Matti Goldschmidt
Matti Goldschmidt (* born on 18 July 1951 in Graz) is an Austrian-Israeli choreographer and author. He is particularly occupied with Israeli folk dance. Life. Goldschmidt grew up mostly in Germany and emigrated to Israel in January 1976, where he began dancing at Kibbutz Ma'agan Micha'el with Moshe Pinkas. He continued his original hobby in Haifa with Bentzi Tiram as well as with Jossi Abuhav (Be'er Scheva) and in Jerusalem with Eddi Sasson. In 1979 he graduated from the Teacher's Seminary in Jerusalem under the guidance of Bracha Dudai, the so-called Ulpan, a training to become  a dance master for Israeli folklore dances. In parallel, he studied Computer Sciences and History of Islamic Countries at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After finishing his studies he worked as a programmer and systems analyst in Israel, New Zealand and Germany. In 1983, he completed another one-year didactic course in dance at the same university, under the direction of Cyrelle Foremann and Shulah Bareqet. In 1988, Goldschmidt took his first job as a dance teacher in Wellington (New Zealand). The following year he returned to Germany and took over the dance teaching courses at the Youth and Cultural  Center of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, which he still directs today (as of March 2021). In 1992 he founded the Israelisches Tanzhaus e.V., a registered charity, which he has chaired since the beginning, in order to popularize Israeli folk dance in German-speaking countries. On November 24, 2017, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, ITH was honoured by the Lord Mayor of the City of Munich, Dieter Reiter, with a certificate for "its contribution to the cultivation of folk dance." In addition to leading several hundreds of dance workshops within Germany, Goldschmidt has also  taught in other European countries, such as Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, England, France, Italy, Russia, or Switzerland. Since 2012, he has been chairman of the Bavarian "Landesverband Tanz in Bayern e.V." (formerly "Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Tanz in Bayern"), holding the position of vice-chairman since 2006. Goldschmidt wrote several books and numerous articles in German on the subject of "Israeli folk dance", e.g. in the periodicals Leipziger Folksblatt, the world music magazine Folker or the former association periodical "Tanzen" of the federal association "Deutscher Bundesverband Tanz e.V." (DBT), as well as sporadically for the professional periodical Rokdim, published in  Tel Aviv in Hebrew and English. As a journalist, he wrote mainly for the monthlies Jüdische Zeitung (Berlin) in 2006–2012, and since 2014 more irregularly for Jüdische Rundschau. He created a number of dances himself, including "Yam Adonai", "Shakharuth", or "Ha-Aviv Tzokheq" as well as a couple version of "Or ha-Ganuz". Since 1983 he has been a member of the union-affiliated "Irgun ha-Madrichim", the association of dance masters and choreographers for Israeli folklore dances in Israel.