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Rabin, Linda
Linda Rabin, teacher, choreographer and artistic director (b at Montréal 28 Sep 1946). She discovered dancing with Elsie Salomons, Séda Zaré and Birouté Nagys, later becoming a dance graduate of New York's Juilliard School of Music. She took courses with Martha Graham, at the Connecticut School of Dance, and with Zena Rommett. She acquired complementary training under Richard Pochinko (mask workshops; voice work with Ann Skinner) at his Theatre Resource Centre in Ottawa. Later, she developed in-depth knowledge in Body/Mind centering, Alexander Techniques, shiatsu, Pilates and ideokinesis.
Although Rabin had danced in the past, her main contribution was in teaching and choreography. She choreographed her first work in 1972 for the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, following a stint as a repetitrice with the Ballet Rambert in London. A renowned pedagogue, she has taught in Canada, Israel, England and Guatemala.
Her choreographic research integrated elements of theatre, ritual and contemporary dance as well as post-modern and classical approaches. Her works appear in the repertories of several Canadian companies and in the Netherlands Danz Theater 2. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes refined, they demonstrate deep spirituality, analysis, and musicality.
She completed a major work, La déesse blanche, in 1977, the first Montréal choreography of a full evening's duration. The audience moves from room to room to participate in this intimate ceremonial that exploits ritual, feminine archetypes, voice work, text and dance, and sets the tone for Montréal's minimalist trends using purification and expanded time.
In 1981 in Montréal, she founded Ateliers de danse Moderne de Montréal, putting to use her intimate knowledge of the techniques of Graham, Limon and Holm, and filling a void in the city's contemporary dance training. She also created the Triskelian Dance Foundation, which only lasted for two seasons, but in 1985 was renamed LES ATELIERS DE DANSE MODERNE DE MONTRÉAL INC (LADMMI), as a school for professional performers. Leaving the helm of LADMMI in 1993, Rabin nevertheless continues to teach there.
After a transition period as a professor at UQAM around 1997, she reoriented her career integrating movement, spirituality and biomechanics into her vision of "movement as healing," not only for dancers but open to everyone.
