Inbal Dance Theater

Abstract This chapter argues that American critics’ understanding of Inbal Dance Theater’s 1950s–1960s US tours as portrayals of ancient Jewry reveals power structures reinforcing American Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews’ assimilation. The chapter shows how Cold War racializing of self and other in Jewish communities occurring in the space of the concert stage implicates our understanding of migration and ethnicity catalyzed by dance touring. By playing on Orientalist tropes that Jews from the Middle East represented a biblical past, American critics foreclosed possibilities for Arab-Jewishness to be part of a contemporary Jewish imaginary and peoplehood. Yet at the same time, Inbal expanded American Jewish audiences’ perceptions of global Jewry.