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The need for community dances first arose among the halutzim of the First Lit. "ascent." A "calling up" to the Torah during its reading in the synagogue.Aliyah in 1882, continuing with the Second Aliyah (1904–1914) and the Third Aliyah (1919–1923). During the Second and Third Aliyah periods, between 1904 and 1923, the halutzim danced only dances that they had brought with them from the Diaspora—the Horah, Polka, Krakowiak, Czerkassiya, and Rondo, with the Horah becoming the national dance.

The choreography of original dances by professional dancers began in the twenty-year period between 1923 and 1943 when dance teachers began to choreograph dances for festival pageants. Several of these dances also became folk dances.

The Israeli folk dance “movement” was born between the years 1944 and 1948. In folk-dance circles, the history of this movement is chronicled according to the dates of the national dance festivals, the first of which was held at A voluntary collective community, mainly agricultural, in which there is no private wealth and which is responsible for all the needs of its members and their families.Kibbutz Daliyyah in the hills of the Ephraim region in July, 1944. Gurit Kadman, who planned and organized all the Daliyyah festivals, prepared a booklet (published by the Kibbutz Seminar) which contained twenty-two The Land of Israel Erez Israel folk dances, eight of them original and the rest based on international folk dances (e.g. Horah Aggadati, Alexandrova, Czerkassiya, Double Czerkassiya, Scotch, Lithuanian Polka, Tel-Aviviyyah, and Triple Debka).

Fourteen folk-dance groups appeared at the first Daliyyah festival, performing international folk dances as well as original Israeli and Biblical ones. A group from En-Harod, led by Rivka Sturman, performed a dance called “Ha-Goren” (The Barn). The new dance “Mayim, Mayim” (Water, Water), which Elsa Dublon had choreographed to music by Yehuda Sharett for the water pageant for the 1937 Water Festival in Na’an, gained national exposure.

The second national folk-dance festival, which took place at Kibbutz Daliyyah in July 1947, has remained in the collective memory because of the nighttime curfew that the British authorities imposed on the roads. Five hundred dancers and twenty-five thousand spectators remained in the Kibbutz Daliyyah amphitheater overnight, singing and dancing, transforming national folk dance into one more symbol of the struggle for independence against the Mandate for Palestine given to Great Britain by the League of Nations in April 1920 to administer Palestine and establish a national home for the Jewish people. It was terminated with the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.British Mandate.

Two further folk-dance festivals took place at Kibbutz Daliyyah, in 1951 and 1958. During this period Rivka Sturman, Leah Bergstein, Gurit Kadman, Sara Levi Tannai, Ze’ev Havazzelet, Shalom Hermon, Tamar Eligur, Yoav Ashriel, Yonatan Karmon, and others choreographed festival and folk dances. Large dance events were held all over the country and the first annual dance parade was held in Haifa in 1953.

At the fifth Daliyyah festival in 1968, leaders of the folk-dance movement expressed regret at the tendency toward ostentation and showy staging which characterized the folk dances performed. Since then, folk-dance festivals have taken place throughout the country, a major one being that in Karmiel, planned by Yonatan Karmon, which has been held annually since 1988.

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