Tamar Ben Ami

Tamar Ben-Ami (1947 – 2026)

Born in Haifa. She studied dance with Yardena Cohen and Gertrud Kraus, and in 1962 joined a local dance company which integrated Jewish and Arab dancers. As a teenager, she was a member of the communist youth party, and at age 16 she became the partner of Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish. In response to her relationship with Darwish, he parents sent her to study dance in the Jerusalem Music and Dance Academy (JMDA) High School. She served in the IDF in the Navy band, and is mostly remembered for her song My Sailor is My Angel. Upon her discharge she studied at the JMDA, where she graduated in 1967. She then moved to New York and studied in Alvin Ailey’s school, and also trained in tai chi and yoga. In 1976-78, she taught in the Kibbutzim College of Education’s dance teacher training program.
Throughout the 1980s, Ben-Ami worked as a freelance choreographer, one of the only choreographers active in the Israeli scene at the time. Her works include: Voices from Nature (1984), First Person Conversations (1986), Gibberish (1987), and Heartbeat (1987). In the course of her work in the workshop for promoting young artists, she created two choreographies for Batsheva: My Sole… and Head (1983), Square Button (1986).
In 1990, Ben-Ami went on a sabbatical from the Kibbutzim College, and accepted an invitation by director David Levin to choreograph for his play Ghetto in Magdeburg, Germany. Following this work, she was invited to choreograph for the Magdeburg Theater and trained with Gret Palucca. Since then and until 2011 she taught in the State Ballet School of Berlin, and divided her time between Berlin and Tel Aviv. She created independent choreographies in both Germany and Israel as well as choreographed for theater plays, including at Acco Fringe Theater Festival, Beersheba Theater, and Habima, Cameri and Tsavta in Tel Aviv.
In Israel, she taught at the Kibbutzim College, JMDA, Menashe Dance Studio, Thelma Yellin High School, and the Tel Aviv University Theater Arts Department. She also taught yoga and tai chi.
In 2014, the film Write Down, I Am an Arab was launched, (directed by Ibtisam Mara’ana Menuhin), depicting Ben-Ami’s relationship with Darwish.
Ben-Ami’s choreographies won her the first prize in Shades of Dance (Gvanim Bemachol) Festival (1987), first prize in the Gertrud Kraus Competition (1987), and Choreography Award at the Video-Dance Competition, Toulouse (1990).