The GJC Dancers Present G11 “Centennial”(Blue Label)

Prologue – The locations as of Jan 1st, 2008

Chapter 1:  The Line Dances

Chapter 2: The Circle Dances

The Philadelphia area has a large number of active Israeli dance sessions. This document covers 6 (7, if you split Wilmington). There’s great overlap in repertoire and dances taught at all the sessions. But diversity does exist as exemplified by next 6 dances. We have selected a dance apiece unique to each location. Hopefully you’ll enjoy both the music and the diversity.

The 2^nd annual Mini Philly workshop occurred over the July 4^th weekend. Like last year, the visiting artists Naftaly Kadosh and Avi Levy joined Eitan Allouche in presenting several circle and partner dances including the next 2 dances.  The Mini Philly camp is becoming more popular with increased attendance being drawn from the Washington and New York area, not to mention locally.

On October 13^th, some 30 dancers partook of Don’s semi-annual session at Germantown. Don taught the next 3 dances, 2 older and a new favorite, Liya. All of these have now become part of the Germantown repertoire. It’s always a pleasure to see Don at Germantown and everyone is looking forward to his next appearance in Spring ’08.

When Don’s away, the teaching duties for his Tuesday and Thursday class generally fall on Mindy Levin’s shoulders. Well, who’s more qualified? Mindy aspired to be a ballet dancer as a youngster, and she continues this dream by teaching other aspiring ballerinas in dance at the Beth Hillel school. Given her training it is not surprising that her dancing is precise and taut, each step a work of art. This quality pervades her teaching. The next 2 dances are among the several she has taught for Don in the last year.

Mamr’rim Taking Off, Soaring(H)		Rafi Ziv	2007		D
		Introduced by Max Steiner at Don’s Pre Thanksgiving blowout, this dance starts as a circle and ends almost as a line dance. Everybody seems to agree that it’s good music with representative steps.
Avre Tu Please Open(L)		Roni Siman Tov	1983	Lyrics by Itzchak Levi Sung By Parvarim	D,G,S
	For those not Spanish equivalent of Yiddish to German.  Five hundred years later, there has been somewhat of a revival if you consider the creation of a Ladino rock band as such. The Sarah Aroeste(right) band, named after its lead singer, has fused the two somewhat disparate themes and you might want to check them out. Another ladino artist, on occasion, is Yehoram Gaon, who is the singer of Tehila
Halev Nitpas The Heart is caught(H)		Rafi Ziv	2007	i	D,R,S,W

For the 3rd year in a row, the Cherry Hill group took a road trip and performed at a senior citizen center in South Jersey. The past two years the performance was at Brandonwood and this year at Lionsgate. On Nov 14, Naomi led 11 smiling and vivacious dancers (and 1 dour, frowning one) onto the carpeted postage stamp of a dance floor where the Cherry Hill group performed 10 dance numbers to acclaim. The next two dances were among those performed at Lionsgate

The Israeli dance community supports a series of dance camps throughout the year. One of these, Chagigah, occurs every fall in Wisconsin where the next two dances of this CD - Banu Lehair et Hair and Eifo Hein Habachurot - were taught in 2007 and subsequently taught at Naomi's and Don Schillinger's sessions - each taking turns introducing one of these dances to the Philadelphia area.

Don held one of his frequent partner workshops on Nov 6^th 2007. What made this session interesting, if not unique, was that he was also in the midst of a six week beginner session, so you had quite a mix of dancers and capabilities around 8:00 when the beginner session was near an end and many were entering Adath Israel for the partner workshop.  For a bit, the sexes were almost even and Don extemporaneously and successfully taught an additional partner dance to this rather heterogeneous crowd.  There is no doubt that Don is amazing in some of the things he does on the fly:  Looking around the room he was even able to pinpoint and mention the dancer whose first partner exposure was the dance being taught. The following three partner dances commemorate that great night

Anyone who knows the disk coordinator (although his identity remains a closely guarded secret) knows of his fascination with the author, Ian Fleming (pictured at right circa 1960). May 28^th,, 2008 - only a few months away in the middle of the Memorial Day week - marks Fleming’s centennial. What’s this have to do with music and especially a discography of music played around the Philadelphia area? Well, let’s find out!

Fleming was born the second son by a year to a very prominent and affluent British family. His father, later killed in WW1, was a confident of Winston Churchill and his grandfather was at one time the richest man in England, having made his fortune in the American Railroad boom and bust of the mid 1800s - similar to the internet boom of several years ago.

It’s his interactions with his older brother, Peter, that’s of interest here. Ian played the part of the younger brother brilliantly. Where Peter strived and succeeded becoming a world famous adventurer, lecturer and author before the advent of World War II, Ian shuffled his way through life from job to job. Where Peter had a strong and vibrant marriage, Ian moved from affair to affair.

In fact, Ian’s only pre WWII achievement was the direct antithesis of his brother. He collected books amassing the first printing of every major scientific, psychological and medical work over the previous century. This appropriately named Fleming collection, still in one piece at Indiana University, remains one of the major book and manuscript collections of the 20^th century some 45 years after his death.

WWII was no different vis-a-vis the two. Both served with British intelligence.  If you read the book, the Deceivers (by Thaddeus Holt), Peter has chapters written about him, Ian has 3 mentions.

