Sharon and Aaron's Oldies Dance Marathon of Nov 20th, 2010

Let's start with some pictures of Aaron in his role of DJ for this party. His equipment is Apple based and his sound system certainly was up to the task for this occasion. By the time the early dancers arrived, Aaron was up and running. Below are some pictures of Aaron as he played DJ.

Equally important is Sharon Polsky, whose original idea this was. She began the project as a added session to teach older Israeli dances but it quickly became the marathon that is described in this script. Sharon, who runs her own session on Tuesday nights at Beth Sholom in Elkins Park, was a major presence this night and was instrumental in the publicity that this marathon attained throughout the East Coast. Below, are some pictures of Sharon during the evening.

A third component was the invitation to Danny Pollack to lead the dancing. If you are not aware, Danny Pollack, who went to the University Of Penna for undergraduate work in some financially oriented field, returned to New York and has become a leading international and Israeli dancer and teacher. Some of us in the Philadelphia area know him from his appearances over the Labor Day weekends at Shorashim which takes place at Bridge For Dance in New York. Below, we have some pictures of Danny at this affair where generally he was in the lead for most dances.

You can tell how popular a marathon is by the instructors who show up to dance. By this measure, this marathon was very popular. Below are some pictures of these instructors who were in attendance.

From left to right is Danny Pollack of New York whom you have already met above, Don of RakDan, Grant who presides at Germanotwn, Gabby of The Wednesday night session in New York, Clark from Cinnaminson, Rob who used to run the Klein Sunday session, Donna who teaches International dance in the area, Judy Freed who at one time was the instructor at Germantown and Sharon Polsky who you also have met above. Another instructor, Naomi, attended this event but inadvertantly no picture were taken of her.

Besides instructors, some sessions have administrators although for many sessions the instructor does double duty as such. The administrator usually acts as the go-between with the facility and is sometimes asked to provide financial acumen. Below are some people who could be considered administrators for past and present sessions.

From left to right we have: Lee who helps run Cinnaminson with her husband, Clark; Tamar, the administrator at Germantown; Rich, who we usually see collecting money at the Klein JCC and who did double duty for that weekend with his presence here; Jackie, who has catered all sorts of events including the April 17th, 2010 event documented on this web site; and finally Rob Malerman who used to run Cafe Israel on Sunday nights at the Klein JCC.

One of the expectations of the marathon was to lure older Israeli dancers out of hiding - have them become engaged again with music and dance that they were familiar with. Obviously, in identifying the last individual above, this was successful, This apparently was the first Israeli dance session that Rob Malerman participated in some 10 years and our photographs of him here were happenstance. Since the marathon, Rob has become active is several sessions around the Philadelphia area and everyone who knew, or now knows, of Rob's efforts in previous years as to this activity is happy to welcome him back and we have surrounded this paragraph with some shots of him enjoying this evening

And it wasn't just Rob who made it back. Several inactive dancers made the marathon and danced away to music whose steps they were able to remember. Below is just a small amount of photographs of these dancers who for whatever reason had stopped attending Israeli dance sessions. And why would you stop if you had an interest in this? Some of these pictures show those who met their spouses Israeli dancing. While the spouse continued to dance, their need for intermingling with singles decreased. Others, here, suffered physical injuries that curtailed these types of activities. Still others started families with non-dancers, if you will, and were too time consumed to continue with a dance genre that demands and requires a lot of attention. Whatever, the reason, it was good to see some of these people back on the dance floor.

Now, we were struck by the number of participants from the different Israeli dance sessions we cover on this web site that made it to this marathon. There is no doubt that the personal visits and explanations at that point of Sharon, Lee and Aaron made an impression. We can document this by giving you a breakdown. Note: Some dancers will appear more than once as they participate in more than one session throughout the week.

