Biography

Yeva Lapsker is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, performer, and translator, born in Leningrad and now based on the waters of Hamburg. Her artistic practice moves through languages, gestures, and histories, often drawing from embodied memory, diasporic imagination, and playful disruption.

She studied Translation Studies at the University of Heidelberg and went on to work with international theater and dance productions before attending the YIVO Institute’s summer program in New York, which deepened her engagement with Yiddish language and culture. Over time, her focus shifted more fully toward Jewish expressive forms, especially traditional music and dance. Her approach has been shaped by years of learning with scholars, dancers, musicians, and tradition-bearers — the mavens whose artistry and generosity continue to resonate in her work.

Yeva is a co-founder of Shtetl Berlin e.V. and has taken part in festivals including Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKanada, Yiddish New York, and Ashkenaz Toronto, in roles ranging from student to performer to teacher. Most recently, she has been teaching at Shtetl Berlin and leading Yiddish dance balls across Germany, creating spaces where communal dance becomes both celebration and embodied tradition.

Her projects include choreographing for the award-winning Netflix series Unorthodox; her solo Performing Denkmal, an exploration of inscription, presence, and the body’s response to historical silence; and the collaborative Di Goldene Argentine, which traces exile through tango, Yiddishkeit, and live visual art.

Across these works, she continues to explore the intersections of movement, music, language, and historical imagination — a practice at once deeply rooted and radically alive.