This script is being written mid summer' 17. On June 19, 2017 Beth Sholom held a celebration commemorating the fourth anniversary of its Monday night Israeli dance class. We felt that someone should document how this class came into existance and who better to do this than this web site that attempts to cover Israeli dance activities in the Philadelphia area. We begin in 2013 and introduce the players who allowed this Israeli dance class to flourish. Note:You can see the original size of any of the pictures by clicking on it

We turn our attention back to April of 2013. From that perspective, since the mid 90's, the Beth Sholom synagogue in Elkins Park had hosted at least one ongoing weekly Israeli dance class. In fact, even as late as 2011, the synagogue played host to two sessions of Israeli dance a week. Up to 2013 these weekly sessions had been taught by Mimi Kogan (aka Mimi Cogan) {bsdance/mimi2|pictured here from her appearance at Hora Aviv 2009|in a recent picture}, Sharon Polsky and Don Schillinger.

Mimi started it all around 1995 while she was in the Philadelphia region with her husband. When she (and her husband) returned to Israel in 1998, Sharon Polsky assumed the session leadership and ran the class until 2011. Don joined with his own class in 2008. You can see that from 2008 through 2011 the facility hosted two weekly classes. Unfortunately, as far as the Philadelphia regional dance community was concerned, the Email indicated in this montage said it all: After April 29, 2013, apparently the synagogue would no longer be the host of a session of Israeli dancing.

At the time of this Email announcement there were six regularly scheduled Israeli dance sessions in the immediate Philadelphia area. Don was session leader for three of these: Sunday night at Or Ami, Monday night at Beth Sholom as discussed in this script and Thursday night at Adath Israel. But, behind the scenes other changes were about to be made. The Email pictured above announced Don's intention to close the Monday night session, but the leader of the Tuesday night Cherry Hill session, Naomi, had already indicated her intention of either getting a replacement or closing that session due to her own life style changes. Several of the regulars at Don's Monday session also regularly attended Naomi's Tuesday session and for them all of these simultaneous changes would be significant.

These two classes at the time, Don's and Naomi's, run the gamut of reasons why sessions close or change leadership. One example is that lifestyle changes for a session leader - Naomi would be an example - start to eat up time that would normally be spent learning and perfecting the new Israeli dances that seem to crop up hourly (although it really is weekly). Most instructors learn the new dances at many of the Israeli dance workshops given around the world. If you don't have the time to attend any of these workshops to keep up, your session suffers. And for a conscientious leader, like Naomi pictured above leading at several of Cherry Hill's field trips, this is not acceptable.

Another reason is financial. If the revenue generated from the attendance is consistently lower than the cost of the rent and supplies - snacks, food, computer and audio equipment, the cost of workshops and the procuring of music - a session leader has a good incentive to close down. One of our editors at the time was interested in the costs associated with running sessions and was contemporaneously talking to several session leaders including Don about this monetary nature of Israeli dance. He relates that Don's Emails indicating this closing came as no surprise. This montage of pictures attempts to show the gamut of additional expenses beyond rent.

Anyway, on Monday April 29, Don's final Monday night session at Beth Sholom was celebrated by a complement of about 35 dancers. We present several pictures taken that night which is also part of our script that celebrates the history of dancing at Beth Sholom that you can access by clicking here.

While dancing was going on that April 29th, some in the crowd mourned the upcoming disappearance in Monday night dancing. Others looked at the loss of a facility very well suited as a dance location. Beth Sholom is known as the synagogue that Frank Lloyd Wright designed (you can see more about this by clicking here and moving down to the relevant part), but dancers know it as the location of the Fischman auditorium. This is a large room with a stage, adjacent food preparation and storage area and a good floor. These pictures were taken several years ago at the beginning of a night of dancing when attendance was sparce.

