Since February 2nd, the disk coordinator had remained burrowed in his secret location awaiting the arrival of Spring. And it sprung on the week of Feb 28th through March 6th when many Israeli dance events were scheduled. This web page documents several of them picturally which you can see below.
In addition, we should first report that two other events occurred the week of 2/28/10-3/6/10, neither of which we have received pictures of and therfore cannot picturally show to you
- Don began a beginner session at Beth Am on that Tuesday. He reported that 25 were in attendance which he thinks, and we second, is pretty good for a beginner Israeli dance session. Hopefully these dancers will persevere and join the already established classes when Don's session is done at the end of March
- An informal (and unofficial) Cherry Hill field trip was done at a local college. Cherry Hill has had some studens from this college in attendance for the last few months and this was a way of showing the rest of the student body this type of physical activity.
We start with the disk coordinator's 40 minutes of DJing the Feb 28th Sunday morning Israeli dance class at Germantown. We guess this amounts to our 40 minutes of fame. To keep in sync with Grant Shulman, the TDC had bought both an IPOD and Bose speaker for amplification. Grant had been kind enough to load the IPOD with Germantown's repertoire. Grant had to leave early on Feb 28th and for a short period the IPODs played music together (one active while the other was readied) until Grant departed. At that point the disk coordinator was left to solo using his new equipment. Below you can see some pictures of the equipment and some pictureof the dancers in the Tenin canteen which is the alternate location for dancing within the building when the Marcus auditorium is being used.
| Here's the equipment side by side. The Bose speaker - to the left - is a newer technology but apparently not as powerful as Grant's existing speaker to the right. Nevertheless they are both set up here for play.
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To try out the system, the first dance played was Salamati. In the background, you can see that Grant has gone over to have some water. Salamati, whose music and lyrics are by the Iranian/Swedish Artist, Arash, is a personal favorite of the disk coordinator
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Here's a picture of the disk coordinator's equipment standing alone. Below these pictures, we include a playlist of those songs played during this 35 to 40 minute time period
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Whatever is being played here (and we think that this is Kachol requested by John who is seen dancing in this picture), it doesn't seem to be too popular as perhaps 4 dancers are taking part. Kachol is a difficult dance to do after several hours of continuous dancing as it has extremely tight and quick turns.
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| Germantown has grown in popularity over the last few years and attending the Sunday session has become a highlight of Sunday for many of the dancers. You can see that attendance was in the twenties on this occasion
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You can see the dancers led by Grace as they move around the support. Grace for a time was the instructor at Germantown prior to Grant taking the helm. Probably we are watching the 2nd part of Rokdim Yechafim as the dancers do a "parallelogram" to the music
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In this picture we can see Sharon Polsky who attended this Sunday session that day. Sharon has been a guest DJ over the years when Grant has not been able to make it. On this day, however, the TDC acted as backup
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Below,
as indicated previously, is a playlist for the 40 minutes that the TDC was at the helm. The music selected to be played was from a list provided by Grant who therefore deserves either the credit or blame for the selections
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The following is the playlist for the Disk Coordinator's 40 minutes in the limelight
Sharon Polsky's Tuesday night class had been affected in February by a variety of factors including snow. Early in February, Sharon had suffered a knee injury which cancelled one class as she was required to seek medical support. And the continual snowstorms had affected at least one more of her Tuesday classes in February (as the snow storms affected everybody's schedule). But, on March 2nd, part of Marching Madness week, Sharon was back in operation promising a surprise for her Tuesday class. To the left you can see what Sharon prepared. Since this class occurred close to the Jewish holiday of Purim, a Purim party was the theme for that Tuesday night. With Sharon sporting a princess headband, the participants indicated to the left are Joan (partially cut), Adina, Lynn, John Franks, Florance, Rebecca, Rita, Sharon Polsky, Susan and Yaacov.
Of note: John Franks and Sharon Polsky were also pictured above at Germantown and for this week, Feb 28th through March 6th, both were everywere which is denoted in another section of this web site. But, as to the picture to the left, for those who are unfamiliar, here's a synopsis of Purim from the web site www.purim.com. Purim is a time for happiness and cheer. Celebrate Purim and enjoy a fun time of the year when it is a mitzvah (good deed) to eat, drink and be merry. The holiday celebrates the overturning of a plot by Haman, aide to King Ahasuerus of Babylonia, to kill the Jewish residents of that empire (approx 600 BC). The plot was foiled by Esther, who was the queen at the time, and you can read of this account in the aptly named Book Of Esther which is part of the old testament. So, since it was a time for gift giving and partying, it was an apt surprise that Sharon had in store for her class that session.
Beginning last October, this web site had added the International Dance at Westfield Friends School Gymnasium to the scheduling programs of this site. We found out that several Israeli dancers would be in attendance on Saturday, March 6th and we made provision to attend. First, however to business. We had become aware that one of the principals of this session, Lee Friedman, had attended 3 different dance sessions on Sunday, Feb 28th. In her honor, this site has established the Iron{wo]man Israeli Dance award and, as a surprise, the first order of business was to give Lee her award plaque and an accompanying box of Chocolate. To the right, you can see the awarding taking place with Lee in the middle. Not seen is how the box of chocolate - a combination of orange peel and dark chocolate - was gobbled up.
Below, are eight of the pictures taken during this session. About 15% of the dances would be familiar to an Israeli dancer and most of the rest were easy to follow. Belw you can even see a partner dance in progress. At the end of the session - which runs from 8Pm to 10:30 - a request for Darkeinu to be played resulted in the last two pictures of the carousal arranged below where you see thse familiar with Israeli dancing taking the fore.
