New York venue dances to Israel’s tune

 

Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company will perform this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York.

Batsheva is a dance company, dubbed by the Israeli foreign ministry as “perhaps the best known global ambassador of Israeli culture.” After more than a year of Israeli genocide in Palestine, BAM leaders’ decision to program Batsheva has sparked a wave of protest from the Palestine solidarity movement, particularly from solidarity activists in the arts.

Three performing arts groups that emerged shortly after Israel’s genocide began – Dancers for Palestine, Theater Workers for a Ceasefire and Amplify Palestine – launched a campaign in early 2025 urging BAM to drop Batsheva.

The campaign began with a private letter to BAM leadership in mid-January with one straightforward request: noting BAM’s “long history as a progressive arts institution,” these organizations “respectfully request that [BAM] cancel [its] upcoming engagement with Batsheva Dance Company.”

BAM’s leadership did not reply to the letter, so as February began, the three organizations took their letter public and called for artists around the US to sign on. As of mid-February more than 60 performing arts organizations and hundreds of individual artists from around the US had signed the letter.

BAM’s leaders have yet to respond.

Notable among the signatories to the “Drop Batsheva” letter was the BAM Cinema Floor Staff, whose decision to publicly criticize the decision to host Batsheva signaled a sharp divide between BAM’s upper management and its workers.

As one BAM cinema worker explained, the decision to program and promote Batsheva during a genocide is “indicative of how [BAM’s top executives] operate.” While BAM promotes itself as a “champion” of “inclusion and accessibility”, in practice it functions as a highly stratified workplace where, according to BAM cinema workers, management has minimal contact with workers. And the nature of that contact is often disciplinary, staff have confirmed.  (more...)

New York venue dances to Israel’s tune