We will start by giving more information as to the previous questions. The instructor of a Tuesday session in the London environs and the choreographer of Enigma and Shkarim, not to mention an all-around nice guy, Roberto Haddon visited the Philadelphia Area en-route from Dallas, where he was a featured teacher at the RikuDallas Israeli Dance Workshop, to Hilulim which was being held in upstate New York.

Arriving on Sunday into Phila., jet lag did not prevent Roberto from joining the Klein JCC session where he led his own choreographed dances, Enigma and Shkarim, and taught two other dances at this session. Someone did not bring their camera to the Klein JCC to document this visit, but that same someone made sure, with camera and flash ready, to document Roberto's visit to the Monday session at Beth Sholom run by Don Schillinger and then again on Tuesday at Sharon Polsky's session. Below, we will feature pictures of Roberto's visit to Beth Sholom on Tuesday, but the pictures right and left of this section were taken at Don's Beth Sholom class on Monday night, Nov 1st.

Philadelphia has one of the most active Israeli dance schedules in this nation. This web site covers 7 regular sessions and many special events. The locations range from South Jersey through the Main Line into Wilmington. And yet, it is rare that choreographers make it to this area. The last time would have been in May, 2008 when some of the guest choreographers of Hora Aviv 2008 made it to Don's Thursday session before that dance weekend got underway on Memorial Day. With so active a community, this visit was well publicized and highly anticipated both to the fact the Roberto is known to all the principals involved - Don and Sharon see him quite regularly at dance workshops - and that his dances, Enigma and Shkarim, are favorites to dancers in this area.

Roberto received a warm welcome when he arrived Sunday night at Don's Klein JCC session. His activities at that session fixed the pattern of his teaching over the next two days as he showed and taught two dances, Avi Levy's Yam Harachamin (Sea Of Mercy) and Malach Hagoel Oti (Angels Watching Over Me) choreographed by Yuval Tabashi who at present is in London at something called the Israeli Dance Institute where he is dance development manager. Roberto would concentrate on these two dances when we encountered him next at both Beth Sholom sessions.

It is obvious that Roberto is very comfortable in teaching dance. Besides his own talent in dance, he has a very winning personality and later in this script, we will concentrate on this aspect of Roberto's visit. But we can at least say that he has the knack of putting everyone at ease as he teaches. He also has a well developed sense of humor. Especially with Don, both were able to play off each other.

So, here's how the Monday session, which normally runs from 7:30 to 10:15, unfolded. When the disk coordinator arrived at Don's session that Monday, the place was already packed. For those readers who are not locals, Beth Sholom is on what is designated as the Old York Road corridor and tends to draw 80% of the attendees from that area. But it was apparent as soon as you walked in that this was to be a different evening as quite a few of Don's Thursday night and Sunday night regulars were in attendance and needless to say it was quite crowded and the place was hopping.

Looking at this section's pictures (they move down on both sides of the screen), starting at the left, the first two pictures show some regulars of Don's Thursday class who normally would not be at this one. We can see Iris on the right dancing up a storm. The left of this first picture shows the couple, Hanoch and Osnat, who frequent both the Thursday and Sunday night dance sessions. At Iris' right (the viewers left) is Marek, who, with his wife Ofra, attends almost every Israeli dance event and this was no exception. The picture below catches Warren, Mindy and Sharon in a somewhat somber and reflective mood. The third picture on the left shows a circle dance in operation and we can identify Ami (who you can see in his day job as the first of the personalities in that section of this web site) and Jani, who has been mentioned many times on this site as she is an enthusiastic Israeli dancer. We interviewed her below as you will see. We see other dancers in the circle including the back of Walter, one of the oldest dancers in the Philadelphia area and still able to make several sessions a week.

Roberto has arrived and is talking with Don as we continue. It's always obvious that at least one topic has to be discussed between guest choreographers and/or guest teachers and the host: what is Roberto teaching and what music is involved. The picture below has Don introducing Roberto although many of the crowd knew Roberto from past marathons and dance weekends and others had been introduced to him the night before at the Klein JCC.

The next picture is very fascinating to this author as it shows the intermingling of the Philadelphia area Israeli dancers. To the left is Sharon Polsky who would host Roberto the next evening at the same location. Somewhat hidden is Rita, a newer dancer who generally makes Don's Monday night class and then Sylvia, who is a regular at the Germantown Sunday morning class with Roberto in the middle pondering the crowd. This is what is appealing about Israeli dancing in the Phila. area. Quite a bit of the dancers make it to multiple sessions.

We end the left side with several pictures of Roberto leading the dancing and instruction. Even Don partook of Roberto's lessons and it seemed as if everybody enjoyed this. Keep in mind that Roberto leads a session in England which may be somewhat more advanced than what was here and it is possible some of the novice dancers had a degree of difficulty with the dance selections and instructions. In this, Israeli dance makes its mark as there is a somewhat steep learning curve for beginners.

We move to the right hand pictures. At the top, we continue to see Roberto leading the dancing. Based on the positioning of everyone, we think that this is Avi Levy's dance, Yam Harachamin. Some time ago both Don and Rob (who every so often subs for Don) had taught this dance and this made it somewhat easier for those who had seen it before to catch on rather quickly.

