steve weintraub

YIDDISH/KLEZMER DANCE
CHAIR WARM-UPS

Born on Governor's Island and Bar Mitzvahed in the Bronx, Steven Lee Weintraub received his dance training in Manhattan with Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins, among others. He has worked with choreographers Felix Fibich and Shula Kivel, and has performed the work of Fred Berk, was a principal dancer and choreographer with the Israeli folkdance group Parparim and is assistant director of the annual Israeli Folk Dance Festival in NYC. For many years he choreographed and danced with his partner Sharona Paller Rubenstien.

He is currently in international demand as a teacher and leader of traditional Yiddish dance at festivals and workshops including Klezkamp, Klezkanada, and festivals in Krakow, Furth, Paris, and London. He delights in introducing people to the figures, steps and stylings of the dances that belong to klezmer music. He has often been called the “Pied Piper of Yiddish Dance”; his years of experience leading and researching Yiddish dance allow him to quickly weave dancers and music together in astonishing ways.

Steven now lives in Philadelphia and in 2016 choreographed and performed in an evening length new Yiddish dance theater piece GILGUL-Transformations, for festival week at Yiddish Summer Weimar. He also choregraphed a Jewish Wedding suite ( A Freylekhn Khasene- A Joyous Wedding) for the Brigham Young University folk dancers.