Post war, Peter continued his meteoric career while Ian settled into op-ed journalism splitting time between England and Jamaica. Here fate takes a delicious and mischievous turn. In 1952 at Jamaica, having impregnated the wife of his previous publisher/employer, never a good career move,  he decides - since he may have neither career nor job when he returns to England - to write a book that extrapolates one of his many failed assignments during the war.  Of course,  in this fiction would be success. And, as in real life where Ian was the most jovial and humorous of the brothers, Fleming’s hero is to be the antithesis of his creator: the most colorless, humorless dullard - an almost anti hero interested only in the most superficial aspects of life - cars, drinks, clothing, etc  (somewhat like the disk coordinator of this CD in a manner of speaking) .

For this dullard, Fleming searches for the most boring name he can find which he finds lying on his book shelf: The authoritative bird watching tome “Birds of the West Indies” by the renowned ornithologist James Bond, a professor and scholar at Philadelphia’s Academy Of Natural Sciences (whose boyhood home, today part of Gwynedd Mercy College in Lower Gwynedd, a Philadelphia suburb, is pictured at the right and was the site of Hora Aviv 2008). Neither the would-be author nor the scholar had ever met. Fleming appropriates this name for his hero and the book is ultimately published. Here’s the Philadelphia connection.

Every year, until his death in 1964, Fleming uses his vacation in Jamaica to produce the next episode in this series. Each time the hero becomes more constrained and uninteresting while the villains become more powerful, vibrant and psychologically fascinating. The books are absolutely humorless. They make, at the same time, the oddest, drollest and most fascinating series of books about one character ever created in at least one person’s opinion, John F Kennedy.  One of the Fleming books makes President Kennedy’s list of favorite novels in the famous Life magazine article of 1961. Ian, to his great delight, if not glee, is now more famous than his older brother.

Eventually this “hero” moves from page to screen. Similar to Mel Brook’s  ”The Producers”,  almost everything goes wrong filming this first adaptation. The betting is that the movie will never be distributed. The only saving grace is that the screen writers are forced to add humor to the script to even make filming possible.  Almost in spite of itself, the movie’s successful.

Fleming, when he sees this first movie, is livid at the producers. How dare they put humor into the mouth of his creation! And he’s not alone. The professor of ornithology can’t understand the crank calls he’s getting in Philadelphia from pranksters looking for Pussy Galore or Doctor No.  He’s livid when he finds out that Fleming has stolen his name - boasting of such in interviews.  And add another person to this irate list. The supposed music coordinator of this movie is livid when he finds out - as he sees the movie for the first time - that the director has surreptitiously had his music rewritten and there is now a question of who should get the real credit in the future for the creation of this movie’s music theme. A lawsuit some 30 years in the future would determine this answer.

All this forces the producers for the next movie in this series to come up with a new title theme, a tradition that still continues throughout the 21 movies about this character over the years. It’s a great body of musical work when you consider the length of time. And as far as research shows, it’s a first that a film series uses different music themes for each installment. Well, here’s the music connection. So, the next track of music on this CD is dedicated to all the following for the upcoming Memorial Day week: To those past and present servicemen defending our country; to the hope that all Israeli dancers at the various Memorial Day camps find air conditioning; to the somewhat strange and perplexing life of the Professor of Ornithology, James Bond, whose namesake has provided thrills for the last 50 or so years (The Philadelphian James Bond's burial plot is pictured to the right); and finally to the hero of younger brothers everywhere, Ian Fleming. It’s the greatest pleasure and honor to close this CD with the end theme of the second James Bond movie. This is the adaptation of the 5th James Bond thriller, the one that appears on the Kennedy list. We present

Table Of Index

This CD package was made possible through the help of many people including Debbie Kaplan(logo creation), Don Schillinger(music), Ellen Weber(proofing), Grant Shulman(music and additional material), Haim Soicher(translation of G11), Hannah Chevitz(music and additional research), Jani Rosen(music), Les Grunes(Additional research), Naomi(additional research), Rob Markowitz(music), Sharon Kleban(music), Sharon Polsky(additional material and proofing),Tanya Buchman(music), Tamar Magdovitz(additional research and a soft shoulder to cry on) and Yona Diamond Dansky(DVD creation and editing). The GJC dancer logo is the property of Debbie Kaplan[3] who has been gracious enough to allow us to use it throughout this G11 package. Unfortunately, until a suitable scapegoat is found, the disk coordinator remains responsible for all mistakes, omissions, trampling of legal copyrights and any subprime interest mortgages taken out to fund this project.

This is the end of the G11 disk, but the Germantown Jewish Centre dance disk will return as G12 sometime in the future.

[1]Israeli Dances come from all over the world. In translating them, (A) is Arabic, (H) Hebrew, (L)Ladino , (S) Spanish

[2]D-Don’s sessions, N-Naomi, G-Germantown, R-Rob, S-Sharon Polsky, W-split sessions at Wilmington. Bold italic means regular repertoire, Normal is occasional, Underline means that this dance will be taught in the near future.

[3]Besides being one of the regular dancers at Germantown, Debbie Kaplan is a professional artist and calligrapher. You can experience her artistry in action in her class in calligraphy for the Main Line School Nights.

This CD contains Mamr’rim and Halev Nitpas both choreographed by Rafi Ziv. The G8 documentation discusses this choreographer somewhat and if you would like to see this documentation, click this link

This Cd also contains the track 'Suerte' by Shakira. If you need a little more information about Shakira, click here