Inna Polonsky: I sculpt not things, but sensations—like ballet slippers with hands

If only you knew what trash is used… but she does. In her hands, base metal turns to gold, shards become ornaments, rags transform into costumes, and plastic turns into delicate scenery, as if blown from glass. She is not afraid of roughness, scratches, or chips—on the contrary, she finds the hidden lines within them, continues their story, embraces their natural wear, their accidental cracks and scuffs, and elevates them to new meaning. Her workshop is something between an antique shop, an alchemist’s laboratory, and a refuge for an urban archaeologist who knows how to hear the voices of forgotten things.

And then these things take the stage. They spin, glide, rise in pas de deux, and dissolve in the glow of the footlights. For her, ballet is not the luxury of silk and brocade, but a theater of metamorphosis, where everything is destined for a second life, where plastic and cardboard get the chance to dance one last, beautiful dance.

We speak with Inna Polonsky, set and costume designer for the Jerusalem Ballet, about porcelain illusions, the everyday origins of the magical, ballet shoes in unexpected incarnations, and why art does not need sterility.

L.G.: The first time I saw your works was at my Jerusalem relatives' home—and I was stunned. Those were little shoes with ballerinas’ hands...

I.P.: Like everything in life, they had their own backstory. The first shoe I held in my hands when I met Nadya Timofeyeva belonged to her mother, Nina Vladimirovna. I asked Nadya to let me take it apart. That’s how the casting of this worn-out shoe came to be, and from it, countless little sculptures were born. They have traveled to various ballet exhibitions and competitions—we literally took them around the world. One of these shoes was gifted to Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and Jean-Christophe Maillot when they came with Cinderella. Inside it were tiny ballet doll legs. In return, Maillot sent us video recordings of all his ballets from Monaco—back then, they couldn’t be found online. Nowadays, Nadya sometimes lets people watch them—but she takes them back immediately. (laughs)
So, this little shoe, in different forms, ended up with collectors and ballet lovers... That was its fate. When I say "shoes," I mean pointe shoes—Nadya calls them shoes, and I’ve already gotten used to it.
I went through a whole pointe period. Like any artist, I go through phases. That was my ballet period—a rather long one.

L.G.: Did it follow non-ballet periods?

I.P.: Of course. First, I was pregnant, and everything revolved around some incomprehensible children. And before that, there was Bezalel. Before moving to Israel, I had no connection to art at all—my first degree was in veterinary medicine. For years, I did equestrian sports, dreaming of treating horses, breeding new breeds—childish, naïve dreams... So, I ended up at a veterinary faculty, but my parents successfully took me to Israel. Continuing my studies there was difficult, so out of despair, I started sculpting. I joined a workshop, and the sculpture teacher told me, "I’m not going to teach you—you have talent. You’d better go to Bezalel."
It’s worth noting that at this academy, they prefer teaching from scratch rather than retraining people. They want someone unshaped by rigid forms. When a person is already highly skilled, with a well-trained hand, nothing can be changed. It's like in ballet: classical training makes muscles rigid, the back straight, and legs strong—otherwise, you simply wouldn’t last. But contemporary dance is built on the softness and mobility of the body. The same applies to painting and sculpture. If your hand isn’t trained to draw a face a certain way, you convey it through emotions. Like a child.
When my eldest daughter was little—around three—she would sit at my exhibitions and draw. People would approach her and ask, "Where did you learn to draw?" And she would answer, "I didn’t learn anywhere. Can’t you see? Everything is visible through the window." That’s the key: to see. Just look—and truly see, in order to recreate. Not in a photographic way—that’s what cameras are for. But if you want to convey reality as you perceive it, you don’t need photographic accuracy. That’s what Bezalel teaches—or rather, unteaches: they retrain you to think entirely differently.
I was accepted immediately—probably thanks to my quick thinking. And that’s how I ended up in art.

L.G.: If you were sculpting a classical ballerina and a contemporary dancer, would they have different poses?

I.P.: Absolutely. If I were sculpting a classical ballerina, I would approach it conceptually. You wouldn’t see an actual ballerina, but I’d write that it is one. Or I’d create a still life with refined vegetables—like a curled-up pepper, for instance. It would be interesting to sculpt what happens to them, what they feel, how hard their work is. And at the same time—such mastery, such incredible beauty, and a smile. Life, Carnegie-style. I remember myself as a child, in love with ballet, and I understand why all of this matters.
But if I were sculpting a contemporary dancer, it would probably be just a lump of clay that I’d strike with various tools, bend, twist, tear apart. It would be formlessness trying to find form. Expressing some kind of emotion. Because in contemporary dance, the most important thing is to express emotion. It has its own language, its own vocabulary. Just like in contemporary art: if you don’t approach it emotionally, it will leave you bewildered.

