Lisa Mendelson AFB Board Member
I was born in South Africa, and dancing found me early. I started ballet almost as soon as I could walk. It structured my afternoons, my posture, my sense of my body in space.
When I was 11, my family moved to Israel. It’s not easy, at that age, to land somewhere you don’t speak the language and don’t have a single friend. Everything that had felt automatic suddenly took effort. I was homesick in a place I was told was my homeland.
Ballet was a rescuer. I joined Bat-Dor, one of Israel’s leading dance companies, as quickly as I could. I adored dancing, but partly, if I’m honest, it was survival. The studio didn’t require Hebrew. A plié is a plié in any language. Before I had friends or fluency, dance was the one place I belonged.
Only years later did I learn that Bat-Dor and Batsheva share a remarkable connection through Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild, who helped shape both companies. When I found out, it felt like the story had been quietly circling back on itself.
Ballet gave me discipline, but also a kind of peace I didn’t find anywhere else, a way of being fully present, absorbed in something beautiful. It taught me that creativity and rigor aren’t opposites, and that beauty takes real work.
But I knew it wasn’t going to be my career. At 17, I hung up my pointe shoes and joined the Israeli Air Force. Dance had carried me through the hardest years of arriving in a new country, and I was ready for what came next.
I stayed in Israel to study, met my husband Avner at a wedding, and then moved to London, the first of many years being Israeli somewhere else. Abroad, you find yourself constantly explaining your country, while searching for ways to share its creative, generous side.
A few years ago, a friend on Batsheva’s Israel board suggested I join here in the US. It made immediate sense, bringing together the dance that once gave me peace and my desire to show people the Israel I love.
Serving on this board is a way of honoring the studio that once held me, and giving back to the culture I’ve spent my life representing.
But what draws me to Batsheva goes beyond that personal connection. I’m fascinated by Ohad Naharin himself, his curiosity, his irreverence, and his refusal to settle for what dance is supposed to be. There is something deeply Israeli in that combination of intensity and playfulness, discipline and freedom, and I see it reflected in the company he has built.
As a donor, I want to help make that kind of ambitious artistic work possible. As a board member, I want to help more people discover it. And as a person who found belonging through dance, I feel a deep connection to a company that creates such a powerful sense of possibility, curiosity, and connection through movement.
You can still find me dancing downtown at Forward Space; my door and the studio door are always open.
Warmly,
Lisa Mendelson