Saar Magal creates dance theatre and opera performances that bridge the poetic and the political, the intimate and the collective. Working across forms and disciplines, she collaborates with actors, dancers, singers, scholars, visual artists, and musicians to generate living encounters where movement becomes thought and gesture becomes language. Her work explores the convergence of body, narrative, image, and sound to create charged, questioning, and imaginative spaces that blur the boundaries between theatre, dance, and installation.

Critics on nachtkritik.de have described her creations as “sensual architectures of thought,” “emotionally charged and fiercely intelligent,” and “a theatre of the body that thinks.”
Her productions transform the stage into fields of reflection — at once precise, poetic, and deeply human.

 

Selected Works

Sacrilege (Schauspiel Essen / Folkwang University / Freie Universität Berlin, 2025)
Rooted in the Book of Genesis, Sacrilege examines stories of sacrifice and belief, confronting the structures of faith, gender, and freedom with wit and visual seduction.
“A deeply moving engagement with timeless narratives, challenging power, faith, and freedom.” — Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
“Religions and their scriptures must be allowed to be critically questioned. Magal does this here as a poet of images.” — nachtkritik

A Kafka Project (Theater Basel, 2023)
A poetic investigation into Kafka’s life and texts, fusing dance, music, and theatre in an intimate chamber setting.
“An innovative interpretation of Kafka’s haunting texts, blending movement, music, and theater seamlessly.” — Basler Zeitung

10 Odd Emotions (Schauspiel Frankfurt & Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company, 2023)
Addressing antisemitism, racism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this large-scale production featured 18 dancers and 5 actors, performed to live music by Omer Klein and Silvan Strauss. Presented in Frankfurt, Dresden, and at Theater der Welt festival, with more than 20,000 audience members.
“A provocative and visually stunning performance that confronts antisemitism and racism with intelligence and energy.” — Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Love Me More (Schauspiel Köln, 2022)
A bold reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that examines beauty, narcissism, and desire in the age of digital self-curation.
“Saar Magal ignites a visual frenzy in her crossover project in the age of selfie culture.” — Kölnische Rundschau

(Ob)Sessions (Burgtheater Wien, 2021)
A darkly humorous meditation on self-optimization, youth, and aging within the hyper-capitalist pursuit of perfection. Combining theatre, dance, and live sound, the piece stages the contemporary body as both commodity and protest.

A Monteverdi Project (Berlin State Opera — Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2018)
An exploration of love and eroticism in a post-human age, merging baroque music with contemporary movement and media art.
Tanz Magazin wrote: “Developed through an intensive research process, blending movement, text, voice, video installation, and music into an exciting, dynamic performance.”

Jephtha’s Daughter (Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015)
Inspired by the Old Testament and Giacomo Carissimi’s oratorio, the piece examines the patriarchal underpinnings of sacrifice and obedience through movement and sound.

Hacking Wagner (Bayerische Staatsoper, 2012)
A radical dialogue with Wagnerian monumentalism and its historical shadows, exploring cultural memory and taboo through Israeli and German perspectives.

Up Your Ass, Virginia! The Valerie Solanas Project (Rote Fabrik Zürich / Tmuna Theater Tel Aviv, 2014)
A dance-theatre homage to Valerie Solanas and her SCUM Manifesto, combining punk physicality and feminist rage with biting theatrical wit.

 

Earlier Creations & Collaborations

Between 1993 and 2009, Magal created numerous works for stages across Europe, Israel and the US, including Pandora’s Garage, Yossi the Grounded Angel, and C.F.C. for the Batsheva Ensemble under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin; The Boy and the Dolphin, Under the Belt, and Shin at the Suzanne Dellal Center, Tel Aviv; Furniture Showroom (Laban Centre London); Ulysses of the Mediterranean (Fabbrica Europa, Florence); Bottom of the Ninth (Peridance NYC); and Telem and Adagietto for the Bat-Dor Dance Company. Her dance film CellFish (with visual artist Shelly Federman) premiered at Lincoln Center, New York, in 2005.

Magal has collaborated extensively with renowned theatre and opera directors, including Krzysztof Warlikowski and Robert Woodruff, on major European stages such as Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Opéra Garnier Paris, La Monnaie Brussels, Teatro Real Madrid, Opéra Bastille Paris, and Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
With Warlikowski, she co-created Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Piccolo Teatro di Milano), Hamlet (Teatr Rozmaitości, Warsaw), Wozzeck, Ubu Rex, Iphigenie en Tauride, Eugene Onegin, Macbeth, and Medea, among others.
With Woodruff, she co-created Phaedra 4.48 (A.R.T. Cambridge / MXAT Moscow) and choreographed numerous productions including King Richard II and Oedipus (American Repertory Theater).

 

Research & Teaching

Saar Magal has been a fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin’s International Research Center for Interweaving Performance Cultures (2016) and served as Visiting Artist in Residence at the Stanford Arts Institute (2017).
In 2024–2025, she held the Valeska Gert Guest Professorship at the Freie Universität Berlin, in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste and DAAD.

She has taught physical theatre, contemporary dance, improvisation, and composition at Harvard University’s A.R.T. Institute, the University of Chicago, Peridance (NYC), Bat-Dor Studios and Maslool Dance Program (Tel Aviv), and the School of Visual Theater (Jerusalem).
She also led an international masterclass and performance project at Zuni Icosahedron in Hong Kong (2017).

 

Education

Saar Magal studied at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London, on a full scholarship awarded by the British Council (1995-1997).

 

Artistic Vision

Across her body of work, Saar Magal investigates the tensions between myth and modernity, embodiment and image, faith and desire. Her theatre of movement is at once sensual and cerebral — a space where choreography thinks and feeling becomes form. Through collaboration and experiment, she seeks to transform the stage into a living organism that listens, reflects, and dreams.