Despite overt political controversy and outcries from many within the artistic community, Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company will perform this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. The Israeli foreign ministry has called Batsheva “perhaps the best-known global ambassador of Israeli culture.”
While in years passed, such a moniker was a banner to be proudly held high, the past few years have done little to make this a title worth advertising. After over a year of Israel’s outright genocide in Palestine, the decision by BAM leaders to program Batsheva comes as a strange, if not entirely tone-deaf, one. As a result, the choice has sparked a wave of protest from the Palestine solidarity movement, particularly those involved in the arts across New York.
Protests
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 response to the scheduling early in 2025. Their goal was to urge BAM to drop Batsheva from the schedule.
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.”
In February, the three organizations publicized their letter, and over 60 performing arts organizations and hundreds of artists from around the US signed the letter. However, BAM’s leadership did not respond to the letter. However, BAM’s leadership had not responded.
The Disconnect in Art and Commerce
As one BAM cinema worker explained, the decision to program and promote Batsheva during the genocide is “indicative of how [BAM’s top executives] operate.” While BAM markets itself as a “champion” of “inclusion and accessibility,” it functions as a highly stratified workplace where, according to BAM cinema workers, management has minimal interaction with employees. Staff have confirmed that the nature of that interaction is often disciplinary.
Like many arts organizations, BAM navigates its political and artistic direction through private consultations with wealthy board members and donors while overlooking the voices of the artists and workers who sustain the institution.
Since October 2023, this disconnect between arts workers who oppose Israel and arts executives who double down in support of it has become increasingly visible throughout the US arts industry. For example, even proclaimed progressive theaters such as New York’s famed Public Theater and New York Theatre Workshop have refused to call for a ceasefire publicly.
The Power of Great Art
In the dance world, support for Zionism—Israel’s state ideology—might even be more substantial than in theater. It seems odd that organizations like the Israeli government and the US State Department would invest heavily in modern dance for the D4P organizers. In that case, it’s more evidence that “colonial powers know how powerful art is.”
One must look no further than the recent Academy Awards to see how influential works can quickly alter people’s opinions. When The Zone of Interest won an Oscar last year—a Holocaust drama—and its director, Jonathan Glazer, spoke out against the Israeli genocide in Palestine, he faced boos and disdain.
However, the anti-genocide documentary No Other Land won an Oscar this year, and the filmmakers’ acceptance speech received widespread applause. In less than a year, art had shifted the views of an entire room filled with Hollywood’s most talented individuals.
In this same way, dance also serves as a powerful medium, and D4P is eager to leverage it to make its message clear.