In the Philadelphia area, when one looks at where the dancers come from, Beth Sholom is in a centralized location as this map indicates. Using the black circle to indicate the location of the facility. (1) the green arrow indicates the Tacony Palmyra bridge over the Delaware river separating Pennsylvania from New Jersey. The bridge itself is US route 73 and New Jersey drivers can follow 73 west and pass Beth Sholom as the synagogue is a block away as 73 moves through Elkins Park. Those coming from the Northwestern suburbs of the city (the Blue arrow) can use the Rt 1 extension (also known as the Roosevelt Blvd extension) to connect with 611 and head north to go dancing. And, those in the northern Philadelphia suburbs can use the same 611 (known as Old York Road or the Old York Road Corridor) that the facility is on.

Even in its immediate vicinity, one would think a dance class could draw from the Jewish institutions in Elkins and Melrose park. This map shows the location of Gratz college, Adath Jeshurun and the Keneseth Israel congregations in relation to Beth Sholom. In fact, all of these institutions combine dancing with other celebratory events around Israel Independence day generally in early May. Anyway, given the last two maps, one would have thought that there should have been some way to allow for a weekly Israeli dance session to exist at Beth Sholom?

Above we mentioned the number of sessions available to the regional Israeli dancer as Don ended his Monday night sessions in April 2013. Most of the classes ran on a specific business model - a session leader paying rent to run a session in a facility. In this way, the survival of the session in some way depends on the number of dancers that can be attracted. However, two of the sessions, Germantown and Wilmington, ran - and still run - on a different basis. In Wilmington's case, the dance class is really a part of the Arden Gild. Arden Delaware is a very interesting residential area built on the concepts of Henry George. It forms an independent small conclave within one of Wilmington's northern suburbs. The Arden gild is made up of multiple gilds including one for dance. The dance gild incorporates contra, international and Israeli dance sessions each month. The Wilmington Israeli dance session is really the Israeli dance subgroup of the dance gild of Arden. That means that the use of the Gild hall is free to the group although the facility is 109 years old (at the time of this writing) and lacks air-conditioning precluding its use during the summer months. The Arden Gild also provides some publicity and support to the group by way of the Gild's web site and some funding. The dance session further augments its funding by charging fees to both gild and non gild members although the gild members receive a discount. The pictures in this montage include the group dancing at the Arden Fair in 2011 and on a typical Wednesday night at the Gild hall. You can see more pictures about the Arden Fair and specifically the 2011 Arden Fair by clicking here.

Another model, somewhat similar to the Arden Gild, is the Germantown Jewish Centre which houses three congregations close to the Germantown avenue corridor in the Northwest section of Philadelphia. The Israeli dance session, which meets on Sunday mornings throughout much of the year and on Wednesday nights during the summers, has an annual stipend of funding to use (and free use of a facility auditorium) which is also augmented by a reduced session fee for all the attending dancers. The session is expected to be a part of synagogue life and many of the session's dancers attend facility events whether members or not. The pictures in this montage are taken from a script studying the Germantown session which you can access by clicking here.

So our story now switches to two individuals who took it upon themselves to try and save the Beth Sholom Monday night session using a variation of the "business" model indicated in the previous montage. One is Talma Solar, a member of the Beth Sholom congregation and at the time and presently a teacher in the synagogue's Hebrew school program. The other is Steve Margolis who was at one time a member of the synagogue. Both Talma and Steve are members of the Philadelphia Israeli dance communuity and generally spent most weeks dancing at all three of Don's sessions at the time.

In both cases - Talma and Steve - outreach went to Harvey Friedrich, executive director of the congregation of Beth Sholom. As executive director, Friedrich is the highest ranking lay official of the facility. Those who are members will know his name through his messages in the Beth Sholom weekly E-News publication (we've included his latest message at the time of this writing) . In addition, with Beth Sholom's distinction of being a Frank Lloyd Wright designed synagogue, Friedrich is frequently called on to represent the synagogue when discussing the building's unique architecture{four yr beth/friedlich2| as indicated rightmost which is from an architectural website}.