L.G.: What’s the difference between a sculptor-ceramist and just a sculptor?

I.P.: In some countries, ceramics isn’t considered sculpture—it’s a craft. A ceramist there is someone who makes cups and teapots. But I work only with clay, with casting material, not even porcelain. When I first started showing my works to wealthy patrons, they were surprised that such things could be made from ceramics. I had a studio in Jerusalem provided by the municipality, but it was shut down during the pandemic. I had to move everything home. I set up a small kiln in my apartment, while the large one—one and a half tons—stands in my mother’s yard. You can’t bring it inside—the floor would collapse. That’s how I transitioned to a smaller format. 
By the way, my teacher, Lidia Zavadsky, was the first ceramist in Israel to have her work exhibited in an art museum. Before that, ceramics were only displayed in ethnographic contexts—in the Museum of Islamic Art, for example, or in archaeological collections.

L.G.: You had a horse period, a ballet period...

I.P.: And then—a period of no period at all. Partially conceptual romanticism. That’s what I’ll call it. My exhibitions were rather romantic as well.
I stopped exhibiting for a combination of reasons. Here in Israel, there’s a kind of ceiling. I sold all my works, but you don’t create just to sell—you do it to grow. And when you’ve been exhibiting for 15–20 years, you realize it’s always the same audience coming, and out of a thousand visitors, at best twenty are truly interested in the exhibition. Meanwhile, you’re sculpting day and night! Endless sleepless nights, working in vain—at some point, I realized I was exhausted. Now, if I create something, I just create. I don’t exhibit it. Maybe in a few years, I’ll feel like putting on another show—who knows?
Nadya’s projects keep me afloat. We’ve done four ballets together. It’s an enormous amount of work, and without a budget—it demands maximum ingenuity.

L.G.: That ingenuity was on full display in the unprecedented sets for The Princess and the Pea—I can’t even call it a fully children’s ballet, because it left both me and the other adults in absolute awe… How much time did it take to create—there’s no other word for it—those sets?

I.P.: I had to rush—I had just one month to do everything. As usual, there was no budget, but that only fuels creativity. It became clear right away: if that’s the case, then everything must be like in a fairy tale. I thought: if our main character is the Prince, eternally searching for love, then, accordingly, the samurai’s goal is his path. And I realized that this path must be magical. A forest, giant dandelions, birds, bats… Everything that, through a symbolic vocabulary, immerses us in a fairy-tale atmosphere.
And all of it was made from scraps, remnants, fragments, castoffs, whatever had been gathering dust in storage. We found old fabrics somewhere… The result was a collage-style canvas with added painting—layers of appliqué sewn together, acrylic on top, little stones. We came up with umbrellas instead of wheels for the carriage—they spin so beautifully, and something got painted on them in the process.
At first, we made the canvas 8 by 10 meters, but it turned out that wasn’t enough—it only worked in a small hall. So, we had to extend it. Now it’s 16 by 12 meters and takes up Nadya’s entire studio. I painted all the flowers, trees, and animals on fabric and glued them onto the canvas. Every night, I had to dry it, and every morning, roll it up, because children use the studio during the day… But the more impossible the task, the more interesting it is to solve. We built the carriage from old chairs, the gates from scraps of cardboard—you paint something monstrous, and it transforms into a fairy tale.

L.G.: Exactly! It turned into a mirage of fairy-tale beauty, something unreal, alive, and magical.

I.P.: If only you knew what kind of junk it was made from—that’s our version. The same thing happened with Memento, the ballet about Franceska Mann. Nadya said, “We need to dress everyone, but there’s no budget.” So I drowned in second-hand stores, searching for military uniforms, making badges by hand. We had them printed at a print shop at night—Nazi symbols can’t be printed officially, no one cares that it’s not a real swastika, that it’s for the theater… Then, at some point, Nadya decided we needed a Beethoven bust for the piece—so I had to sculpt it. And I even wove barbed wire. Out of string.
The worst thing is when they don’t let you do anything at all. But Nadya gives me a field to work in. When we were working on Houdini, she said she wanted the characters to be religious Jews, but modern ones. “What kind of new breed of modern Haredim are we talking about?” I asked. “How should they look?” “I don’t know,” Nadya replied. “Figure it out.”
I thought about it for a long time and realized—traditional religious costumes shouldn’t be touched. But since this is dance, the hands have to be free. No sleeves, nothing that restricts movement. Like a muslin tunic for a ballerina—just enough to cover the body but still transparent, keeping the femininity, the silhouette. So I ended up creating something like a cape, or rather, a garment. Just a strip on the front and back—the sides remained sheer. Like putting on an apron: once you wear it, you’re already a different person. You put on the feeling of religious clothing, and it gives you a different state of being. But at the same time, it’s unobtrusive—it’s there and not there, you forget about it. It dissolves and then reappears—like when tzitzit or a kippah suddenly appear in our performance.
In general, religious Jews living outside of Israel have a completely different sense of what it means to be Jewish. They are Jewish, but in a way, kind of. Once, I went to America, and a friend invited me to dinner at a rabbi’s house. “Just don’t be surprised if there’s pork on the table,” she warned me. I gasped. “Don’t be shocked and don’t ask questions. They’re very religious Jews, but they don’t really understand what kashrut is.”

