Meet the 2021 LABA NEW YORK Fellows who will be exploring the theme CHOSE-N:
Sivan Battat (she/they) is an Iraqi-Jewish artist & community organizer, focused on new play and musical development and Arab-Jewish cultural organizing. Sivan’s work is across genres – in the theatre, in community, in ritual celebration, and beyond. Sivan works to bridge justice work and cultural work, bringing the power of performance & story to our movements, and the vision of movement work to our theaters.
Annie Berman Annie Berman is a media artist living and working in New York City. Named one of Independent Magazine’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch, her films, videos, performances, and installations have shown internationally.
Abel Demian Goldfarb is a passionate storyteller, focused in the audiovisual arts. He is committed to search and highlight meaningful undermined stories in a personal and unique way. Always pushing the boundaries on conventional narratives, in search for a deeper connection with the audience. His work has been recognized with international distinctions in over 70 countries.
King David had his slingshot, Samson had his hair and Dvir has his lyrics. Whether it be through his Rap Battles of the Bible series, Moishe House Albums or his rock opera book report assignments, Dvir dances through life with a musical filter. As a hip-hop artist in his first year at the rabbinic school, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Dvir hopes to use his music as a means to allow people to access their spirituality.
Rebecca S’manga Frank is an actor, writer, director in the Theatre Arts. She’s performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Red Bull Theatre, Sundance Theatre Lab in Morocco and many off Broadway and regional theaters. TV credits include: Elementary (CBS), Prodigal Son (FOX), and an upcoming release on Apple TV. She’s a member of Society Theatre Co. based in New York. Rebecca is an intersectional storyteller in the movement for Black Lives
Born in Brooklyn, NY, librettist Ben Kaplan currently serves as Director of Education at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. His libretto for State of the Jews, an opera written with composer Alex Weiser, tells the story of Theodor Herzl and the toll his political activities took on his family life. His next libretto, for another opera collaboration with Weiser, is about the controversies surrounding a great Yiddish dictionary.
Rachel Joravsky is a scrappy, queer power Jewess born from socialist ashkenazic stock, who currently resides in Brooklyn. She writes and performs comedy, as well as frequently eats almonds she finds at the bottom of her bag. Rachel knows she must one day move off to Los Angeles to fulfill her life’s purpose of making TV shows about Black/Jewish solidarity, however she is putting off that move for as long as she possibly can. Google her.
Doron Perk studied in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel and received scholarships from The America – Israel Cultural foundation during the years 2003-2008. Doron danced in The Croatian National Theatre Ballet (HNK) in Split, The National Dance Company of Spain (CND) in Madrid, and The Batsheva Ensemble – The Young Company in Tel Aviv.
Doron has been a Gaga Movement teacher since 2015 and a dancer in ZviDance since 2016.
Mindy Pfeffer is an actor/playwright/solo performer/teaching artist/native New Yorker. She has appeared in over 60 plays in NYC and regionally. Her short and long plays have been produced in many small theaters. Mindy’s solo play about training for an Ironman triathlon was seen in several Fringe Festivals and off-off Broadway. She uses puppetry and theatre to teach about social justice and inclusion in NYC schools. Member AEA, Dramatists Guild.
Sam Sussman is a writer whose work has been recognized by BAFTA and Cannes. He has written for the Tel Aviv Review of Books, Haaretz, Dissent, and the Oxford Review of Books, and taught writing seminars in India, South America, and Europe. Sam is co-founder of Extend, an NGO that offers immersive learning in Israel–Palestine and has been featured at the UN. He holds degrees in philosophy, literature, and politics from Swarthmore and Oxford.
Visiting Fellow
Sam Lish is an NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar pursuing a DPhil in Theoretical Physics as an artist and scientist. Both disciplines juggle macroscopic and microscopic views of the universe. My research utilizes mathematics and quantum mechanics to uncover properties about cell geometry. My artwork focuses on the dynamic interplay between nature and humanity’s creative interference. In sum, I study emergent properties that arise from an amalgam of parts.