Talma and Steve's outreach to Friedrich was done separately. Steve indicated that as a former member of the congregation the Synagogue's assistance in keeping the Monday new session going might attract new members, or be an incentive for lapsed members to rejoin. In Talma's case she approached Harvey as a current member and as a current teacher in the synagogue's Hebrew school. Friedrich asked Talma the following: Besides herself, was there five additional current memebers of the synagogue who already did Israeli dancing and who would attend this proposed class. If so, he would consider allowing the session to continue as a part of the synagogue's social events and membership services calendar (indicated in this montage - which also includes the Beth Sholom choir as you can see).

Easily Talma was able to rattle off the following names: Marek, Menachem, Lynne, Malca and Marina, some of whom are pictured in this montage. Many of them generally attend multiple Israeli dance sessions over the week. So, it was easy to assure Mr Friedrich that a core group of dancers were already situated to attend any future Monday sessions.

These conversations between Talma, Steve and Harvey occurred in May. Once the go ahead was okayed the prospective dance session was now a part of the Beth Sholom administration. There would be no rental required for the Fischman auditorium but lines of communication would need to be established within the synagogue. The prospective class was put under the administration of Julie Glass, director of Program and Membership Services and it was her name that would be announced as the contact as regards to information about the class although at present Talma has taken over this responsibility both actually and in name. The middle of June, 2013, was set as the first class session under this new management. Interestingly enough this web site received notification of the new class through a secondary source, Grant, who is the leader of the Germantown session. This montage shows Grant's Email on June 9th, 2013, {four yr beth/julie glass|and a picture of Julie Glass as indicated on Beth Sholom's web site|}. Rightmost is the first Email sent out by Beth Sholom.

As we arrive at June 10,2013, two things remain to be resolved for Talma and Steve. The first thing is to provide teaching instruction. The resolution of this falls to Talma. This is especially important if Talma is expecting any number of beginner dancers. Someone must show them the steps or they will go home disillusioned and unwilling to come out in the future. In this Talma enlists Sharon Polsky. Sharon is not new to this! In fact, until 2011, Sharon was leading a small Tuesday night class at Beth Sholom before it was disbanded. Sharon agrees to do this for free and we have one part of our two piece puzzle solved.

Additionally there is another aspect to dancing that needed to be readied in the month and a half layover between April 29 through June 10th. This involved the music and equipment. In this Steve Margolis provided an answer. Steve used his own Macintosh computer that he had purchased from Nurit Brown, an Israeli dancer from the New Brunswick, NJ area, which was already loaded with the MIT DJ player and some 3000 Israeli dance music selections. Contacting everyone who he felt had some dealings with music (including this website specifically to access our TDC disks) he further stocked this machine with even more music. Prior to June 10th, with some other help, he created several playlists of Israeli dance music that could be used for the Monday night sessions. He also invested in a set of large and powerful speakers that amplified the whole room.

We can't find anyone who took any pictures on that first night of the revival of dancing at Beth Sholom. But we can hazard a guess as to how it went. Prior to 7:30 Talma would be busy preparing the table where food would be placed for the dancers to nosh on (although some dancers would bring something to share). Steve would be busy connecting the components of the computer system together. This would be the computer itself, the speakers and a mixer to control the sound. Once the computer was up and running Sharon and Talma would select a playlist already loaded - as mentioned above - in the MIT program. At 7:30 or so Talma and Steve (and possibly Sharon) probably gave speeches of welcome. For the evening the MIT program controlled the computer although someone babysat it just in case. For the first 45 minutes or so Sharon Polsky showed those assembled easy Israeli dances. After a while it was general dancing. By 10:30 the evening would be over with everyone feeling a sense of accomplishment. We can assume some of this by looking at the first Email from Beth Sholom that this web site received that you can see here. And this Email tells a tale of the added responsibilities for Talma. The Synagogue uses Constant Contact for its Email campaigns and the use of this commercial software is under the control of the aforementioned Julie Glass. Talma is about to take a crash course in this software as the session establishes a routine of a weekly Emails to dancers (presently sent to 237 recipients with new addresses added weekly). Eventually these Emails will document the recent dances taught and the video links to find them.

