Dancing Times. In 2010, she received the Ministry of Culture and Sports Lifetime Achievement Award. Her daughter Talia Paz is a highly regarded dancer, who has been dancing in various companies in Israel and abroad since the 1990s, including Batsheva and Cullberg Ballet, and has been serving since 2014 as the artistic director of the Kibbutzim College School of Dance Arts.