Born 1986. Independent Choreographer and dancer, founder and manager of Meeting Festival. 

The main pursuit of Ayala’s work is the question how to examine feminist content through the choreographers’ eye. Her debut piece, “Gazelle”, premiered at the Jerusalem Festival dance area, and was later commissioned for festivals locally and internationally. The piece criticises the way the gender-cultural perspective is embedded in the performing female body. “2HER” – (ELEYA) is a duet premiered at the Ha’zira theater Jerusalem, Dance Arena Festival (2016). The piece aspires to represent complex female characters, observing through feminine perspective subjects such as tenderness and violence, symbiosis and separation.  “Pangea” is a quartet piece, premiered at the 2018 Meeting festival at Bat Yam Kelim centre. It is a designated four female dancers-creators piece, in which Ayala investigates forming an inclusive feminine community that invites the audience to a mutual and alternative encounter.  “Transfor(man)ce” – her latest piece, premiered at the 2019 Meeting festival at Bat Yam Kelim centre. The foundation of the piece is to create an encounter between feminist choreography ideas and masculine body and thought through work with two make dances. This work is a “gender laboratory”, zooming in on masculinity, male relationship, researching the forbidden and allowed, observing the need for empathy and touch.    

Born 1986, Israel. Ayala started her dance training as a teenager, specializing in Ballroom dancing and Latin-American dance. She was state champion in the field during 2000-2003. Searching for a more personal and critical view of the body, she refocused into contemporary dance and trained at the Haifa three years Dancers Training workshop (2005-2008). 

After graduation, Ayala became a contemporary dance independent dancer (2009-2017) and collaborated with numerous choreographers: the Yasmeen Godder Company, Batsheva Company, Yossi Berg and Oded Graf Dance Company, Danna Ruttenberg Dance Company, Tamar Borer, Iris Erez,  Bosmat  Nossan, Gil Kerr, Maya Brinner, Anat Vaadia, Rubi Edelman, Tami and Ronen Izhaki, Tomo Sone (Japan), Anna Röthlisberger (Switzerland) and more. During her work as a dancer she toured and performed in festivals and cultural centers around the world. 

She is currently completing a BA in Philosophy and History of Art. Trained as an integrative Yoga Instructor and Ilan Lev method therapist.

Over the years, Ayala initiated and took part in community projects that aspire to offer the artistic dance knowledge in order to create stimulating encounters with various populations such as the elderly, people with Parkinson disease, teenage girls and more. 

In 2015 Ayala participated as a dancer-creator in the “Ma’ase Gil” (Age Tale) project initiated by Dalia Chaimsky. Throughout the project, weekly meetings were held with senior citizens from the Lustinger Elderly Day Care Center in Bat-Yam in partnership with the Kelim Center in Bat Yam. The end of the project showcased a dance piece featuring the dancers-creators together with the elderly, performing together at the Bat Yam international theater and street art festival. In the same year she took part in the “Disturbance” project by the Yasmeen Godder Studio. It was an international project aiming to introduce the knowledge of the dancers with people living with Parkinson disease. The project encompasses weekly lessons, convention, creative process and joint performances by professional dancers and people living with Parkinson Disease. 

In 2017, Ayala was lead choreographer for a community art project premiered as the dance piece “It has Innocence” at the Bat Yam international theater and street art festival. The project was supported by the residency program at the Fest’Factory and the Kelim Center in Bat Yam. It is a dance and community piece in which 8 performers, professional and amateurs, ranging from 10-56, dance together.  

Nowadays, Ayala was chosen as lead choreographer for the “life in motion” project – a collaboration between Mifal HaPayis (Lottery art Council) and the Choreographers’ Association. As part of the program, Ayala will host a few meetings with a group of Girls from Nazareth Ilit (Nof Hagalil), in which she will provide the girls feminist content through discussion and physical- motion-choreography means.

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Ayala’s experience as a woman and as an artist, her vast field experience as a dancer and choreographer, her academic education and the experience she accumulated in the communal projects combining social content with artistic doing – all led Ayala to initiate the Meeting Festival for feminist art in 2017.  Ayala felt the need to discuss the sever gender inequality in Art and to enlighten the phenomena in a way that will promote it from the particular into public and collective sphere.  The critical perspective that the initiative is based upon is that frequently, and in many spheres, the voice of women is marginalized. Therefore, it is perceived as an individual experience and not as a public phenomenon, enhancing the need for feminine unionization. Therefore, Ayala’s initiative aspires to create a space for female artists to meet and form a sense of community, alongside emphasis on representing different and diverse female voices. Since its foundation, Ayala has been the producer and artistic director of the Festival. It runs annually for three days and includes premiers, running shows, workshops, panels and community performances. All the pieces performed at the Festival are created by women creating in different mediums such as dance, music, performance, theater, spoken-word, literature and photography. All the pieces deal with feminist subjects arising from feminine experience, body and thought. The festival is a celebration of feminine encounter, and relish the multiple feminine artistic voices alongside an active artistic protest designed to undermine the existing structure, calling for inclusiveness and the removal of hierarchical separation in the field of art or any other field. 

Ayala is commissioned to teach and create as a choreographer, contemporary dance teacher and accompanies creative process in professional dancers’ training schools and various frameworks for qualified dancers.  For example: Ben Gurion University dance company, “Gila Workshop” by Galit Liss for the golden age, dancers training workshop in Haifa (Hasadna), the Kvutza Dance School in Tel Aviv and more. Through the years, Ayala gained experience in teaching contemporary dance for diverse people and ages. 

After accumulating vast knowledge and experience as a dancer-creator in contemporary dance, Ayala started working as an independent choreographer in 2015.  Since then, Ayala premiered her work annually in festivals and events locally and internationally, winning grants from the Mifal Hapayis (Lottery Art and Culture council) in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Furthermore, Ayala was selected for an artist residency program at RE-SEARCH and Yasmeen Godder studio (2016), Kelim Center and Fest-Factory (2017). In 2019 Ayala was granted the Ministry of Culture Independent Makers Work Grant. She is a member of the Choreographers’ association since May 2018. 

“TransforMANce” 

“Pangea” 

“It Has Innocence” 

“Gazelle” 

“2HER”

Meeting workshop

Contemporary Dance and Repertoire workshop