The next big event at Beth Sholom would take place in about six months and in this period one assumes this new Israeli dance class would establish some norms and policies. For more flexibility we assume that a black board was very quickly installed to handle requests for specific dances. The reliance on the MIT program probably diminished as human intervention by either Talma or Marek to select other music increased allowing the session to appropriately handle requests for specific music and dances written on that blackboard. Participants could voluntarily contribute to a pot for the night that went to pay the maintenance men charged with setup and closing. Other participants would continue the tradition of bringing some cakes and goodies for the enjoyment of the crowd. The first 30 to 45 minutes would include instruction by Sharon Polsky, at first. Past the instruction of the first 45 minutes, the dances would get progressively harder through the night. Near the end of the night and only in rare cases, when the sexes matched equally in numbers and capability would there be a partner set.

Unfortunately this new class puts a lot of time pressure on Sharon especially as the summer progresses. We know from our write up on her, which you can access by clicking here that Sharon does a lot of travelling during the summer. In addition, sometime in October (although the negotiations had been going on for a while) the Email indicated here arrives which augers changes to Sharon's schedule as she will be taking over Naomi's Cherry Hill class at Temple Beth Sholom (TBS) in November.

At first, until other responsibilities come to the fore, Sharon's replacement - when Sharon can't make it - is her friend Ellen Weber. Ellen's exposure to Israeli dance goes back to the original Israeli dance class in this area, the U Of P Hillel class active in the late '70s/early 80's. In fact, the leftmost picture in this montage is of her attending that class at that time. Over the years Ellen has participated in various Israeli dance classes in the region, not to mention Israeli dance workshops around the world, and is very familiar - to the point of demonstrating - with many of the dances that Sharon is teaching each week.

But, in the long run, to relieve Sharon Polsky other dancers volunteer to occasionally teach dances. One of these dancers is Marek who was a part of the initial discussions on the continuation of the class. No one spends more time studying Internet videos of Israeli dance! Very few know more dances than Marek. And over the last few years he and his wife, Ofra, have been regular visitors at many of the worldwide Israeli dance workshops. No doubt Marek tentatively steps his toe into the Israeli dance teaching waters circa late '13, early '14 but over the years he has become more confident and more competent in demonstrating steps in the middle of the circle.

Besides professional teachers and choreographers, there have been others who have taught at this session over the years. Early on there was Kim, Osnet and Steve Schwartz. We don't have pictures of Steve Schwartz, but topmost are some pictures of Kim teaching at Germantown and bottommost are picture of Ossie and her husband dancing one night at Beth Sholom.

Another dancer who wouldn't need to be invited twice to teach is Lee Friedman. Lee has also been a subject in this web site of a script on her dance activities and she has taught both Israeli and International dance around the world. Since the timing would be right, we're sure that Lee taught the dance, David Melach, at Beth Sholom around the same time that she taught it at Germantown.

Few israeli dancers have the pedigree of the dancer profiled in this montage, Hannah Chervitz, who also taught at least one dance at this session. Hannah grew up near St Louis, Missouri and in her teens augmented her parents in teaching International (and some Israeli) dance at their dance session in the St Louis suburbs. Coming to the Phila area at the turn of this century to attend the University Of Pennsylvania, Hannah quickly became an influence in Israeli dance in this area. At one time Hannah was the dance teacher at the Sunday night dance session when it was located at the Klein JCC in the Northeast. Here we see her at at the Cinnaminson International dance session on a Saturday night when the Zlatne Uste Balkan Band made an appearance. Hannah is equally at home doing Israeli as International because of her background.

While he is generally very busy teaching and preping for his own classes - both 2nd grade in the Philadelphia school system and at Germantown on Sunday mornings - Grant Shulman also contributed to dance instruction at Beth Sholom when he taught the dance Sodot early on. Besides this one episode of teaching, the advent of this Beth Sholom class has allowed Grant to move the Sunday morning Germantown repertoire closer to that of the Monday night Beth Sholom class. This is the result of requests from the many dancers who take both classes on a regular basis.

