Vaganova on the Rocks: The Stubborn Grace of Jerusalem’s Ballet Rebels

How Nina Timofeyeva’s Jerusalem Ballet School Breaks the Mold and Breeds Global Stars

My eyes were arrested, first and foremost, by a stride that had grown beautifully defined—particularly among the senior girls, my chosen favorites. (For reasons unknown, my computer’s autocorrect repeatedly insisted on playing the antiquarian, rendering it ‘my favourites’ with that stubborn British ‘u’ as if yearning for a bygone orthography). I speak of Romy, Alma, Naama, Noa, and Alisa. Alma is no Mahler; Naama is no biblical demon; but Alisa—well, she is precisely the one in Wonderland.

I am referring to yesterday’s unlooked-for joy: the graduation gala of the Nina Timofeyeva Jerusalem Ballet School. I stumbled into it straight from the feverish embrace of Tel Aviv, a city currently scorching from temperatures both meteorological and visceral. Graduation galas are a peculiar genre. They demand of the critic a truly Yom Kippur-esque capacity for absolution, and of the audience, a generous dose of parental blindness. Yet when a school bears the name of Nina Timofeyeva—a legendary prima ballerina of ironclad aplomb—one loathes to make allowances for youth. Happily, no such allowances were necessary. This year’s Jerusalem Ballet gala proved that the classical gene remains stubbornly resilient, even where the Middle Eastern climate and mindset fiercely resist the rigors of academic drill.

                                      Photos by Ofel Moldovan

Here, on this island of sheer obstinacy, Nadya Timofeyeva—alongside Sari Mendelson, Martin Schonberg, Anael Zateykin, Ichina Sharavyn, and Oded Ronen—has constructed a distinct balletic civilization of her own. While Sari, in her touching children’s preludes, coaxes the tiniest dancers to untangle their épaulements and keep their arches from collapsing (an achievement that, in these latitudes, borders on the heroic), Martin sets Liszt for the senior students. He compels these young legs to inhabit the pauses and deliver a calligraphic precision of line. Meanwhile, Anael ventures into a modernism where classical pointe work suddenly acquires the grounded gravity of contemporary dance, teaching the disciplined bodies of these Jerusalem graduates to breathe in time with their own pulses.

The classical segment of the evening served as an uncompromising trial of balletic conservatism. Fortune, however, is a fickle mistress. While the charming little ones disarmed us with their port de bras, and the fifth-graders in Vainonen’s Nutcracker Pas de Trois waged a desperate war for turnout from the hip, Romy Mizrahi stepped onto the stage—and it was pure, unadulterated splendor. In Petipa’s Harlequinade Pas de Deux, Romy delivered such a textbook manifestation of Vaganova aplomb that one practically had to rub one's eyes. Her diagonal turns were executed on a ringing, sky-high demi-pointe; her central axis seemed driven irrevocably into the stage, while her soft, singing arms left no doubt that we were witnessing a ballerina of rare, thoroughbred musicality.

                                       Photo by Ofel Moldovan

The second act offered a taste of adolescent chaos elevated to the status of haute cuisine, courtesy of Anael Zateykin. By the second hour, the gala had transformed into a crucible of contemporary meaning. A pupil of Nadya Timofeyeva, Zateykin has blossomed into an idiosyncratic and daring choreographer; her work is true culinary artistry in motion. In the solo How Could He Fire Me?, Anya Maksimenko romped through the urban rhythms of Daniel Pemberton, fracturing elegant développés against the harsh scaffolding of our current reality. Darting onto the stage in a cheeky red hat, red socks, shorts, and towering heels, she staged a celebration of stylish mischief and pure wit. Need I add that at the height of this hilarious number, Anya kicked off her shoes and proceeded to dance with abandon in her bare socks?

Soon after, Zateykin pushed this subversion to a conceptually triumphant peak with Under the Patronage of ADHD, set to the music of Madam Crocodile. Rather than policing the chaos of teenage hyperactivity into neat balletic formations, Anael turned attention deficit into a form-giving element. The dancers moved at a spasmodic, frantic tempo, externalizing their adolescent angst directly into the auditorium. It was audacious and strangely therapeutic—the frantic pace, fractured lines, and self-irony turning the piece into a generational manifesto. Alongside it, the hypnotic minimalism of Oded Ronen’s choreography to Max Richter coaxed bodies into a meditative balance, proving that contemporary dance can possess a mathematical beauty.

Yet the emotional crux of the evening was, naturally, the return of the prodigal son—Yuval Cohen. It was a fleeting homecoming, a brief pause between Philadelphia and Boston. This near-future étoile of the international stage has only just boarded the Boston express, a journey that conspicuously routed him through St. Petersburg's Rossi Street. Indeed, I suspect the story of Yuval is a ready-made Khazar Dictionary of balletic civilizations. The raw clay was molded by Nadya Timofeyeva, who gifted him the broad, muscular Moscow stroke, a willful drive, and a phenomenal leap. Then, this diamond was refined in St. Petersburg: Nikolai Tsiskaridze spent three years at the Vaganova Academy leaning out his arches, hammering an iron axis into his pirouettes, and purging any excess sentimentality. Pair that with his seasons at the Philadelphia Ballet, and you have an artist on the cusp of a planetary scale—or very nearly so, considering he is a mere twenty-three years old.

                                          Photo by Ofel Moldovan

Yuval revealed himself to Jerusalem in a duet with the luminous Alma Roman. In the Giselle Pas de Deux, the pair offered a masterclass in refined Romantic style. Alma radiated a crystalline, romantic melancholy; her arabesques positively rang, and her weightless leap created the illusion of absolute incorporeality. She moved with the haunting, gossamer grace of a Wilis, her soft, fluid port de bras framing a silhouette that seemed etched in moonlight. Indeed, there was a pristine, nineteenth-century phrasing in her every movement—her silent, feather-light landings and the exquisite tilt of her head capturing the very essence of the ballet blanc.Yuval Cohen suspended himself in the air with uncanny ease—I have long been astonished by the explosive power of his leap and its flawless ballon, to say nothing of his exemplary academic posture and the clean precision of his entrechats.

Then came a stylistic coup in Balanchine’s solo Who Cares? to the music of Gershwin. For a moment, it seemed that Cohen’s American experience had dissolved any lingering academic melancholy. He danced at the frantic tempo of New England—brash, athletic, utilizing intricate jazz-inflected hip shifts and virtuosic syncopation. It was a display of absolute physical liberation. The Boston Ballet, where Yuval is headed, is receiving a fully realized principal dancer; God willing, they will recognize it instantly.

                                   Photo by Ofel Moldovan

The gala culminated in Nadya Timofeyeva’s neoclassical fresco, Theme and Variations to the music of Tchaikovsky. As ever, Nadya played with the geometry of the corps de ballet with fluid virtuosity: rigid lines dissolved into concentric circles, sweeping the dancers into a single, pulsating current. When, in the final coda, the dancers soared aloft against Tchaikovsky’s passionate, sweeping chord—with marvelous solos by Alisa Zeldin and Naama Beller demanding special mention—I was ultimately convinced of the reversibility of art. Tchaikovsky’s imperial nineteenth century dissolved seamlessly into the Israeli contours of the twenty-first, rendering time, for one fleeting moment, entirely tangible. The Jerusalem Ballet has proven yet again that it possesses a rigorous school, global stars, and, above all, a future.