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Creative Writing: Dance as Inspiration

I write about dance, performance, and the moments that move us—inviting you to step in, feel, and experience the stories behind the movement.

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The Rite of Spring by Yossi Berg and Oded Graf - A Look at Two Performances

Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s Rite of Spring invites us to witness, feel, and return to its intensity again and again — a meditation on masculinity, violence, and what it means to come home.

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Reflections on Ohad Naharin’s Last Work

Ohad Naharin’s Last Work moves at a frequency all its own, inviting audiences to feel, mirror, and embody the extraordinary depth of human connection through the Batsheva dancers’ otherworldly movements.

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Reflections on ‘Landscapes of Gold’ by Sharon Fridman

At the Kid’s Summer Festival, Sharon, Noa, and Dikla conjure a golden world of wonder where children’s imagination leads and magic rolls freely across the stage.

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Love Made Visible

A Dance Piece makes work itself an act of devotion—love woven visibly through movement, memory, motherhood, and the courage to create with an open heart.

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Thoughts on Sally Anne Friedland’s ‘A-Peeling’

In A-Peeling, Sally Anne Friedland and Guchi Kohan turn the mundane into the profound, exploring our endless struggle for connection, presence, and resilience—falling, rising, and peeling again.

Musings on ‘Home Work’ by Maya Brinner

In Home Work, Maya Brinner and her sons turn everyday movement into a playful, heartfelt meditation on connection, presence, and the enduring magic of dance.

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Dear Mr. Dancemaker:

Musings on 8th Day by Lior Tavori Dance Company

A deeply personal reflection, this piece unfolds as a letter to a choreographer, exploring how dance lives on in the body through memory, birth, faith, and trust.

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Planting the Seeds of Art:

A Response to the Israeli Opera’s Dido and Aeneas 

Stefan Poda’s Dido and Aeneas unfolds as a stark, elemental meditation on love and loss, where choreography and design give form to Dido’s fractured inner life.

About

My name is Heather DeAtley

Born in the U.S. and rooted in Israel’s dance world since 2011, I carry a lifelong love of movement shaped by healing, curiosity, and deep embodiment. I weave dance, somatics, storytelling, and poetry into experiences that invite others back into their bodies and into connection.

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