Ruth Eshel

Ruth Eshel was born in 1942 in Haifa.

She graduated from the local Hebrew Reali School and the Dunie Weizman Music Conservatory in 1960. In 1953-60 she studied classical ballet with Valentina Archipova-Grossman. Later, in 1961-62, she studied piano with Haim Alexander in the Jerusalem Music and Dance Academy.
After her military service Eshel left for Europe in 1964 and trained in ballet technique with Olga Morozova. In 1965-66 she studied in London with Phyllis Bedells and passed the Royal Academy of Dance graduation examinations.
In 1967, Eshel was injured in a traffic accident in Belgium and subsequently returned to Israel, where she focused on modern dance and trained with a long series of teachers and choreographers. She also established and performed with several companies. In 1968 she was a dancer and assistant in Oshra Elkayam Ronen’s company in Haifa. In 1969, she established the Haifa Chamber Dance Company and danced with it. She also performed as a solo in the Dance Stage of Lia Schubert and Caj Lottman in 1971-75.
In 1976, Eshel danced with the first members of Batsheva 2. She performed as a solo dancer in works created for her by various choreographers, including Hedda Oren’s Broken Lines and Inner and Outer Space, Rachel Cafri’s Image of a Demagogue, Ruth Ziv-Ayal’s The Scarecrow, and Ronit Land’s People Like Lines (1977). In 1977, she founded the Ruth Eshel Dance Theater which was active until 1987 and choreographed many works, including Dreams, performed together with Batsheva 2 dancers, and Masks (1978), Gown of Stones (1980), and Diapered Branches (1983).
Eshel has a BA in the humanities from the New College of California (1982), MA in Theater from the University of Quebec in Montreal (1990) and a PhD in Theater from Tel Aviv University (2002).She taught in the Hecht House (also called Rothschild House) Dance Center in Haifa, taught ballet at Ga’aton Studio in 1967-69 and prepared students for the final examinations at the Royal Academy of Dance’s Israeli branch in 1971.
In 1991-95 Eshel documented the dances of Ethiopian Jews for the Israeli Dance Library. In 1996, she established Eskesta Company with students of Ethiopian origin at Haifa University, which was active until 2005. In 2005-11 Eshel lectured in the university’s Department of Multidisciplinary Studies. In 2005 she founded the Beta Dance Troupe, also with dancers of Ethiopian origin, which is active to this day. Her choreographies for the two companies include Liturgy, Village Memories and Courting (1996); Aspirations (1997); Ethiopian Tribal Dances (2000); Opus for Shoulders (2001); Opus for Heads (2002); Tezi-Teza (2008); and In the Heat of Gurage (2009).
Since 1991, Eshel has been the dance critic of Haaretz leading daily. Together with Giora Manor, she was the cofounder and coeditor of Dance in Israel, a quarterly which appeared in 1992-97, and since 2001 she has been the founding editor of Dance Now. In addition, Eshel launched the Israel Dance Diaries website where Dance Now, Israel Dance Quarterly and Israel Dance Annual are published. She is also a researcher and presenter of documentaries about dance in Israel.
In 2013, Eshel won the Ministry of Culture’s Lifetime Achievement Award in artistic dance.