Yehuda Hyman
Yehuda is a dancer, writer, choreographer, actor and the Artistic Director of Mystical Feet Company. He was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents from Poland and Russia. He trained in ballet in Los Angeles with Tatiana Riabouchinska (Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo). At age 16, he received a full scholarship to study at Maurice Bejart's interdisciplinary arts school, MUDRA in Brussels, Belgium. Returning to the U.S. he danced in three Broadway shows and was a member of the original American Dance Machine company touring the U.S. and Japan. He studied acting with Stella Adler, Paul Sills, Nina Foch and Paul G. Gleason and then became a choreographer (theater, opera) and worked primarily in Los Angeles. He left dance to focus on writing (primarily playwriting) in 1990, studying with the Padua Hills Playwrights Group and writing mentor, James Carroll Picket. He returned to dance in 2009 with the intention to fully integrate dance into his theater work, receiving his MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College (2014). Most of his plays originate in the movement of the body. Original plays include The Mad Dancers, Center of the Star, Swan Lake Bde Maka Ska (formerly Swan Lake Calhoun), David in Shadow and Light (co-written with composer Daniel Hoffman), Max, Rapunzel and the Night, Tequila, Scenes from a Tango (co-written with John Dantona), The Mad 7 and The Mar Vista which was developed at LABA/14th Street Y and ran at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan in 2019. His work has been produced at theaters including McCarter Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, San Diego Repertory, Cornerstone Theater of Los Angeles (NEA Playwright in Residence), Theater J, Mixed Blood and Actor's Theatre of Louisville. He choreographed Paula Vogel's Indecent at the Guthrie Theater (directed by Wendy C. Goldberg). He has acted in plays in NYC with Target Margin Theater, The Civilians and Rady & Bloom and danced in the 2017 Fire Island Dance Festival (in a piece choreographed by Lorin Latarro), and has choreographed and performed with Dances for a Variable Population, working with a population of Senior dancers on the Lower East Side of NYC. His many honors include the Kennedy Center New American Plays Award, the NEA/TCG Playwright-in Residence Grant, Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis Jerome Fellowship and LABA Fellow/14th St Y. He currently teaches Devised Theater and Advanced Acting at Manhattan School of Music. His essay, "Three Hasidic Dances" was first published in Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance (Wayne State University Press. Editor: Judith Brin Ingber) and re-published in Dance in America, A Reader's Anthology (Editor: Mindy Aloff; Foreword by Robert Gottlieb), Library of America. He translates the work of German poet, Eva-Maria Berg into English and Ms. Berg translates his work into German and French. His article about his dance activism in Germany, "Jew in the Pool," was published in Mahol Akshav/Dance Today in Israel. A revised and expanded version of this article, ‘Dancing On Smoke” was published by Oxford Press in December 2021 in the anthology, “The Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance.” His evening length work, “Secret of the Possible,” premiered in December 2022 at Theater at the 14th Street Y in NYC. The work is drawn from mystical Jewish tales that deal specifically with the transformative power of dance. His full length performance piece “The Dancing Room” premiered at Arts on Site in NYC in December 2023. It featured famed Klezmer clarinetist, Margot Leverett and was Directed and Developed by Michael Leibenluft. In Spring, 2024, Yehuda appeared in the Target Margin Production, Remember this Trick, Directed by David Herskovits. He currently teaches Devised Theater Making and Advanced Acting at the Manhattan School of Music. Yehuda lives in Brooklyn.