Ze’eva Cohen

Ze’eva Cohen was born in 1940 in Tel Aviv.

She began dancing at age five with Gertrud Kraus. She went on to train in the Graham technique with Rena Gluck and joined her company. In 1957, she joined Bimat Mahol (Dance Stage), established by Gluck, Rina Shaham and Naomi Aleskovski, where she danced their choreographies for the company, and on various occasions took part in performances independently organized by each of the three. In 1962, after her military service, Cohen joined Anna Sokolow’s Lyric Theater. Sokolow arranged for a scholarship for Cohen, and she moved to New York in 1961 to study in Juilliard. At the same time, she performed with Sokolow’s company in New York.

After graduating Cohen remained in New York and continued to perform with Sokolow’s company. She later cofounded the Dance Workshop Theater, a collective of dancers from Sokolow’s company. In 1971, she began performing in solo dances in festivals around the US and worldwide, and kept doing so until she retired from dancing in the early 1980s.

In the late 1970s, Cohen began choreographing. She created for the Boston Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Chicago Dance Company, Inbal Dance Theater, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and Batsheva. She created the following choreographies for Batsheva: Portrait for Two, and Wilderness, Swamps & Forest (1979); Passages (1981); Island (1983); Walkman Variations (1987). In 1983, she formed her own dance company which was active for two years.
Cohen was a Professor of Dance at Princeton University, having founded the Dance Program and served as its coordinator for about forty years. Throughout the years, she also taught at the Alvin Ailey School of Dance, Herbert Berghof’s studio, Yale and Harvard, as well as in various courses in the US, Europe and Israel.