Below are some pictures of circle dancing occuring during the beginning of the marathon. Of the 7000? israeli dances that exist at the time this script is being prepared, generally 40% of the dances are partners and the rest split between lines and circles. Lines were important in years past, probably due to the demographics of the participants at that time, but there were no lines played this evening. At the beginning, the play selection was skewed toward circles and below we see some early participants of this. Later in the evening a more even split occurred between circle and partner sets.

Below are some pictures taken at random as partner dancing was taking place through the beginning of the evening. We should add that because of unforeseen problems, most of the pictures taken by our camera equipment that appears on this script were during the first hour of the marathon and therefore skewed toward circle dances. As stated, the later hours provided for increased partner dance sets.

It was a great evening for Sharon and Aaron. We are sure that attendance exceeded expectation. Plenty of dancers arrived from outside of the area to add to the festivity. It was also great to see those who had no longer continued with their interest in this genre of dance become participants again and we know, in one case, that an interest has been rekindled. Kudos go to Sharon and Aaron (and to some degree Lee and Clark) for creating and administering this evening.

We thought we'd devote a little discussion in this script to Israeli dance partners. There is a myth that partner dances are more prevalent today than in the past. If you use the Aussie database at www.israelidances.com, you can run numbers to determine the number of circles and partners created through the decades. This is a great resource in determining information about a particular Israeli dance or the dances in general since it seems to be the most comprehensive database available for those of us who only speak English.

Just a quick check shows an average of 42% of the dances choreographed, get choreographed as partners for the 80's, 90's and 00's. How often these are played is another matter as certain groups play circles only (including Sharon's generally) and several sessions are more partner dance oriented. In years past, as we date back to the eighties, it was apparently an unwritten code that only 2 partner sets per session would occur. At present, those sessions that feature partners hit 6 to 8 partners sets as a norm. Therefore, Israeli dance partners, based on percentage of play, have quite an effect on those sessions that support it.

However, anybody sampling the decades of partner dancing must make a conclusion that the partner choreography is becoming more sophisticated and less like international folk dancing. No longer do most dances allow the couples to split and dance with others. Generally, the partners are moving counterclockwise and staying more or less self contained as a couple although splits in movement forward and backward, or into and out of the circle are common.

We thought we'd use this space to give those readers not familiar with Israeli dance partners a little more insight to this dancing. Below are a sequence of shots for one dance. Let's analyze the steps and positioning by concentrating on a couple (which will change as the circle goes round), several couples in the vicinity and the entire room.

Although this was inadvertant, on one partner dance the camera held steady as the couples moved past. We will try to describe, for those not familiar with this genre of dance, what is occurring keeping in mind that Israeli, like International folk dance, has set choreography for each beat of the music. Each of the following montages will provide 3 pictures: the first on a specific couple; the second on couples in close proximity and the final being the full shot. Israeli dance follows ballroom parlance is indicating that the inside partner has the 'lead', the partner on the outside is the follower. Notice the quotations because lead may not convey the same meaning as ballroom dancing. The couple above, red and white are beginning a joint outside turn. In this dance terminology, inside is where the lead's right shoulder goes forward and/or where the follower's left shoulder goes forward. In this case, red's left shoulder is going forward, white's right shoulder is going forward. Both are doing an outside turn. In Israeli dance, since choreography has already been created, this is not uncommon. But for ballroom dancing, except for night club two step where this is the underlying steps, one would find this more difficult given that the male would be forced to lead (indicate this a half beat before) this. The propensity for joint outside turns in Israeli dance is a major difference from ballroom dancing.

Now, if you look at the closest couples and the line, for the most part everyone is in a similar position of turning, although you can see that red and white are somewhat late. As we will see this is not atypical in Israeli dance since the already established choreography allows couples to recover and make up the beat. We will see further instances of this since the already established choreography allows the partners to be early or late in doing a step. This could never occur in ballroom as the follower is mirroring the lead and the timing would be destroyed. Here you have the advantages and disadvantages of this type of dance. In Israeli dance, the lead partner doesn't really have to worry as much about beat and music. The lead also doesn't have to worry about 'lead'. But, both lead and follower must know the choreography (steps) beforehand to really be good at this.

