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The prestigious JISDF Festival presents selected solo dance and duet works by leading choreographers, bands, and soloists from around the world, as well as new Israeli pieces. This unique event with international ties is presented in a special production by the Angela Company, inviting the audience to four days of international dance in a Jerusalem late summer atmosphere with a lot of good wine.
This year’s JISDF Festival takes place in a special setup, hosting artists from Israel and around the world who come to be here and now with all the complexities included in the situation. Through art and the shared experience, we hope to open everyone’s hearts and to re-join the healing essence that arrives from human connection.
Under the open sky in the outdoor sites and in various spaces of the Jerusalem Theater, the main festival events, opening events, closing concert, and other events rich in content take place alongside world premieres and performances by first-class artists. The events present a variety of international dance works with a unique personal statement, which correspond with social, environmental, political, and cultural issues, simultaneously touching the worlds of the soul – from the boundaries of place and time to the abstract.
This year, the festival hosts works and artists from Italy, Spain, the USA, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Netherlands, Romania, Argentina, and France: leading artists from Israel and abroad will perform new dance works, original productions and world premieres created especially for the festival. In addition to the evening events, the festival offers a show for the whole family, film screenings, master classes, and discussion forums open to the general public and to the professional community, as well as holding a residency program for Jerusalem artists and guests from around the world who are invited to the process of creating original works that will be internationally premiered at the festival events.
The 2024 festival will conclude with a special closing concert which is an original production by JISDF in collaboration with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra: The artistic collaboration between festival director and choreographer Miriam Engel and conductor, composer, and pianist Nizar Elkhater (نزار الخاطر) presents original dance works created especially for the event in a world premiere, hosted by international conductor Giselle Ben-Dor (USA) and singer Rania Ateek, with the participation of leading international and Israeli soloists. The concert will feature the festival’s artists alongside 64 musicians from the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, presenting a diverse and surprising repertoire of classical and contemporary work offering a multicultural connection between East and West.
Now more than ever, JISDF 2024 is an unmediated meeting point connecting cultures and people in the range between body and place and offering the possibility of personal and universal multidisciplinary expression – just like this city does! In a black dress and sneakers, in jeans and a blazer, the festival invites you to an exciting and multicultural experience of movement and creation that is all here and now.
The festival is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Jerusalem Foundation, the Jerusalem Development Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Goethe Institut.
Photo by: Liron Weisman
Founder and Director of the Jerusalem International Solo Dance Festival
Miriam Engel is an Israeli and international choreographer, dancer, actress, and entrepreneur who lives and works in Jerusalem. She has been creating and performing for 20 years in Israel in Europe, the United States, the Far East, and Africa. She is the initiator of international projects and major collaborations around the world. Engel is the founder of the Angela Dance Company, of the LoveINg Your City project, and founder and director of the Jerusalem International Solo Dance Festival (JISDF).
As a Jerusalem resident, Engel draws artistic and intellectual inspiration from the complexity and multicultural nature of the city, where she acts as a cultural entrepreneur. Her works are characterized by unique interpretations and designs and by a rich virtuoso performance that adapts the Israeli experience in all its diversity into an interactive and universal work.
In 2011, Engel founded the Angela Dance Company in Jerusalem – an artistic body that serves as a home for contemporary activity and develops a repertoire of original dance works alongside international projects and interactive and site-specific projects. Its center of activity is in Jerusalem’s Katamonim neighborhood, where it creates a deep connection to the community and promotes educational projects in dance, platforms for artists, and a home for professional training and enrichment.
In recent years, Engel’s main artistic projects are the Jerusalem International Solo Dance Festival (JISDF) and the interactive concept project LoveINg Your City, a unique project she developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project maps and documents true love stories from the city through original dance and performance work in public, staged, and digital spheres. LoveINg JERUSALEM was originally presented in Jerusalem and was adapted to a digital website distributed in Israel and around the world as an artistic and cultural document. Thanks to the project’s success, a parallel project was also produced in Turkey (LoveINg ANKARA), and the format is expected to expand to other cities around the world in the near future.
