Video: Batsheva Dancers Create

The Batsheva Dance Company’s dancers might have cooled off at the beach to make this video, but this July, they – and many of Israel’s finest dancers – will be heating up the Suzanne Dellal Center’s stages during SummerDance 2010.  The annual festival, called Maholohet in Hebrew (a play on the words for “dance” and “hot”), will take place from July 1-August 31 and boast 84 performances.

Nuevo Ballet Español.  Photo courtesy of Ora Lapidot PR.

This year’s programming kicks off with a festival within the festival.  From July 1-10, Madrid Dance will showcase Spanish dance including the Antonio Najarro Dance Company, Nuevo Ballet Español, Sharon Friedman and Jesus Pastor, and Pastor and José Marino.  More international guests arrive later in the summer with dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet performing their own creations in Incidence Choreographique and with the Black Light Theatre from Prague in Africania.

Video: Rachel Erdos’s OU’ premieres at SummerDance 2010

As in previous years, premieres abound at SummerDance.  This year’s bounty, totaling 19 new works, will include premieres by Dana Ruttenberg, Kamea Dance Company, Tamar Borer and Tamara Erde, Portal Dance Company, DaNaKa Dance Group, Yoni Soutchy, Idan Sharabi, Ronit Ziv, Sigal Ziv, Elina Pechersky, Rena Schenfeld, Dafi Altebab, Mami Shimizaki, Sharon Vazanna, Anat Grigorio, the Jerusalem Ballet, and Rachel Erdos.  Sahar Azimi, Elad Shechter, and Ido Tadmor offer pre-premieres, and Yaniv Cohen’s work will be shown in its Israeli premiere.

Arkadi Zaides’s Quiet.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

For audiences who missed some of this year’s most intriguing premieres, SummerDance offers a second chance to check them out.  Among the offerings are Arkadi Zaides’s Quiet, which recently returned from a tour of Europe, as well as the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Rami Be’er’s Infrared, Fresco Dance Group in Yoram Karmi’s Particle Accelerator, Kamea Dance Group in Tamir Ginz’s SRUL, Kolben Dance Company in Min-Hara, and Animato Dance Company in Nadine Bommer’s American Cinema. Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak’s Rushes Plus and Ohad Naharin’s Kyr/Z/na 2010, both highlights of the last season, combine excerpts of older works in a strikingly new context. And Vertigo Dance Company presents not only its recent hit Mana but also White Noise and the now classic Birth of the Phoenix.

Batsheva Dancers Create.  Photo by Yoav Barel.

Several evenings pop out from the schedule with a mixture of interesting fare.  This year’s festival includes Batsheva Dancers Create, an annual workshop featuring two programs of Batsheva’s dancers in an array of their own choreography.  Another intriguing evening is Noa Dar’s presentation of her recent Anu alongside a work-in-progress, Banu, which is the extension of her previous creation.  And audiences will have a chance to sample a combination of choreographers when established artists host up-and-coming contemporary choreographer.  These programs include Dana Ruttenberg and Shlomit Fundaminsky hosting Neta Ruttenberg and Uri Shafir; Sahar Azimi hosting Elad Shechter and Yaniv Cohen; Dafi Altebab hosting Mami Shimizaki; and Idan Cohen hosting Sharon Vazanna.

Beta Dance Troupe in Meeka Yaari and Ruth Eshel’s Fathers and Sons. Photo by Ofer Zvulun.

SummerDance 2010 also features several companies and choreographers that add an ethnic flavor to the Israeli concert dance scene.  Beta Dance Troupe blends Ethiopian traditions with contemporary choreography in Meeka Yaari and Ruth Eshel’s Fathers and Sons as well as Adam McKinney and Daniel Banks’s What We are Saying. Rona Bar-On, Sigal Ziv, and Elina Pechersky bring belly dance to the stage, while COMPAS, Silvia Duran, and Tania Vinokur offer variations on flamenco.  Adding to the mix is Bangoura, an African dance company that will perform The dance of the drums.

Batsheva Ensemble in Ohad Naharin’s Kamuyot.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Want to attend a dance performance with your family?  Several family-friendly programs are dotting this year’s bill, including the Batsheva Ensemble in Ohad Naharin’s Kamuyot, Kamea Dance Group in Or Abuhav’s The Ugly Duckling, COMPAS in Carmen and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Noa Dar Dance Group in Children’s Games.

