The intricacies of Being Israeli and Yemenite. An Ethnographic Study of Yemenite “Ethnic” Dance Companies in Israel

Focusing on the work of Yemenite “ethnic” dance companies in Israel, this article aims to understand how issues such as a shift in collective representations come to be invested into dance practices. In other words, it discusses how artistic creation and identity reconfigurations happen to associate in a dance form, and how an ethnographic study of dance practices and their contexts of performance may be a valuable way of accessing the dynamics of self-positioning of a group within the surrounding society. Linking together “classical” ethnography, analysis of dance products, and socio-political contextualisation, the present analysis shows that the articulation of two apparently contradictory ways of building these companies’ repertoire allows Yemenite dancers, choreographers, and also internal audience, to assume in one single dance form a sense of “being Yemenite” whilst not giving up the national dimension of their Israeli identity.