Engel serves as a member of the Executive Committee of EMI (Association of Israel Artists), as CEO of the “Merhav Mahol” Association, and as a member of the Choreographers Association, and previously served as artistic director of a dance series at Beit Mazya. In addition to her original productions and many performances, she is invited to companies and festivals around the world as a guest artist, to create, perform, lecture, and teach her repertoire of works and her unique technique. She is also a regular guest at DePaul University (Chicago) and the SADC Center (Berkeley, California).
Photo by: Tamir Elazar
The Jerusalem Theater, located in the Talbieh neighborhood at the heart of the city, is the largest cultural and artistic establishment in Israel. The theater is an artistic arena that brings together all the performing-, screen-, visual-, and plastic arts, and it works to present an up-to-date artistic language and create original initiatives and fascinating connections that express the meeting point between idea and art.
Every evening, the theater provides a wide audience of art and culture lovers with a comprehensive cultural experience and exposes them as much as possible to the discourse, challenges, and contemporary cultural creation from Israel and the world. At the same time, the theater continues to develop original productions, festivals, and special events. Every year, close to a million spectators visit the Jerusalem Theater and enjoy hundreds of artists and actors, from Israel and around the world, at more than a thousand cultural events.
The structure of the theater is a unique architectural work in itself. The building, which has received the status of a building for preservation, consists of three basic systems: the stone and wall concrete elements, the interior halls, and the exceptional sculptural elements outside and inside the theater, designed by the artist Yechiel Shemi.
The Jerusalem Theater is the new home of the Jerusalem International Solo Dance Festival.
Miriam Engel, General and Artistic Director | Kfir Netanel, Chief Producer | Yael Strassberg, Production | Tanya Schramm, Translations and Content Editor | Melanie Berson, Performance Manger | Brief, Branding and Marketing | Moran Paz, Public Relations | Magenta, Technical Production, Sound, and Illumination | Hanna Taieb Photography | The Choreographers’ Association, Office and Accounting Services | Nizar Elkhater, Dina Bitton, Adam Inanc, Rafaela Irace and Melanie Berson Artistic Consulting
Solocoreografico International Festival – Torino, Italy – Frankfurt, Germany
Solo Dance Ankara – Turkey
FemArt Festival – Pristina, Kosovo
Israel Ministry of Culture | The Jerusalem Municipality – Culture and Arts Division | The Jerusalem Foundation | The Jerusalem Development Authority | The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Teperberg Winery | Growper Organic LTD | Goethe Institute | The Slovak Institute in Jerusalem | The Czech House and The Czech Republic Embassy | The Romanian Institute in Tel Aviv | The Italian Institute in Tel Aviv | Cervantes Institute in Tel Aviv and The Embassy of Spain | Embassy of Hungary | Jerusalem Greek Comunity | Gonenin Center for Music and Dance | Magenta – Sound, and Illumination | The Choreographers Association
Carola Dürr – Goethe Institut | Ruth Diskin – The Jerusalem Foundation | Foundation | Sharon Yardeni Abramovich – Jerusalem Theater | Giora Engel | Joseph Singer | Anat Gilad – Ministry of Foreign Affairs | Sharon Bar Lev and the Choreographers Association’s Office Staff | Tamar Berliner and Eli Cohen – Jerusalem Municipality, Culture and Arts Department | Danny Fishoff – Magenta | Yonatan Strayer, Kobi Sharvit, Ben Tschernihovski and Yossi Reif – Brief | Niv Yehoshua Dreyfus Abudram | Ofer Amsalem and Slava Kozodoi – Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra | Jacob and Martina Urik – The Slovak Institute | Marina Trivella – The Italian Institute | Martin Solomon, Maria Minerva Rusca and Ana Marginjono – The Romanian Institute | Einat Talmon – Cervantes Institute | Jan Stern – The Czech House | Michal Dvorak – Czech Republic Embassy | Lili Simo – Hungarian Embassy | Anastas Damianos – Jerusalem Greek Community | Ruth Cummings – JCU | Adva Blechner – Teperberg Winery | Michael Kresner and Bar Elul – Gonenin Center for Music and Dance | Orna Lipkind and Ariel Koren – Lev Cinema | Kobi Gannet – Alko Print