Rounding out the programming are several critically acclaimed works created in recent years, including Yasmeen Godder’s Singular Sensation and Yossi Berg and Oded Graf’s Four Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer, and evenings of work by independent choreographers including Iris Erez, Shlomi Frige, Maya Levy, Michael Miler, and Michal Herman.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Maholohet: SummerDance 2009 at Suzanne Dellal Center
• More on Maholohet: A Hot Summer of Dance Continues

Related Links

• Suzanne Dellal Center

Karmiel Dance Festival.  Photo by Mati Elmaliach.

When many people hear the phrase “Israeli dance,” they think of Israeli folk dance.  And while the Karmiel Festival includes all sorts of dance done in Israel – including contemporary, jazz, and ballroom – it’s Israeli folk dance which forms the core of the country’s largest dance festival.

Shlomo Maman, who has been involved with the festival for ten years and took over the artistic directorship from Karmiel’s founder Yonatan Karmon, explained that the idea to have some mix of dance styles was present from the festival’s start in 1988.  “The main issue of the festival is the Israeli folk dances, but it’s very important for us to bring other groups,” he says.  “All meet together which makes this very big and very interesting . . . everyone will learn from the others.”

This year, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Ido Tadmor, Rina Schenfeld, Vertigo’s second company, and a group of dancers from the renowned Paris Opera Ballet will make appearances at Karmiel.  Yet the bulk of the festival – which boasts 5,000 dancers and 80 events over a mere 3 days – is composed of concerts, competitions, and even classes in folk dance.

Karmiel Dance Festival. Photo by Mati Elmaliach.

This year’s festival is built around a motif of song festivals.  For one folk dance competition, choreographers are creating dances to songs from the festival HaZemer HaYisraeli, while for a jazz competition, choreographers are using songs from the popular Eurovision contest.  Other choreographers are using music from a children’s song festival for a program of children’s dance troupes.

While the town of Karmiel is in the north of Israel, the festival is dedicating its opening performance to Tel Aviv in honor of the city’s centennial.  An extraordinary array of 1,500 dancers will be performing pieces that tell the story of dance in Tel Aviv, from the popularity of dance in old-time cafes and modern clubs to the pioneering efforts of Baruch Agadati, Mia Arbatova, and other teachers and choreographers.

Another highlight will be the closing performance, an annual tradition in which each folk dance group presents its best piece of choreography from the past year.  Like the opening concert, this will be a celebration on a grand scale, with 2,000 dancers participating.

As he prepared for the festival’s opening, Maman reflected, “What’s important is that people will come and will be happy and will have a good time.  I think if people come one time, they won’t stop – they will come again and again every year.”  Maman’s prophesy appears to be true: a whopping 250,000 people are expected to attend the 2009 Karmiel Festival.  Sounds like a good time indeed.

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Related Links

• Karmiel Festival

Barak Marshall’s Monger.  Photo by Gadi Dagon.

This summer has already been so packed with festivals and performances that I have barely had time to reflect, but I figured it’s high time that I post an article I wrote at the end of Suzanne Dellal’s Big Stage.

I’ve been to numerous festivals since moving to Israel, but the Big Stage stands head and shoulders above many others in my mind.  There was something magical about the festival’s outdoor setting, and each impressively large-scale performance brought its own theatrical marvels to the already enchanting space.  Further adding to my enthusiasm about the festival was the dual reason for its existence: Tel Aviv’s centennial and Suzanne Dellal’s 20th anniversary.  It’s pretty hard to top that!

I first published the article below as “Big Performances” in the Forward on June 19, 2009.  Read on to get a sense of what this spectacular festival was like – or to refresh your own memories of this momentous event.

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Big Performances

An eager crowd took its seats high above the Suzanne Dellal Center’s plaza for the opening of the three-week festival Habama Hagdola — The Big Stage.  Two majestic palm trees framed the large outdoor stage, and the center’s main building provided a picturesque backdrop.  A glance around revealed the impressive scenery of the first century of Tel Aviv: quaint red-roofed homes of the Neve Tzedek neighborhood overtaken within a few blocks by modern skyscrapers.

But it was the action onstage that captured the audience’s gaze.  Rooted in a wide stance, five women grabbed their heads and raised their arms in exasperation.  Rocking vigorously in place, they performed a series of intricate gestures. Even the smallest motion — a lift of the hip, a tilt of the chin — was delivered with attitude.  The movement grew, the pace quickened, and the tension built as five men approached the women.

This nuanced, lively dance — Barak Marshall’s Monger — was only part of the excitement onstage.  The popular band Balkan Beat Box lent its infectious rhythms and hypnotic vocals to the choreographic excerpts.  As the dance and live music mixed, Marshall recounted, “the energy on the stage was explosive and surprising.”