And that brings up another observation touched upon above. For many of the dancers at Beth Sholom, this session starts a dance week that ends up with the session at Germantown on Sunday morning. It's somewhat difficult to determine the effect of Germantown on this Beth Sholom session. But, as mentioned above, it's easy to see and hear the effect of Beth Sholom on Germantown. This montage shows Wendy, Lillian, Sharon, Susan and Susanna, all of whom would become regulars at both sessions.

By October it becomes apparent that there will be a loophole in the normal Christmas eve Philadelphia regional Israeli dance marathon procedures. Traditionally, Don's Thursday night class has seniority in running this marathon but because of scheduling problems Don had set his end of year '13 festivities for the Saturday before, Dec 21. Even the name that Don assigned for this event - THe Philadelphia's Winter Israeli Dance Marathon - makes it clear that this was not specifically a Christmas eve marathon either by name or purpose as you can see to the left. As such, this newly revised Beth Sholom class decided that it would enter the breach with its own celebration that Christmas eve. This montage shows both Don's announcement of his event (including the announcement for the Thanksgiving eve marathon) and the announcement by Beth Sholom.

Usually near the end of the year there are schedule changes and annulments as dancers, both leaders and followers, are travelling or enjoying end of year festivities. Because Don had cancelled his end of year Sunday night classes which normally would be covered by Rob Markowitz, Rob would be available to DJ the Beth Sholom Christmas eve marathon. Rob is well known as a DJ of Israeli dance music throughout the Israeli dance community and his addition would be an added plus. This web site covered both yuletide parties (you can see our coverage by clicking here) and both were interesting events. In Don's case, most of the out of town visitors were from the Washington/Baltimore area whereas the out of towners at Beth Sholom generally were from the north like New York city. The pictures in this montage are from Don's end of year 2013 event on Dec 21, 2013 and show dancers doing both partners (topmost) and lines.

Three days later the pictures in this and the next few montages were taken. We'll focus first on one of the guests from New York, Danny Pollack, who is well known as a dance instructor in both the Israeli and International dance communities. These pictures show him giving an impromptu dance lesson during the evening. If you've never had the opportunity to be involved in a dance teach by Danny, you are missing an experience: a combination of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Michael Flatney. In a way, whenever Pollack is in the Philadlephia area, its a sort of homecoming as he is a gradulate of the University of Pennsylvania with an accounting degree. Whatever the loss to the field of accounting, Danny has more than compensated with his contributions to dance and choreography.

This montage tries to highlight the out of towners (mostly from the north) who attended the '13 Christmas Eve marathon besides Danny Pollack indicated above. We've not been able to further crop many of these pictures shown here so for many of our readers this may not be very informative. You'll have to take our word for it. But, we're interested in the characteristics of the attendees because at this web site we are always interested in what attracts the different groups of dancers in the Israeli dance community. Why did the Baltimore/Washington group generally head over to Don and the New Yorkers (and environs) come to this event. Our limited guess would be that the addition of Rob as DJ is one answer. He's known and appreciated by the New York crowd for a variety of reasons and this was probably what made the Beth Sholom event attractive to them.

The Beth Sholom session outdid itself foodwise. Of course this was the first event of the session with a specific charge. But we think you would agree that the $5 charge certainly was worth it given the availability of dancing pictured above, the opportunity to learn a dance from Danny Pollack and to sample the food as indicated here in this montage.

With the new year (2014) new additions become a part of this Beth Sholom class. The dean of local instructors adds his efforts to the class. Israel (Sorin) Siegler was born in Romania and developed an interest in International folk dance - the native dance of his homeland. When he moved to Israel he also naturally became interested in Israeli dance. When he moved to the Philadelphia area in the late 70's, Israel joined the nascent Israeli dance class at the University of Pennsylvania. By 1987 he was at the Gershmann Y in the capacity as a member of the committee: a group of attendees that ran the session and also provided teaching instruction. At any session that Israel attends he is inevitably asked to guest teach. This has happened over the years at all of Don's sessions. Not surprisinging the call to guest teach also happened in this session as Israel and his wife, Pnina, started to regularly attend these Monday sessions during 2014. The leftmost picture in this montage shows Israel (under red arrow) some 25 years ago when he was a part of several Israeli dance entertaiment groups. The other pictures in this montage show Israel and Pnina doing a circle dance at a recent Beth Sholom session.