Meet the 2021 LABA BUENOS AIRES Fellows who will be exploring the theme CHOSE-N:
Dalia B. studied journalism at TEA School in Buenos Aires and specialized in cultural reporting in La Maga web journal, and as a scriptwriter for television documentaries on Canal á, History, Discovery and other cable channels (2001-2021). She writes scripts for biographical documentaries published by the cultural magazine Ñ of the Clarín newspaper (2004). She currently collaborates in graphic media such as Clarín Cultura, La Agenda de Buenos Aires and Almagro Magazine and writes scripts for Canal Encuentro. She is co-author of the book Los 80 (2015), Editorial Planeta.
Julieta Cajg is an actress and theater director. She has writes her own plays, acts in hr plays and in other playwrights, mainly in Argentina but in other countries such as Spain, Poland and Uruguay as well. Besides her work in the theater, for the past 10 years Juliets has hosted different radio shows, dedicated mainly to the entertainment.
Daniela Ema studied film and literature, directed the shorts Virtual Guard (BAFICI 2019), Hurricane Berta (Asterisco 2020) and Moshik (2021). Daniela writes and translates poetry and works as a videographer.
Yasmin Garfunkel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a Musicology and Arts Education graduate from University of Buenos Aires and holds an Artist Degree in Vocal Performance from Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel de Falla. She has had the privilege of performing in some of the main stages of Buenos Aires, as well as in Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse, USA. Actually, she is a member of the Área de Investigaciones en Artes del Espectáculo y Judeidad del Instituto de Artes del Espectáculo “Dr. Raúl H. Castagnino”. FFyL. UBA (Performing Arts and Jewishness Research Area at Performing Arts Institute “Dr. Raúl H. Castagnino”. FFyL. UBA).
Marcelo Knoblovits Who am I? My purpose is to figure it out, through music, through poetry, through art. What can I offer? Sounds and words. Dust and stones. Art, sometimes need a justificación but does music need it too? I have composed songs since my youth in Buenos Aires. I finished the secondary school in Israel where I found a new old beautiful language to sing and communicate.
Years after, in Argentina I developed, with some colegues, a few bands of latinamerican music. And then I met a comedian that was just starting, and I began to work with him, mixing stand up and music, and today he is one of the most famous and remarkable comedian in Argentinian and Latin American scene. We still work together. Beyond everything, I have my songs, in which I work every single day, and some nights. Which are the substance of my artistic development.
Maxi Kronenberg is from Buenos Aires (Argentina). He is a journalist and sport journalist too and has a Master of Journalism in San Andres University. Maxi has worked and written many articles about culture, entertainment, finances, history, society, sports and others issues in a newspapers, radio, TV and digital media since 1997. Today he writes for Clarín newspaper, Telam news agency, Sala de Inversión web site and Fox Sports, América TV and C5N TV News Channels. Maxi’s first e-book Perón, Gardel y los Deportes was published in 2019. His second book about the Second World War will be published soon, in 2021.
Gustavo Menahem
Omar Panosetti is a Visual artist. Illustrator. Teacher. As a visual artist he has been awarded in 2004 with the Grand Prize for Drawing from the National Visual Arts Hall. In 2018 he was invited to participate in the Trabucco Drawing Contest, invited by the National Academy of Fine Arts and obtained the Honorable Mention. 2003- 2nd Prize for Drawing, Manuel Belgrano Municipal Hall of Drawing and Engraving, Bs. As. Omar also obtained awards and mentions in different salons and competitions in the country.
From 2014 to 2020 he taught Creative Illustration workshop in Florida, for the Municipality of Vicente Lopéz. He dictates his Drawing and Painting workshop since 2012. He gives a cartoon and illustration workshop for children at the Buenos Ayres Comprehensive School. CABA. Graphic representation techniques in ENET Nº 6 Fernando Fader. Design digital illustration, photoshop, illustrator. He gives mural seminars in different provinces sent by the CFI.
