Baruch Agadati ^People

Baruch Kaushansky (later Agadati) was born to a Jewish family in Bessarabia, and grew up in Odessa. He immigrated to Palestine in the early 1900s. In Palestine, he was known for performing Jewish folk dances in an expressionist style.Agadati attended the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem from 1910-1914. When World War I started in 1914, he was in Russia visiting his parents and was unable to return to Palestine. He remained there and studied classical ballet, joining the dancetroupeof theOdessa Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1919, he returned to Palestine. In 1920, he moved to the Neve Tzedek neighborhoodi n Tel Aviv. Until his death is 1976, he worked in theatre, painted, danced and choreographed Israeli folkdance, produced thefamous Purim Ad DeLo Yada Carnival balls. Agadati pur- chased cinematographer Yaakov Ben Dov's film archives in 1934, when Ben Dov re- tired from filmmaking. He and his brother Yitzhak used it to start the AGA Newsreel. He directed the early Zionist film entitled This is the Land (1935), the first Hebrew speaking film, and a new version in 1963, called Tomorrow's Yesterday. In 1924, Agadati choreographed a dance based on the Romanian Hora that became known as Hora Agadati'. It was performed by the Ohel Workers' Theatre, which toured pioneer settlements in the Jezreel Valley. The dancers form a circle, holding hands and move counterclockwise following a six-beat step in a walk-walk-step-kick-step-kick pattern.