Let's deal with the Germantown summer sampler first. Several events were occurring within the building, but we were interested in one specific event: Grant Shulman ran a free class of introductory Israeli dancing. Below are some pictures and commentary taken at the event.
Grant had agreeed to provide a teaching seminar for those attending. The rest of the pictures on this line show Grant teaching at the early stages of the evening. Some people did show up who had never done Israeli dance before. This is not held against anybody as this writer was in the same situation 10 years ago. In Grant, since he is by profession a 2nd grade school teacyher, you have someone who is a very patient explainer of steps as you are seeing here in the last picture.
The first picture shows Grant continuing to explain steps. We pan around to take a shot of Yona, a Germantown regular, who is quite an artist herself in terms of video production. The last 2 picture inadvertantly are focused on Elaine, John's wife, in blue. Both Elaine and John are regulars in Israeli dance at Germantown. In the 3rd picture we can't determine whether she has lost a contact or just hanging her head in shame. But, it's apparent by the last picture that she is dancing again, following Rochelle in a circle dance.
We are catching various stages of dancing at Germantown. Both the regulars and some new people are strutting their stuff. Obviously, we are dealing with circle dances and the writer knows this both from the positioning of the dancers and, in addition, to the fact that Germantown does not do partners. The 3rd picture on this line shows someone new to Germantown - we had never seen him before. He is doing one of the circles. Was Israeli dance of interest to him after experiencing it? It will be impossible to know for a while whether any of the new people on the floor continue to have an interest in this type of dancing
We are starting to get into the shots taken about halfway through this session. The faces and clothing are changing. One new face is Lee Friedman who, with her husband, Clark, runs the Cinnaminson International folk dancing group that is also covered by this web site. Lee is an accomplished dancer in several genres of dance. This picture documents one of the few times she was at a philadelphia based Israeli dance session as this summer she has been travelling to attend Scandinavian Dance camps (as explained in the Memorial Day doings link on the welcome page) and the like.
Finally, whatever dance we were tracking has the dancers moving to the center as we see in the 2 pictures above. We believe somewhere near 20 participants were dancing at various times during that evening and we would consider that a good attendnace for that time in August
As indicated on this site prior to and at the time, The Pittsburgh session hosted the Columbus and Cleveland sessions on August 8th in what the participants call the summer pow-wow. We asked Cherie, the leader of the Pittsburgh session, to send some pictures of this event. Below are some of the shots which unfortunately do not show any dancing. Cherie assures this site that plenty of dancing did occur, so much so that no one was available to take pictures as they were all dancing. Perhaps next year, when they hold this event again, the alter ego of the disk coordinator will take a little trip to that part of the state to verify, and prove by picture, that dancing is done during the Pow-Wow.
So, below, are pictures of the pow wow. Cherie is correct - not much dancing but everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. Using first names, going across each row, is Alex, Yehudit and Nili. You see Gary,Nomi and Rebecca posing for the camera. Last on this line apparently ready for the next circle dance is Laurie, Janet, Esthi, Sarah and Sandy. On our next line of pictures is Gary again with Noga, a picture from right to left of Jeannie, Malke and Nili relaxing after dancing and finally a picture of Neev and Stuart.
Anyway, at least we proved that this big affair took place.
On January 16th, 2011, after a spirited Sunday morning session at the Germantown Jewish Centre, a few dancers stopped to talk in the street next to the building. Included in this discussion was Grace, Elana and Jani. As related to this web site, it was Grace who got the idea, "let's have the session get together for a lunch after dancing." And so, a week later, this was done having been organized by these three and the team of Grant and Tamar. 16 dancers and one spouse braved the cold after the Sunday session to travel together to the Trolley Car Diner - about a mile and a half from GJC - and partake in a lunch. We went with them to record this. So, below, we present the highlights of the dance session and the lunch date afterward.
The big event at the session itself was the introduction of a new dance, Tagidu La, choreographed by Gadi Bitton. Germantown is one of the last sessions in the Phila. area to add this dance to their repertoire and several regular Germantown dancers, who are regulars at other sessions, already knew the steps to this dance as Grant demonstrated it to others. The following shots show Grant as he is teaching this dance.
When Grant's instruction was done and the dance music was about to be played, several of these dancers - Elana, Jani, Wendy and Yael - joined Grant and formed an inner circle to lead the session in this dance. The third shot below shows this quite clearly as the camera focuses on this inner circle. It looked both in person, and as far as the camera was concerned, that the other dancers in the session picked up the steps relatively well and with enthusiam. At the time that these shots are being taken, some 24 dancers were at the session marking the 5th consecutive week of 20 or more dancers at this session according to one participant who apparently keeps such a count.
The Germantown session runs from 10AM to 12:30 PM. After the session ended, 16 dance participants and a spouse of one of the participants packed into 6 cars and sped over to the Trolley Car diner (about a mile and a half away on Germantown avenue) in order to wait a while for a set of tables to open up. To the left and right we see the group waiting for tables. Let us point out that on the left we see the smiling face of Grace (peeking tentatively at the camera) whose idea this was (and apparently picked this restaurant as it is one of her favorites - she especially enjoys the French onion soup which she immediately ordered as she sat down). To the right we have included a picture of Albert Kaplan, a well known area psychiatrist, who is the husband of Deborah Kaplan whose work has graced this web site. Deborah is next to her husband and she is in conversation with several other dancers. We should note that the Philadelphia area - in fact the entire East Coast - was affected by a very hot summer followed by a very cold winter. The difference in temperature outside between the summer sampler pictures above and the pictures taken in this diner was about 80 degrees and is indicated by the different dress and clothes for each occasion. Eventually, the tables were readied and in the end the group manned 3 tables and below are pictures of each table and the participents of such at a lunch that went from about 1:15 to 3PM.
Moving left to right in terms of the pictures above: 1) We have a side portrait of David, the backs of Howard and Grace with the middle between Howard and Grace occupied by Lee and Eleanor as everyone at this table is studying menus except for Grace who is in the process of ordering the French onion soup which we will have to try next time. We appologize for inadvertantly missing Wendy and Marc, who both were at that table and have been missed in this shot. 2)Deborah and her husband, Albert. 3)Sylvia and Ellen sitting opposite of Deborah and Albert. 4)Rachel, Elana, Susan, Grant partially hidden (or hiding) and Jani. It seemed as if everyone was enjoying the get together and the resolution was to do this again in the Spring. In total, for the morning, a lot of fun dancing, fine dining and good conversation. Even some nice comments about this web site which is very rare. We had so much fun that when they do this again in a few months, this web site will make it a point to be there.
Note: Germantown has its own unique terminology for Insraeli dancing. One of the dancers has written this up. you can see a discussion of this on Minna'a page by clicking here.
Note: Trolleys are as Philadelphian as Cheese Steaks. you can see a discussion of this by clicking here.