Balkan Beat Box.  Photo by Yariv Alter.

In some ways, though, this synergy might have been predicted: Here were two massive hits performing together.  BBB’s fusion of musical influences has won the group a devoted following, and Monger, with its theatrical vitality, was a big success during Israel’s most recent dance season.

Monger follows 10 characters who serve the domineering (but never visible) Mrs. Margaret.  Marshall combines text, an eclectic sound score, clever visual tricks and an expressive physical language into a well-seasoned dramatic stew.  Some rhythms and gestures seem Middle Eastern, others European, and still other elements — especially vintage radio ads for Hebrew National and Manischewitz products — provide a taste of Jewish New York in the early 1900s.  This blend of cultural flavors has endeared Monger to audiences at home and abroad.

The Big Stage marks Suzanne Dellal’s 20th anniversary, and Marshall attributes much of his own success to the center.  “Simply put, I would not be a choreographer if it weren’t for the Suzanne Dellal Center,” Marshall said.  “[Suzanne Dellal director] Yair Vardi discovered me, challenged me and pushed me to challenge my limits.”  The center also produced Monger.

Marshall is not alone in benefiting from Suzanne Dellal’s support.  The choreographer further credits the center with the larger “renaissance of dance in Israel,” thanks to numerous yearly festivals that “discover new choreographers and catapult young Israeli creators into the international dance scene.”

The center’s extensive programming is made possible by its remarkable facilities. Suzanne Dellal boasts three theaters for productions large and small, traditional and experimental.  Both the Batsheva Dance Company and the Inbal Pinto Dance Company call the center home, and the complex’s studios host other choreographers’ activities.  Imagine New York City’s Lincoln Center devoted exclusively to dance.  Add some visionary leadership, and you have a sense of the Suzanne Dellal Center — the reason that Israeli dance is increasingly a global force.

According to Vardi, who has steered the institution since its founding, Suzanne Dellal is “definitely the major dance center in Israel.”  Besides possessing this national distinction, Suzanne Dellal has thoroughly integrated itself into the fabric of Tel Aviv.  Vardi proudly outlines the center’s many contributions to the city, affirming, “By now, we’re a very important part of Tel Aviv’s culture scene.”

The Big Stage celebrated not only the Suzanne Dellal Center’s birthday, but also Tel Aviv’s centennial.  Accordingly, the festival reflected the city’s artistic treasures.  Besides BBB, major Israeli musical acts, including Chava Alberstein, Ehud Banai, and the Idan Raichel Project, rocked the house. The Orna Porat Theater for Children and Youth, which is in residency at Suzanne Dellal, charmed a family audience.

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. Photo by Robert Etcheverry

Yet it was the dance concerts that revealed the essence of the Suzanne Dellal Center.  Spain and Canada have been particularly supportive of the center, so Vardi invited Madrid’s Compañía Nacional de Danza and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal to perform.

The rest of the dance programming exhibited some of the best that Suzanne Dellal has offered throughout its history.  The acclaimed Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company presented Rami Be’er’s 1994 masterpiece, Aide Memoire.  Choreographer Ido Tadmor revived Cell and Sima’s Pot with cameo appearances by legendary dancers Rina Schenfeld and Talia Paz.

Vertigo Dance Company in Noa Wertheim’s White Noise. Photo by Gadi Dagon.

Another collaboration paired Vertigo Dance Company with the Tararam Group, which fuses dance and percussion.  Vertigo’s tribe of daring dancers threw themselves into Noa Wertheim’s 2008 White Noise.   As the troupe charged toward the audience and tore across the stage, Tararam’s drummers increased the electrifying intensity.  Tararam’s performance also received a fresh twist with an acrobatic solo by one of Vertigo’s dancers.

No celebration of Tel Aviv and the Suzanne Dellal Center could be complete without the Batsheva Dance Company.  Together with the Batsheva Ensemble, Israel’s oldest modern dance company performed excerpts from some of Ohad Naharin’s most beloved repertory.  The dancers’ bodies rocketed into deep arches to the chorus of “Echad Mi Yodea” (“Who Knows One”) and repeated jointed, rhythmic patterns during a synthesized version of Ravel’s “Bolero.”

Dressed in black suits and hats, the Batsheva dancers pulled audience members onstage to a techno rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  The unsuspecting performers gamely grooved with their professional counterparts; some even hammed it up on the Big Stage.

The crowd rooted wholeheartedly for Batsheva, for Suzanne Dellal’s home team and for the most recognizable emblem of Israeli contemporary dance.  Too soon came the end of the festival, but all left assured that Tel Aviv is still moving with grace and purpose as it begins its second century.

