Yiddish in Motion: The Dance Theater of Benjamin Zemach

Karen Goodman

Karen Goodman is a critically acclaimed dancer/choreographer and teacher. Awards include from the National Endowment for the Arts. She directed the documentary/instructional video on Yiddish folk dance, Come Let Us Dance (Lomir Geyn Tantsn) and writes and speaks on Yiddish folk dance and 20th century modern choreographers working from their Yiddish roots. She has presented at AJS, IAYC, the Conney Conference at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and others. A new paper on Benjamin Zemach published by the Institute for Modern Russian Culture at USC comes out in Experiment in November. She shot archival footage of the Yiddish dance classes for Yiddish Summer Weimar 2011-2012 and is creating a video archive of Yiddish dance.