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Berta YampolskayaBallerina
Country:
 Israel |
Content:
Biography of Berta Yampolsky
Berta Yampolsky was a French-Israeli ballet artist and the founder of the Israeli Ballet. She was born in Paris to Nafatali Yampolsky and Yocheved Shenker. Her father, originally from southern Russia, had deserted the Russian Imperial Army and made his way to France. Her mother, born in Odessa, was the daughter of a fruit merchant and studied medicine at the University of Geneva and the University of Paris, where she met Yampolsky.
The Yampolsky family immigrated to British Mandate Palestine when Berta was three years old and settled in Haifa. She attended a religious girls' school as well as the Hugim School and the Real School. At the age of fourteen, she began studying dance with Valentina Arkhipova Grossman.
In 1956, Yampolsky met her future husband, Gilel Markman, who was also studying dance. They got married in 1957 and moved to England right after the wedding to continue their dance education. Gilel took lessons from Marie Rambert, while Berta enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dance and also studied at Sadler's Wells.
Both Gilel and Berta danced with various troupes around the world, including Belgium, Switzerland, and France. They also performed with the Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo in the United States. The couple returned to Israel in 1964 and settled in Tel Aviv, where they were appointed as principal dancers and managers of the ballet troupe of the Israeli Opera.
The Israeli Ballet
In 1967, Yampolsky and Markman established their first independent troupe, The Classical Ballet of Holon. Most of their performances were based on duets from classical ballets. In 1970, they founded a ballet school in Tel Aviv, and their dance company grew to include seven dancers.
Unable to find well-known local dancers in Israel, Yampolsky and Markman turned to immigrants from the United States. Their first notable soloists were Pamela Osserman and Marcia Zussman. Until 1975, the company remained a modest local ballet without much recognition.
In 1975, they were invited to perform at a festival in Israel. George Balanchine granted the company the rights to perform "Serenade" and the pas de deux from the opera "Agon" for free. They also performed Felix Blaska's "Electrobach" at the festival. The relatively unknown Israeli Ballet surprised the audience and received rave reviews from critics.
Yampolsky toured the United States with her Israeli ballet company in 1975 and 1981. The troupe, consisting of twenty-five dancers, gained international recognition. She was awarded the Best Foreign Choreographer Prize for her Dvorak Variations in Santiago, Chile.
Artistic Accomplishments
Yampolsky served as the main choreographer for several productions of the Israeli Ballet, including "The House of Bernarda Alba" (1978), "Carmen" (1980), "Untitled" (1981), "Dvorak Variations" (1981), "Mendelssohn Concerto" (1982), "Opus 1" (1983), "The Nutcracker" (1985), among many others. Her works encompassed both classical and neoclassical styles.
Berta Yampolsky served as the artistic director of the Israeli Ballet for forty-five years until 2013. In 2018, she published her autobiography titled "The Optimists."
