Ruth Ziv Ayal

Ruth Ziv-Ayal was born in 1944 in Kibbutz Dalia.

She began studying dance with Naomi Aleskovski in 1955, and later participated in some of her dances with her company and with Bimat Mahol (“dance stage”), including The House of Bernarda Alba (1961) and Sun (1962). She later studied at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Dance. In 1966, she moved to New York for five and a half years, where she earned both her bachelor’s (1968) and her master’s (1970) degrees in dance at NYU’s School of Performing Arts, directed by Jean Erdman. Richard Schechner, who gave a course on ceremony and ritual, was also on the faculty, and had a profound impact on her future work.
In 1971 Ziv-Ayal returned to Israel and began to teach movement at the Beit Zvi acting school, directed by Gary Bilu. At the same time, she worked as a choreographer at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem, with artistic director Michael Alfreds, where she created her first chorography for the play Secret Places (1977). In 1978, she choreographed The Scarecrow for a short one-character play performed by Ruth Eshel, then a dancer in Batsheva 2. In 1979, she created Headlines and Bounce Back for Ensemble II of the Cameri Theater.

In 1981-1998, she established and directed the Ruth Ziv-Ayal Troupe. Oded Kotler invited the troupe to work in the newly established Neve Tzedek Theater Center (today Suzanne Dellal Center), where she staged Cycle (1982), Wear and Tear (1984), and The Window (1986). In the 1990s, she choreographed Parts, a continuous theatrical piece in seven sections, staged in the course of the work process as “sketches” (part one was called Sketch 1, and so on). In 1998, she staged the movement monodrama Mangrusim at Suzanne Dellal.

Together with her work with the troupe, Ziv-Ayal also choreographed for others such as the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and Batsheva. Commissioned by Ohad Naharin, she choreographed Suf (Reed) for Batsheva in 2000. In 2007, she staged Meal of D and G, a tribute to Samuel Beckett, at the Arab-Hebrew Theater in Jaffa.
Over the years Ziv-Ayal worked as a motion designer in theater with directors Michael Alfreds, David Muchtar Samurai, Hannan Snir, Yosef Milo and others, and gave movement workshops to actors in Germany, Austria, the US and India. Throughout the years, in addition to her work for the theaters, she kept teaching at Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University, Kibbutzim College of Education, and a private studio frequented by actors from all Israeli theaters.

Ziv-Ayal received the Silver Rose Award of Maariv daily newspaper (1979), the Rosenblum Prize for Theater Arts (1996), and the Tel Aviv University Rector Award (2004). In 2014 she received the Kipod HaZahav (Golden Hedgehog) Fringe Theater Award for her lifetime achievements.