Dafi Altabeb Choreographer
Contemporary Dance
Dafi Altabeb – Community Outreach
Alongside the professional artistic works of Dafi Altabeb and her Company, she engages with non-dancers of various ages in different outreach projects. Movement and dance as a tool for communication, self-exploration and development is something of great interest and value for her.
“ Working with nonprofessionals is a gift that I discovered in recent years of my professional career. It teaches me new and more defined skills of how to talk about and explain dance; what its engines are and how we can transform a thought or emotion into movement. I can clearly see the joy it brings out in people when they are encouraged to dance in a safe environment; The trust that they can build towards themselves as well as one another and the long-term effects it has on their emotional state and mindset. This type of work enables me to discover dance all over again; I see its innocence and endless potential that connects people from all around the world. There is no question, that this knowledge influences also my work with professional dancers.”
From early child education through dance, up to projects with and for non-professional dance lovers, ages 65+, Dafi Altbabeb initiates opportunities for people to come together and find various ways of bodily expression and creative sessions.
Moving for All
Moving for All is a recent project, developed at the very beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, out of the need to stay in touch with people in a time of total isolation.
Moving for All invites dance lovers, ages 50+ from all around the globe to meet online on a weekly basis for a creative dance project.
This project ran between May 2020 until May 2023 and brought together a group of strong women from Israel, Singapore, Germany and the USA who met on a weekly basis for creative movement classes.
The Goal & Project Visions
When everything stopped, sometimes over two years and a half ago, the body and soul wanted to keep on dancing, moving, and expressing.
“During my years of experience as a creator and teacher, I have been asked several times by women I met in various classes I taught, to give movement lessons for non-dancers as well. This particular lesson was planned for the exact week when everything shut down, in March 2020 in Tel Aviv. This was meant to be the opportunity to make this encounter and invite nonprofessional dance lovers from all around Israel”(Dafi Altabeb 2020)
When the lockdown came into action, we decided to take these classes online and invite the international community as well.
We dance, create, express, share, contain each other, paint, translate words and paintings into movement, and generate a better reality for ourselves. This created reality is positive, caressing, empowering and constantly moving. The need to move our bodies and minds existed and even strengthened during this period in which the possibility to freely move in space and meet people was very limited.
Nursing House Outreach
Nursing home outreach during the COVID-19 period.
During the Covid 19 Pandemic, Dafi Altabeb initiated a format for live performances in Old peoples places throughout Israel, places with the highest rate of isolation and loneliness. Dafi felt the need to give warmth and attention to a group within our society who felt left out.
She and her company wish to empower communities and be a part of their well-being.
In August 2020, in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis, we decided to do the impossible and have a performance in the Mish’an senior living home in Givatayim. The Coronavirus crisis placed the elderly at the highest risk and imposed on them curfew and isolation. Our aim was to create for them an hour of pleasure,
of togetherness. We came with love and compassion, we came to hear how they are, and so it was. Choreography by Dafi Altabeb Co-creator: Nini Moshe Creative dancers: Yankalle Filtser & Ilan Golubovich Video by Nini Moshe