“I was studying ballet in London at Nicholas Legat’s Russian school and at the Royal Ballet. I always felt free on stage, but I didn’t like the system and the intrigues, and I didn’t want to dance anymore. In 1965 after my military service, on the way to the beach, I accidentally met Aviva Paz in front of the Batsheva studio on Ib’nGevirol boulevard, and she invited me in. That’s how I met Francois Schapira who let me participate in Donald McKayle’s ballet class after I convinced him that I was a dancer and not a beach bum. Francois signed me on a 1,300 lira per month contract, which was a fortune, and I committed to learn the style before Martha Graham would come in three months. When Graham arrived I was advised to come shirtless, because that’s what she liked. She grabbed me by the balls and said: “I see that your art comes from those”. She was right.
It was a repertory company, and choreographers were brought from abroad into the Israeli mentality. They had to get what they could from the dancers, adapt the dance both to the abilities and to the local audience. Once we performed in Be’er Sheva at a movie theater in front of an audience of young people who expected to see a show with half naked girls, and instead they got boys dancing in skirts [in Glen Tately’s Psalms]. They didn’t appreciate the art we brought them. The audience shrieked and screamed and we barely managed to dance.”
Danny Binstead, Dancer, 1966-1968