As we head into Spring 2014, changes continue at the Beth Sholom session even as far as geography. We had mentioned somewhat earlier in this script that Sharon Polsky in Nov'2013 would be taking over the Cherry Hill session on Tuesdays. No doubt she mentioned the Beth Sholom class to her Jersey students. In some ways this resulted in cross fertilization as several of the Cherry Hill dancers (some pictured in this montage) would cross the Delaware each Monday night to dance. And, one more thing no one expected is that this would contribute to the session's taste buds as Etty, leftmost, generally arrives with her homemade goodies.

One of the men above is Gary Rosenberg. Gary is a professor at the Academy Of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia although he lives in New Jersey. In academic circles Gary is well known for his studying, documenting and general knowledge of Mollusks. In the greater Phila regional Israeli dance community Gary is also well known for his documentation of a Region wide play list. His interest in starting such a list was a result of his visits to the Beth Sholom sessions where he would hear a different repertoire than what Sharon would play on Tuesday nights in Cherry Hill. After a year of regularly attending both sesssions - Monday at Beth Sholom and Tuesday at TBS in Cherry Hill - Gary produced his list. You can see more of this by clicking here.

By the middle of 2014 there is a little less competition and a bit more opportunity. As of June 8th, Don closed his Sunday night class. Prior to the closing for many of Don's dancers there was little incentive to attend Beth Sholom if they were dancing both Thursday and Sunday nights. Without Sunday there was a pickup in attendance of those dancers who usually frequented the Sunday night session. We can mention a few names of dancers who we know started to attend on most Mondays: Jody, Warren, Cindy, Iris and {four yr beth/hannahx2|John, accompanied by his wife Elaine,|John} all pictured here.

Another result of the closing of the Sunday night dance class is the addition of the aforementioned Rob Markowitz, one of the most respected of Israeli dance DJs. We think that Rob is pictured here setting up his own equipment and his weekly appearance allows Steve's Macintosh to be retired from operations. Besides an innate sense of music, Rob brings his own experience of running an Israeli dance class to the Beth Sholom repertoire each week. This web site understands that Rob had been asked to volunteer his help some months before but apparently his agreement to substitute for Don at the Thursday and Sunday class when Don was away kept him from giving any commitment. With Sunday no longer an option, this freed Rob for Monday night. At first he used his own computer but presently he uses a computer that the group has purchased exclusively for the session's use.

We would like to move our narrative into 2016. But before doing this we should make note that Sharon Polsky would be doing less and less instruction of dances (and Marek more and more) due to the problem of scheduling. So, in February 2016 during the President's day weekend, the session invited the noted Israeli/International dance teacher Roberto Bagnoli to give a workshop on the Tuesday after President's day (Feb 18, 2016). Roberto is based in Italy but frequently jets over to this country to give two week dance workshops around the country. For February, 2016 the iternerary included Orlando Florida, Harrisburg PA, Beth Sholom in Elkins Park, Fort Washington PA, Washington DC and Alberquerque, NM. Our montage shows a map illustrating the trip.

Roberto runs a summer Israeli dance camp, Camp Yofi, adjacent to Lake Garda in Italy. Many of the Philadelphia regional dancers have attended this camp over the years including Sharon Polsky, Lee Friedman, Andrea Wallach, Ellen Weber and Wendy and David Friedman. In addition Roberto holds Israeli and International dance classes year round centering around the village of Reggio Emilia, Italy and these classes were attended by Israel and Pnina Siegler during their recent year of living in that country. So, not surprisingly, most of the dancers who have dealt with Roberto in his native country met him for dinner before his Beth Sholom workshop as indicated here.

If one looks through the Internet, there are multiple praises about Bagnoli's teaching style. Click here to see a biography of Roberto. Our website covered Roberto that night at Beth Sholom and we think that every participant enjoyed Roberto's style of teaching. Roberto has the capacity to as easily merge in with a circle as he has to enter and be at its center. This was especially evident at the beginning of the evening when these pictures were taken and Roberto joined the early arriving dancers moving along the circle.