The third picture shows Ofra, Marek's wife, following Roberto. In addition to Israeli dance, Ofra is part of the Phila Israeli choir which makes periodic appearances through the course of the year. This is, of course, in addition to her day job as an operating room (OR) nurse. And, in this, Ofra is not unique - almost everybody we are photographing at this event has a profession and does Israeli dance in addition to the duties each profession requires. This includes the disk coordinator and Roberto, who it turns out, is a part of the data processing profession in his work as a Database Analyst consultant to the University College of London.

The fifth picture down on the right shows two Thursday night dancers deep in concentration watching Roberto. To the left is Diane, who works for a technology company and to the right is Judy, a psychologist. Both attend multiple sessions generally through the week and apparently enjoyed this brief visit by our guest, Roberto, as he partook of several local sessions himself as indicated in this script.

The rest of the pictures on the right show Roberto as he continues to teach and demostrate the dances. In one of the shots, we see one of Don's most energetic students meeting Roberto in the middle of the circle. This is Liat who is the daughter of another dancer, Marina, and who has been one of a group of teen-aged dancers that Don has been tutoring in advanced aspects of Israeli dancing. Also, notice that our semi novice, Rita, is keeping up. For those not familiar with this type of dancing, it seems overwhelming at first as there is a tremendous amount of memorization needed, but this can be overcome by a stick-to-it-ness as demonstrated here by Rita.

As promised, we have moved to Sharon Polsky's class at Beth Sholom the next day, Nov 2nd. Sharon has been in preparation for her own appearance at the Nov 20th Cinnaminson marathon which she is to run with Aaron Rosenberg, who we will also see in these pictures. Nov 20th promises to be a night of dancing to older, classic Israeli dances. This night, Tuesday, Nov 2nd, promises instruction by Roberto Haddon in newer Israeli dances which may one day meet the standard of the term, classic. Our first picture to the left in this section is of Sharon preparing for Roberto and her other dancers. We've documented this before for Sharon and the other dance instructors. On their shoulders is food and drink prep, location and room prep and computer and sound system prep - getting everything ready for a night (or session) of dancing. At least for this night, Aaron Rosenberg would be handling the computer operations.

The next few pictures show the session dancers doing what they like to do best: dance to the music. You might be able to recognize some of the dancers from Don's session the previous night. This includes Wendy and her husband David, Rita, Jani and Sharon, herself. By the 6th picture, the dancers had been augmented by Lee in the blue sweater. Lee helps run the Cinnaminson folk dancing session where Sharon and Aaron (not to mention Danny Pollack of New York) will be holding their marathon. Lee is a very enthusiastic dancer in whatever dance she is performing. Besides Israeli dance, Lee regularly attends International folk dance, Cajun, Swedish and Waltz sessions, marathons and weekends. It always is informative talking to Lee given this background.

Lee arrives slightly before 8PM and almost exactly at 8PM, our guest of honor, Roberto Haddon, makes it once more to the Fleishman Auditorium of Beth Sholom as he had done the previous night. Attired this night in a green TShirt, we were about to see a repeat of the teaching and dancing of the day before except for one big exception. In this the disk coordinator had a small part to play. He joined a chorus of voices from dancers demanding of Sharon the following: Have Roberto teach his most famous choreography, Enigma.

Perhaps this is what is being discussed between Sharon and Roberto as Aaron preps the computer. Of course, just as with Don the previous night, Sharon knows Roberto from Israeli dance marathons and workshops from around the world. The next picture pans around to catch the two of them continuing their discussion. In short order, Roberto would be in the center of the circle leading and teaching the session but in the interim we catch him on the sidelines. It was at this point, having inadvertently blinded him with our flash, that we asked him some questions whose information we can relate to you.

Apparently Roberto was a language major in college and he is fluent in Spanish and German besides his native English. After college he began his career working in what is now known as HR (human resources) and this led to some interaction with computer departments and he evolved into a database analyst on Oracle systems which are high level SQL databases for those of you who are interested. When he learned that the disk coordinator had some tie-in to data processing, he naturally asked about the languages in which we were fluent and was surprised to learn that we were limited to English and not really good at that either as any visitor to this web site can attest. Today, Roberto still works as a consultant in Oracle database programming but solely for the University College of London where a major assignment is data scubbing the alumni database.

Generally when the disk coordinator is discussing computer science, the conversation usually drifts to mutual interests in crossword puzzles and left-handedness, which surprisingly Roberto does not share. In our conversation this night, the drift was into his choreography of Enigma which he would later visualize in front of Sharon Polsky's class. As Roberto indicates, he became interested in the music of Enigma and eventually, encouraged by other advanced Israeli dancers, created the dance we know today. Adding detail to this discussion, he later indicated that the music was done by the group, Zig Zag, and he happened to hear this music on a trip to Greece in the early 1990's and it took him some 10 years to perfect the steps and have it pass muster to become an Israeli dance.