In 2016, he publishes his book “One of those days”. Book 200 Years of Jewish Life in Argentina, AMIA 2010.Since 2008 he works independently both in the field of design and doing illustrations for publishers and agencies.
Pulso- Gabriela Esterovich and Carina Toker
Pulso (Pulse) is an artist collective formed by Carina Toker and Gabriela Esterovich. Carina is a show director and choreographer, and Gabriela is a visual artist and art teacher. Their views have aligned in this new project space, after they met in 2018, at Laba BA study sessions.
In 2019, Carina presented her children’s theater play ‘A Golem from Buenos Aires’ at the 14th Street Y Theater in New York City, where she invited Gabriela to develop an educational program focused on the potential of the plot to work on values education.
Motivated by the spirit of Laba in such interesting experience working together, they now formed Pulso, an artist collective, with the purpose of conducting research and generating new art creations.
Gabriela Esterovich
Gabriela is a visual artist and educator, two passions that weld and guide the vision of her work. A Graduate in Graphic Arts from the University of La Plata in 1991, she has developed her work through projects that involved different media, printmaking, photography, visual poetry and art books. Her works have been presented since 2006 in exhibitions, contests and biennials in Argentina, Bulgaria, Austria, Spain, Germany, the United States and Israel, obtaining prizes and awards. She has taught visual arts for 30 years at Scholem Aleijem School in Buenos Aires. She leads her own art studio, ‘Taller del Patio’, dedicated to art and childhood since the year 2000. In 2019, she designed and carried out educational activities for the children’s theater play ‘A Golem from Buenos Aires’, by Carina Toker, presented at the 14th Street Y Theater in New York. She is part of the artist collective ‘Pulso’ alongside Carina Toker, which was recently selected for the study grant LABA-BA 2021.
Carina Toker
Carina has been a choreographer, theater director and creator of original events and shows, and a teacher for more than 30 years. Carina has an educational background in contemporary and classical dance, in music and musical theater, in choreographic composition and Israeli dances with great masters of Buenos Aires, New York and Jerusalem. She was a dancer, and later a director, of the Jewish-Argentine Dance Company ‘Darkeinu’ for 17 years, and she was guest choreographer at foreign companies, obtaining significant prizes and international awards.
She is a creator of ideas, scripts, staging of shows, theater plays and audiovisual products, such as ‘Chagall Chagalito’, ‘Klezdanz’ or ‘Una vida iluminando’ in homage to Eliahu Toker.
Carina Toker has been a teacher at the Scholem Aleijem School in Buenos Aires for a decade, where she has created shows, plays and audiovisual productions with children and teachers. She is currently working on the creation of the Art Department in the school.
In 2017, Carina Toker obtained a grant from LABA-BA with ‘A Golem from Buenos Aires’, a multi-award winning theatre play, declared of Cultural Interest by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (Mecenazgo) and selected by LABA to be presented in December 2019, after two seasons in Argentina, at the‘14th Street Y Theater’ of New York.
She is part of the artist collective called Pulso (Pulse)along with Gabriela Esterovich, which has been recently selected for the Laba-Ba 2021 study grant.
Charley Rappaport Actor. Singer. Dancer. Songwriter. At age of 50, he started a comeback to the path of ART that he had abandoned when he was 30. Charley integrated different plays, Musicals, One Man Stand Up Shows, Stand Up Comedy, Films, Advertising, Tv & Radio shows. In 2016 he recorded his first record with his own songs. Until the pandemic’s shutdown of theaters, he was performing the lead role of “El Dogma”, the local version of Scholem Asch’s play “God of Vengance”. He currently is giving Drama classes, coaching foreign language conversation meetings, and has been acting small parts in different movies, series and TV shows.