But, of course, the highlights of this evening at Beth Sholom is when Roberto walked into the circle and assumed his role as leader/teacher of the extremely large circle made by the overflowing crowd as shown in this montage. What we thought was interesting is watching the attention of the dancers, both beginner and advanced. All eyes were trained on Roberto and all seemed to enjoy his teach. This may be Roberto's gift: dealing with dancers regardless of ability or experience and having them all enjoy the evening.

A highlight of the evening didn't even involve an Israeli dance. Roberto taught Tu Romnie, part of the International dance repertoire. Included here is the video (video is top,leftmost) and a few stills from the video that we shot of Roberto teaching this dance that night. Besides watching Roberto, look at the dancers. You can see them mimicing Roberto's exagerated movements. It's interesting given that this is their first exposure to the music. They have limited exposure to the dance steps given that Roberto had spent some time showing them the dance. You can see their enthusiasm which speaks highly of the type of dancers that Beth Sholom is attracting for their weekly class. And, by the way, there is a script on this website that documents Roberto's trip across this country in February, 2016.

A year later, during the President's day weekend of 2017, Beth Sholom again played host to a professional Israeli dance teacher. In this case, the visitor was also the well known Israeli dance choreographer, Sagi Azran, who also teaches a weekly Israeli dance class in Los Angeles. This LA class must be very interesting as we assume Sagi debuts his newest choreography on that floor. But, for this script, we will concentrate on Sagi's appearance in the Philadelphia region during the President's Day '17 weekend. Besides his appearance at Beth Sholom on Saturday night (Beth Sholom held a special session that weekend), Sagi also appeared at Don's special sessions the next day in the afternoon and evening.

Sagi has been choreographing dances since 2004 when we think he also visited the Philadelphia area to appear at one of Don's sessions at the time. When younger his choreographies tended toward line dances. In these later years he had added partner dances. All the while he has also been choreographing circle dances. In this two appearance weekend in the Philadelphia suburbs Saga taught the circle dance, Kululu, at both the Beth Sholom session on Saturday and at both sessions of Don's classes on Sunday. He also taught two partner and one other circle dance during Sunday. We should mention that Sagi's compositions are well known at Don's session where his partner dances Hi Lo At, Ksheat Halacht and Kmo Tziani Im Gitara are regularly played. This montage displays Aura Lipski's Australian database information about Sagi's choreography from 2010.

While a script on Sagi's activities in Philadelphia on President weekend'17 has not been written yet (we're getting there) this web site did cover, by sending a photographer, these activities. These pictures here show the prep work needed for that Saturday evening of dance and instruction. At left we start with a powwow between Marek and Sagi. {four yr beth|The next photo shows Talma being put into this mix.} Apparently powwows can sometimes be thirsty as we see Sagi heading for a drink. Notice the tables and chairs ready for the visitors and finally we see the first two arrivals: Yael and Sharon.

So, in this Israeli dance night/day double header, Sagi first arrives on Saturday night, Feb 18th, 2017 at Beth Sholom. He draws quite a crowd as our representative counted 107 participants that night. This montage concentrates on one couple that we always enjoy seeing although we rarely get to photograph and that is Don Schillinger and his wife, Karen. In some of the pictures Karen is sitting with Menachem. We know that Don likes to be able to popularize choreographic talent and so it was not a surprise that he would show up as encouragement to Sagi. Of course, since Sagi was going to show his new dance, Kululu, perhaps Don {four yr beth/don1|, who you can see dancing rightmost,} was there to get a running start tutorial for the next day when he would be hosting.

So, as you can see, for the second year in a row Beth Sholom provided professional teaching instruction, not to mention choreography in the case of Azran, during the President's day weekend. These pictures show the circle dancing that occurred that night. And, specifically, we think these pictures are of the crowd doing Kululu.

