Moshe Efrati

Moshe Efrati was born in 1934 in Jerusalem

Moshe Efrati was born Moshe Giat in Jerusalem in 1934, to Ephraim and Rivka, a sixth generation family in the Land of Israel. His father left the family soon after his birth, and his mother worked in the home of the Egyptian consul. His 5 older brothers belonged to the underground groups.

He studied at the Tachkemoni school and worked young as a mechanic and a quarry laborer. As a teenager he took up dance to build his body, studying at the studio of Hassia Levy-Agron. In 1958 he danced for Martha Graham, and from 1962 he trained for 2 years at her school in New York.

In 1964 he joined the Batsheva Dance Company as a lead dancer and later became its chief choreographer. He then founded a company of deaf dancers that later took in hearing dancers and became Kol Demama. He cued deaf dancers through floor vibrations, and he disbanded the company in 2001 after its state funding stopped.

His works mixed classical ballet with contemporary dance and drew on sources such as Kafka, Beckett and the Bible. He won the Israel Prize for dance in 1996. In 2001 he had a stroke, and he died on September 26, 2020.