The Big Stage.  Photo by Ariel Besor.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• Tel Aviv’s 100th + Suzanne Dellal’s 20th = The Big Stage
• The Holocaust in Modern Dance: Rami Be’er on Aide Memoire

Related Links

• Barak Marshall
• Batsheva Dance Company
• Ido Tadmor
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• Tararam
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Photo of the Big Stage by Ariel Besor.

Something big is about to happen.  It’s the biggest cultural draw in town from May 14 until June 6th.  And fittingly, it’s titled Habama Hagdola: The Big Stage.

This isn’t the first time that the plaza of the Suzanne Dellal Center has been turned into a massive, open air theater.  The pictures in this post show a previous transformation from a few years ago.  But this time around, the construction of the Big Stage is marking something truly huge: the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv and the 20th anniversary of the Suzanne Dellal Center, Israel’s premiere center for dance.

To celebrate both of these occasions, the Big Stage (sometimes translated as the Great Stage) will present some of Israel’s top dance companies and musical groups as well as world-renowned troupes from abroad.  The opening night combines both art forms in a special performance by Balkan Beat Box, with excerpts from Barak Marshall’s “Monger” that are set to music by the popular Israeli band.  As part of the festivities, Yair Vardi, Suzanne Dellal’s director, will receive an award from the Foreign Ministry for his contribution to the field of Israeli dance.

Photo of the Big Stage by Ariel Besor.

In a land whose recorded history stretches back thousands of years, it’s a bit mind-boggling to realize that Tel Aviv is a mere century old.  Consider for a moment the ages of some other major cultural centers in the West: Paris.  Rome.  London.  New York City.  Tel Aviv is but an infant next to these metropolises, but despite its relative youth, the city has developed a world renowned arts scene.

There was certainly concert dance in Tel Aviv prior to the founding of the Suzanne Dellal Center.  Even before the country of Israel was formed, the city absorbed immigrants who had trained in the German expressionist style and laid the foundation for Israel’s modern dance scene.   In 1964, the Batsheva Dance Company opened in town, and the Bat-Dor Dance Company debuted a few years later.  Over the next two decades, Israeli choreographers started to strike out on their own, and they centered their activity in Tel Aviv.

But what really put Tel Aviv on the international map of dance was the Suzanne Dellal Center.  Finally, the city – and indeed, the country – had a complex of world-class theaters and studios devoted almost entirely to dance.  The center became a home for the quickly expanding field of contemporary dance, and its multiple stages and festivals spurred more and more choreographers to create work.  It’s hard to imagine that Israeli contemporary dance would have grown so much and risen to such prominence over the last twenty years without the support of the Suzanne Dellal Center.

With its key place in the city’s cultural arena – and its role in revitalizing Neve Tzedek, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside of Jaffa – it seems fitting that Suzanne Dellal will play a central part in Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary celebrations.  With the Big Stage up and ready to go, let the party start!

The Big Stage Schedule

• May 14, 9 p.m. – Balkan Beat Box and excerpts from Barak Marshall’s Monger (Music and Dance)
• May 16, 9 p.m. – Vertigo Dance Company and Tararam (Dance)
• May 18, 9 p.m. – Ido Tadmor and Friends, with Rina Schenfeld and Talia Paz (Dance)
• May 19, 9 p.m. – Chava Alberstein (Music)
• May 21, 9 p.m. – Batsheva Dance Company (Dance)
• May 22, 9 p.m. – Mosh Ben Ari (Music)
• May 23, 9 p.m. – Rita with special guest Shlomi Shaban (Music)
• May 26-May 27, 9 p.m. – Compania Nacional de Danza (from Spain) (Dance)
• May 28, 4:30 p.m. – Orna Porat Children and Youth Theater (Theater)
• June 1-2, 9 p.m. – Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal (from Canada) (Dance)
• June 3, 8:30 p.m. – Idan Raichel Project (Music)
• June 4, 8:30 p.m. – Ehud Banai (Music)
• June 5, 4:30 – The Apples (Music)
• June 6, 9 p.m. – Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (Dance)

For more details in English on the dance performances, please check the Events page of Dance In Israel.  Tickets can be bought at Suzanne Dellal’s box office, 03-5105656.

Related Articles on Dance In Israel

• “Interview with Yair Vardi: A View of Israeli Concert Dance from the Top” (Podcast)

Related Links

• Suzanne Dellal’s page about the Big Stage (in Hebrew)
• Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Home Page