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Rachel Rosenthal

Rachel Rosenthal (November 9, 1926 – May 10, 2015) was a French-born interdisciplinary and performance artist, teacher, actress, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles.

She was best known for her full-length performance art pieces which offered unique combinations of theatre, dance, creative slides and live music. She toured her pieces, with The Rachel Rosenthal Company, to numerous venues both within the United States and abroad. Theatres and festivals she visited include: the Dance Theatre Workshop and Serious Fun! at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Kaaitheater in Brussels, The Internationals Summer Theater Festival in Hamburg, The Performance Space in Sydney and the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques, Théâtre Centaur, Montréal. One of her key ambitions was to help heal the earth through art.

Rosenthal was born on November 9, 1926, in Paris, France, into an assimilated Russian Jewish family. Her father, Léonard Rosenthal, was a well-known merchant of Oriental pearls and precious stones. Her mother was Mara Jacoubovitch Rosenthal.

She described her childhood home as one filled with the works of Monet and Chagall; purchases brought home from her father's travels to Italy. Her knack for performing developed at an early age; she was only three when she started performing and often entertained up to 150 guests at family events. She was only six when she started learning ballet under the guidance of the acclaimed Preobrajenska.

During World War II, her family escaped France, moving to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, via a short stay in Portugal. This journey inspired the creation of her piece, My Brazil. In April 1941, her family left Brazil to settle in New York, where Rosenthal would later graduate from the High School of Music and Art.

She studied acting at the Jean-Louis Barrault School of Theatre and with Herbert Berghoff. At some stage she was an apprentice of director Erwin Piscator and directed some off-Broadway productions. Additionally, she was an assistant designer to Heinz Condella at the New York City Opera and danced in Merce Cunningham's company. It is the integration of these various skills and talents that have enabled her to produce complex and multi-layered performance art pieces.

After settling back in New York in 1953, her social circle included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Sari Dienes, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. She was introduced to Zen Buddhism and Asian philosophy by Cage. She soon grew an interest in martial arts (kung fu, tai chi, karate) and started training in them.

Improvisation and spontaneity became significantly more important to her and her move in the direction towards experimental theatre was influenced by reading of Antonin Artaud's "The Theatre and Its Double." She returned to visual arts and sculpture as well; creating unique performance art that allowed the freedom to improvise.

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