We are back looking at the same couple. Red has led white to his right. But this will not be a full turn. In fact, they are about to head the other way. Similar to other dances, lead in some ways must follow or generate momentum. Israeli dance is more nuanced than ballroom in this again because of the choreography. In ballroom, this type of movement has to be short (and could we joke, to the point) and then swiftly sent the other way to keep up with the tempo and beats of the music. Israeli does allow the partners to take several beats to accomplish this since the lead partner is not forced to provide 'lead'. These partners will be moving to your right, their left, as they move counterclockwise along the circle. The right hand picture above of the couple closest to red and white shows the lead of that couple looking around to determine what steps to do at this time. You can see the lead looking forward for guidance. Let's assume they miss this turn. Israeli dance partners in this case can be very forgiving as they can take a shortcut to the next pattern. In ballroom dancing, the lead would be really silly in doing this pattern of steps if he didn't know the set of steps given that he has to 'lead' the follower in doing her steps. Generally Israeli dance patterns are more involved that what a ballroom dance couple would do unless that couple really was advanced in a dance. The rest of the couples are in the process of doing the sequence of steps in a similar manner to red and white although in this picture red and white are ahead of everyone else as opposed to lagging as indicated above.

Here we see blue and black in the midst of 'swinging' into what is called offset (ballroom) position in Ballroom and ballroom position in Israeli. The couple above was already in ballroom position. Offsets generally (although there is exception) don't really have meaning in Israeli dance couples. In offset ballroom, the lead is using his hips and body to get his partner, the follower, where he wants her to go. This is very obvious in many ballroom dances especially tango. In Israeli partners, since everyone is supposed to know where they are going, this really doesn't matter. In the end, blue and black will endup in an offset position but only because the choreographer's choreography requires them to move this way along the circle. We see in the picture of the couples next to blue and white that they have already completed this and, similar to our first set of pictures of red and white a few rows above, our featured couple above is slightly late in doing this but there will no consequences for this lateness.

On focusing our attention on this couple, white and striped, we see them in what in ballroom would be considered as promenade position and in what would be a traditional dance pattern (probably also called promenade) of international folk dancing. That genre also has established choreography but is not as aggressive as Israeli dance in forcing movement. Most partner dances in International folk dancing start with a variation of this pattern of promenade called the sweetheart or cuddle position where the follower is, in essence, cuddled by the lead as they both move forward in line of direction. You would also see this pattern in square dancing. Now, we don't know to what degree white and striped are following the steps because the other couples seem to be in something else at this point. Remember, above, we did say that individual partners in this type of dancing can be late or early and we don't know which of these is occurring

In ballroom, it would be very rare where the partners split and are on their own. How can the lead 'lead' at this point if not in contact with the follower at least by hands and more preferably by body contact. International folk dancing and Israeli dancing do not have this limitation given the already existing choreography. A favorite movement of choreographers is something called a banana turn. Why this is the expression, we have no idea, but the turn for the lead is rotating around with his left shoulder going back (turning on his left would be the professional's way of saying this) proceeding three steps directly away from his partner and then completing the turn to head back to his partner in another three steps. The follower does a similar turn although she is mirrowing the right and left descriptions. In Israeli dance this is a favorite way of choreographers to move the couple into the next phase of dance and this is what's happening here as what is known as a 'part' of this dance has been completed. In the picture of all the couples, you can see this banana turn progressing down the line.

And, we're back to where we started with red and white a few rows of pictures above. Black and green are in a modified ballroom position (although the hands are wrong) and ready for movements to the right and then left. Hopefully for those not familiar with this type of dancing, this gives you a little feel for the steps and movements of both partners in a somewhat typical Israeli dance.