Above we showed the events of two President day workshops - one with Roberto Bagnoli and the other woth Sagi Afran. One assumes that this tradition will continue. But another tradition has also been established which will be the content of the next few montages. This tradition is to celebrate the middle of June as the anniversary of the restart of the Beth Sholom Israeli dance session. Middle of June 2016 would have been the third anniversary and for this anniversary Talma made provisions for a two CD set of Israeli dance music to be given out to the attendees. This montage shows the case cover and the two CDs designated as Beginner and intermediate.

This celebration of the third anniversary incorporated an old with a new tradition. Beth Sholom has quickly gained the reputation of having the best food available for the dancing crowd and this event did not disappoint as the leftmost pictures illustrate. A new tradition was to have the principals take the microphone and make some speeches and rightmost we see both Talma and Marek at the microphone. Both deserve great credit to resurrecting Monday night dancing in spite of many hurdles.

Consistent with what has been discussed it was Marek, rather than Sharon, who did the teaching later on in the evening of June 20th, 2016 which the group celebrated as its third anniversay. What is being shown here would have been an instruction in a new intermediate level dance that Marek, situated in the middle of the circle, would be presenting. What about Sharon?

Well, Sharon was present and did the beginner instruction earlier in the evening. We know this because our photographer happened to get Sharon's teach at the beginning of this session of the Israeli dance Irisim. And he got this in a unique way - from the inside of the circle. You can click the image in this montage to watch this. Notice while Sharon is teaching additional dancers are arriving. Some join the circle for Sharon's teach and others await other music.

Our last montage about the session's third anniversary celebration has several shots taken of the dancing about 8:30 in the evening. For those not familiar with Israeli dancing, this is showing a typical dance with movement around the circle, generally counter clockwise, with sections of the dance having the participants move into and out of the circle. Typically in an evening at Beth Sholom there will be 35 or so such dances during the evening.

One year later, it's time for Beth Sholom's fourth year anniversay celebration on June 19th, 2017. And this web site was there and took a few pictures of the general dancing but also pictures of the food table. We should make clear that this is not just a perk supplied by the session. Many of the dancers bring kosher snacks. {four yr beth/ety1|One dancer specifically, Ety from New Jersey (and mentioned earlier) pictured bottommost from another event this web site covered, has been extremely generous with her own home baked items as mentioned above.}

You are already aware that a set of tables and chairs are ready for visitors within the Fischman auditorium. Generally our photography is taken in front of this but these pictures, for whatever reason, are taken behind the furniture. Notice how different the dancing looks. Many dancers (and some who are not dancers but onlookers) use the tables and chairs for rest or perhaps for conversation. Now here's a quiz for you. Many of the users of these chairs and tables have already been identified above in various pictures taken while they were dancing. Click the pictures to enlarge! Can you place them from earlier in this script.

Talma and her group were ready for their guests with a unique party favor. The year before it was CDs in a jewel case. This year it was frisbees. And not just any frisbee but a mini frisbee which would fit in a pocket until opened. We see Sharon here (who also is one of the answers to the question posed above) with hers. Throughout the night, when appropriate, dancers would throw some of these to add to the celebration.

One of our readers apparently extended his use of frisbees to include his cats. Feline interest in frisbees was confirmed by these pictures: the first shows the frisbee, the second has the frisbee caught at a printer (red arrow) and the interest aroused among the cats. The other pictures show feline inquisitiveness once a frisbee has landed.

And we close this script with several more pictures of circle dancing early in the June 19, 2017 session that celebrated the four years since the session was resurrected. It's been an exciting four years for the group, don't you think? Dancing almost every week, playing host to celebrities such as Roberto Bagnoli and Sagi Azran (and others). A CD collection of beginner and intermediate dance music distributed to all. Bashes for anniversary celebrations. We didn't even begin to cover one other set of events: the celebration that the session is involved with to celebrate Israel independence day in early May along the other Jewish related institutions along the Old York road corridor. Well, perhaps we'll cover that next year when we prepare our script for the fifth anniversary celebration. But, for now, we hope you've enjoyed this script about the Beth Sholom session.