It doesn't take much to pique the disk coordinator's interest and subsequent research by the disk coordinator indicates that Zig Zag is a Latvian band founded in 1986 which continues today with several of its members never having left the band since its inception. This author has listened to other tracks of Zig Zag, including Disco Dance, and like most "new age" bands, some of the music is good and some of it is not so good. We do want to warn you if you feel like researching this yourself, that any Google (or search engine) results involving Eddie Chapman and the Enigma coding machine is leading you down the wrong path although for this author, who studies espionage activities during World War II as a interest, it provided a subsequent ironic twist on the conversation we have just related with Roberto.

The rest of the pictures on the left show Roberto teaching the same dances taught the previous two nights. He did reverse the order for this and we are probably seeing Malach Hagoel Oti (Angels Watching Over Me) choreographed by Yuval Tabashi in these shots. And speaking of this dance and music, these demonstrations of it over the last few days were the first time local dancers have seen this dance or heard the music and we expect that it will become part of the local repertoire. The music grows on you and by this point, the third night in a row that some of us were being introduced to this, we were humming away with this music as Roberto was teaching. The steps are quite interesting also showing great creativity by the choreographer, Yuval Tabashi, who is presently based in London.

The right hand side pictures show Roberto as he moved onto Avi Levy's Yam Harachamin. We don't think that this is a dance that had been previously taught by Sharon to her group so for many of the dancers this was the first time they were being instructed in it. But they gave a good showing in this and by the end of Roberto's teach, the group had learned two new dances. We should note that the first two of these pictures on the right shows Rebecca who has just returned to dancing from a hip injury. She is acquitting herself quite well despite her extended period of inactivity.

You can see as we progress down these shots that Sharon's group is practicing the steps of these dances and eventually everyone, including Sharon and Roberto, is in the circle dancing.

Interestingly enough, we've come to the highlight of this evening although we have no pictures to show of this. Roberto agreed to Sharon's request, egged on by many of us, to teach his most famous dance, Enigma, as mentioned above. This we couldn't miss and the camera was set down as yours truly joined the circle. Roberto did not fail to live up to expectations and we all were subjected to the meaning of the steps and how they should be done.

Before discussing what this dancer learned from this demonstration, we should note that other instructors have taught this dance at Philadelphia area sessions. We hope that they understand that a teach by a choreographer on his own dance gives quite a bit of added insight that a teach from another instructor cannot deliver. How could it be otherwise, if you think about it. The following should not be taken as a criticism of any other person's teaching ability, but here's what we learned.

1.The middle of the first part is a glide of 2 steps and not a form of kick, ball, change

2.The end of the first part on the first iteration ends with a step, hesitation, step, step in keeping with the syncopation throughout the dance.

3.The end of the first part on the second iteration ends with a lift of the right knee

4.In the middle part, the movement is to become smaller, not larger as this dancer was doing. This was a complete surprise.

5.The additional steps after completing the dance a second time involves specific crossing of your feet as you move inside

We ask you the following. Do you think this added insight was worth the price of admission? We certainly do and thank Sharon for her insistence in having Roberto teach his dance, Enigma.

What about Roberto Haddon as a teacher of Israeli dance? How was he? Some people who are very talented in areas can be awful teachers. We see this in sports all the time where those with a natural talent can't relate or pass on this natural instinct and talent to others. At dance camps, many dancers will complain about choreographers being insensitive to the limitations of the abilities and memorization capacity of average dancers. Roberto does not have these problems. His good humor and open personality work well when he is in the center of the circle. You can see some of this in these two sets of pictures. The woman in the red top, Susan, is an advanced Israeli dancer who arrived late at Sharon's, specifically to see Roberto and both have met at various camps and marathons over the years. You can see a genuine friendship and comaraderie in these first pictures.

The woman in green, Eleanor, is a local dancer probably not known to either Susan or Roberto. Eleanor probably knows most of whatever is being danced but not to the level of Susan and Roberto's expertise. Yet, as this dance progresses, both join hands with Eleanor and all three are dancing away to the beat of the music. It's possible that both Susan and Roberto thought that their proximity might provide Eleanor with more insight. What is certain is that there is no sense of arrogance or insensitivity in this as you might see in other choreographers. The pictures below show Sharon doing the same thing and you can see the easy intermingling of both stronger and weaker, veteran and novice dancers moving together in the circle. We were impressed as we were taking these shots. How about other opinions?

Jani Rosen happens to be a couples dance partner of the disk coordinator at other sessions. We asked her what she thought of Roberto as an Israeli dance teacher. Her comments ranged from, "wonderful to watch" to "easy to follow." Jani has had many years of dance experience, in a variety of different styles, and it is her opinion that Roberto's creative flair has been heavily influenced by his exposure to International Folk Dance. Per Jani, "Take the stiff and moving arms while holding hands in Shkarim as one example of this. And don't forget his choice of music in both Shkarim and Enigma."

Whether arm movements, jokes, disposition or personality, Roberto Haddon came, saw and conquered the local Israeli dance community in the three short days he spent with us. We all are better dancers because of him especially in the dances he is associated with either as choreographer or instructor. For one dancer and sometime web designer on this site, it was fun both in experiencing his visit and reliving it while creating this script. Thanks to Roberto, Don and Sharon for making all of this possible.