L.G.: And what was on the table?

I.P.: Kashrut was nowhere to be found. Meat in sour cream and things like that. But in the end, faith is what matters most—everything else, everyone does in their own way.

L.G.: So, you were creating a sense of Jewishness?

I.P.: Well, yes. After all, Erik Weiss’s father was quite the rabbi. A great failure and all that. But that wasn’t the point. What mattered to Nadya was emphasizing Houdini’s Jewish identity.

                                            Photo by Ravit Ziv

L.G.: Houdini has a fascinating way of exploring the theme of the circle. It’s the séance table, the Red Sea, the cradle, and the place where one departs forever…

I.P.: The two main objects in my life are the circle and the sphere. As we know from art history, they can be anything. The sun, sunrise, sunset… The word “round” carries a multitude of meanings. In this case, it was a practical decision—if we had a budget, maybe it would have turned out differently. And thank God we didn’t. When you have no money, you find the simplest and most precise solution. In the performance, the circle is both Houdini’s rise and his fall, his transition from one state to another.

L.G.: And how did you manage to recreate the Chinese water torture cell?

I.P.: Again, from whatever we had on hand. A transparent container covered with fabric, with lighting creating the illusion of water filling it. Nadya has an incredible technical talent and a sharp eye. She pulls off all sorts of effects—lighting, pyrotechnics. And I keep trying to achieve things through visual means. And somehow, our tandem creates a shared vision that works. We also had Amor, a ballet-comedy where everything is a tangled mess. And then suddenly, I realized—it’s de Chirico! I borrowed his arches, and everything came to life. Because arches, like circles, can be anything. You can create any atmosphere with them. Four arches—and you have a garden, a house, four walls. And if you have four walls, you have everything. Like in Victory over the Sun, where the square first appeared on stage. Four walls—and now you have a space for action. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, where all you need is a single balcony. (laughs)

L.G.: Can you recall your first experience working in ballet?

I.P.: Yes, it was one of our early productions, also based on Andersen—The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep in Nadya’s choreography. To show that the dancers were puppets, little figurines, I came up with the idea of a giant wardrobe top—against it, the dancers looked tiny. There was also a fragment of an enormous clock, a giant ear… I don’t know if it had the intended effect, but that’s where I learned about stage proportions. Before that, I exhibited in museum spaces, where people come close to the artwork. But in theater—if you’re sitting in row forty-eight… Can you imagine how massive that wardrobe had to be to seem enormous? 
That ballet had a lot of interesting discoveries. For instance, there was a general whose uniform was made out of disposable spoons and forks, and so on. To create something, you have to believe in it. Even if you’re making something ugly but you see beauty in it, the result will be objectively beautiful. But if you don’t see it—it will turn out fake, lifeless.
At Bezalel, we had an incredible course called הנחשה—Hanchasha, or “Inference.” The essence of it was to explain to someone who had never seen an onion, for example, what it is and how it works. They’d give us a topic—say, “paper.” And you’d write: Paper, colon. Toilet, sandpaper, papyrus, cigarette… With each passing day, the list grew, and at some point, you realized that paper was an entire universe. That it was far from the dull word you had heard at first. And suddenly, you’d have so many ideas on the subject! But at first, you think—ugh, paper, how boring.
That course taught me to break anything down into tiny components and then reassemble them in a new form. To think about something for days, months, until it became exhausting, nauseating, unbearable—and then, at some point, to stop thinking. And that’s when something would finally emerge. Something of your own. Because then you’re like Margarita from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita—you’re free. I remember that state—when I get up from my chair and walk into the studio. I am absolutely empty, cleansed of thoughts—free.
That’s the most wonderful moment. You always wait for it.

Photos by Nadya Timofeyeva & Inna Polonsky