Matti Goldschmidt

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Matti Goldschmidt (born 18 July 1951 in Graz) is an Austrian-Israeli choreographer and author who specializes in Israeli folk dance. He grew up mostly in Germany and moved to Israel in January 1976, where he began dancing at Kibbutz Ma’agan Micha’el with Moshe Pinkas. He continued dancing in Haifa, Be’er Sheva, and Jerusalem.

In 1979 he graduated from the Teacher’s Seminary in Jerusalem (the Ulpan) to become a dance master for Israeli folklore dances. He also studied Computer Science and the History of Islamic Countries at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working as a programmer and systems analyst in Israel, New Zealand and Germany, he completed another year of dance training at the Hebrew University in 1983.

In 1988 he taught dance in Wellington, New Zealand. The next year he returned to Germany and began teaching at the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, a role he has continued. In 1992 he founded Israelisches Tanzhaus e.V., a charity to promote Israeli folk dance in German-speaking countries, and he has chaired it from the start.

In 2017, on its 25th anniversary, Israelisches Tanzhaus was honored by the Munich mayor for its contribution to folk dance. Goldschmidt has led hundreds of workshops across Germany and other European countries, and taught in Taiwan and Japan in recent years. Since 2012 he has chaired the Bavarian Landesverband Tanz in Bayern e.V. (and has been vice-chairman since 2006). He has written books and many articles in German on Israeli folk dance and created several dances, such as Yam Adonai, Shakharuth, Ha-Aviv Tzokheq and A-Salam Aleikum. He has been a member of Irgun ha-Madrichim, the association of dance masters, since 1983.