The disk coordinator thought it would be a good idea to try to track the Israeli dance music played at many sessions. Assuming you were a visitor to a session, what type of music could you expect? You can already check this web site for location, time and duration. But what about the music? To this end we present the actual playlists of a session for some groups, the theoretical playlists of some groups, the playlists of special dance events, the playlists of substitutes and even an attempt to come up with an area wide music repertoire.

A few Notes: It's been several years since we scoured Youtube and the like for videos of Israeli dances. We are in the process of rescaning. We have also been active in trying to find the underlying music as you can see. As to these lists, a control will show you all the videos found of a dance at that time and if one doesn't work, choose the next. Also notice that the videos are broken down between dance video and music video. A "yes" in music video means that you can click the yes to see a music rendition of the song. In addition, by positioning your mouse over the choreographer, a panel will display any information we have on music (creator, lyrics and singer). Most of this information has been copied from the Israeli dances site www.israelidances.com run by Aura Lipski. Aura's database is the standard as far as information is concerned about the discography of Israeli dance.
For a while this script has contained the results of a project by Gary Rosenberg to catagorize a regional playlist for the Philadlephia area. This has been moved to its own script which you can access by clicking here.

HTML 5 allows for a web site to host video. We've tried to add this to this script: The videos in question are indicated in red. Unfortunately, not everything works to plan as of this moment. Once invoked, the video will hog the video player. In this case, if you want to look at another of the red indicated videos, you will have to reload this script. We might mention that the loading process is also time consuming adding to the problems. We'll continue to study these new changes and make this easier to deal with.

On Feb 4, 2017, to celebrate her birthday, Lee Friedman took the helm of the Cinnaminson International dance session. Lee has many times appeared in this website as a participant of Internation and/or Israeli dance sessions. Here we find her as she emcees this session. Below is her discography for that evening

On Nov 13th, 2016, Marc Rauer subbed for Grant at the Sunday morning Germantown session. You can read about this by clicking here but at this point we are giving you a playlist for that morning.

We're a little late on this but we've run into an Israeli dance workshop that crisscrosses many of the interests of this web site. The specific workshop occurred in May, 2013 in Melbourne where the Zooz Israeli dance session is based. This weekend affair featured Shmulik Gov Ari teaching his own dances which are listed below. We should note that the pictures shown here are from various classes and workshops over the years and this Melbourne group has weekly Israeli dance sessions. Note: We are readying a script for this website featuring the weekend workshop. While not done as of this writing, you can get a feel for it by clicking here.

On May 12th, 2015 it was the turn of the Cherry Hill class. We kept track of the music and dances played during that session. Below is the listv in the order of the songs being played.

On May 4th, 2015 this web site tried to document the dances played at the Beth Sholom Monday night session. This is the first of two playlists furnished through the auspices of the Beth Sholom volunteers, especially Talma, who run the session each Monday night. While the session runs from 7:30 through 11, we think this list would encompass the dances played through 10PM and these dances appear in the order that they were played. We also recorded the dances taught during this session and they are Harishut, Lo Ahavti Dai and Yesin Aleik. At the maximum from our count there were 45 dancers on the floor enjoying the evening. The pictures shown here were taken the week after on May 11, 2015.

Sometime in May 2013, the Beth Sholom Monday night dance session was reconstituted where a group of volunteers, led by Talma Solar indicated in the above pictures, has taken responsibility for the session. Theoretically, the session now is part of Beth Sholom's adult education program. One of the attempts of the volunteers, as documented by Talma, was to create a beginner repertoire for some of the attendees. The list below is a combination of beginner dances taught on 11/13/13, 2/19/14 and 8/5/14.

On Feb 8th, 2015, we sent a representative to analyze that Sunday's Germantown Jewish Centre session. This resulted in the anatomy of a session script. During this session, a detailed list of the dances played was kept and it is from this information that this session playlist has evolved. We'd like to thank Grant (and Tamar and the other dancers) for their cooperation in this project.

At the time of this list, Don Schillinger was running 3 sessions in the Philadelphia area each week. On Feb 28th, 2011, The disk coordinator sat in and watched Don play DJ to his Beth Sholom class. Don has been reticient to provide a playlist for this section and would only do this on a real time basis of someone recording his play selection. We took the opportunity to talk with him somewhat as this selection process went ahead and it was quite interesting to hear Don relate some of the cues he uses to select music and to select when to play it. For this session, 4 dances were taught, 2 being circles, one partner and one line. 50 play selections were used during this evening's session that spanned close to 3 hours with some of the music being repeated after being taught. In the process of the evening, Don dealt with 3 line, 4 partner and the rest circle. Below is the play list for Beth Sholom on Feb 28, 2011.

The next two lists will show you a lot of things including a playlist of the jan 9, 2011 Germantown session run by Grant Shulman. Below this list is another list pertaining to this session which will be discussed at that point. As to this list, this is the actual plays in their order of performance at that time. The disk coordinator was late to their session and as he entered Olam Hafuch was being taught. In the hour and forty five minutes that remained in that session, this dance and Lachazor Habyta would be reviewed, announcements would be read and the following 21 dances would be played (Olam Hafuch would be played twice and Lachazor Habyta would be played three times). At the max, 23 dancers would be in a circle and the dancers ranged from beginner to advanced (assuming Grant considers himself as advanced). Only circle dances were played as Germantown does not support line or partner. For that morning, the session was in the Marcus auditorium.

Prior to the actual session, Grant had submitted a theoretical list of plays which appear below. E indicates easy dances and R represents repertoire dances. Comparing both lists - above and this - you can see quite a difference. This pertains to Grant's changes in teaching method over the years. He has to some degree adopted Don Schillinger's techniques of playing to the crowd. Requests are invited and played and Grant to some degree scans his dancers and plays their favorites. This type of approach is more difficult, to be sure, than an already set list of plays but tends to increase likely attendance of many dancers to this session and this 'phoenomena' has been tracked by this web site including the timeline script. Below, then, is a theoretical list of plays for the Germantown session.

This list pertains to a theortetical playlist submitted by Grant in early 2009. The Germantown Israeli dancers meet from 10 to 12:30 on Sunday mornings in a session led by Grant Shulman. Early in 2009, we asked Grant (pictured above) for a playlist and below he presents a theoretical playlist for a typical Sunday morning. The first 11 of these dances are beginner, the rest are classified as intermediate to advanced. The Germantown session limits itself to circle dances only. Grant has made a note that this would be a theoretical listing assuming no teaching or special requests. From the previuous two playlists above, you should understand that even at that time the actual dances played would have greatly varied from this list.

We asked Minna, pictured above, who is one of the Germantown dancers about some of the pet names the Germantown Sunday group has given to some of the dances. Terms like Grant's melancholy trio or the binary dance has been the result as you can read for yourself by clicking here. Below is a list of these dances. G stands for Grant's Melancholy Trio, M designates the Germantown Schmaltzy trio and S designates dances with special names or special affectations

The Wilmington Israeli dance session meets several times a month in the Gild Hall of the Arden Gild, just north of Wilmington. They are also participants of the Arden Fair held the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend. You can see pictures of the fair and this session's performance at such by clicking here for 2010 and by clicking here for the fair and performance in 2009. Above are several scenes from the videos shot at the Arden Fair performance. Below, This is the playlist of the Wilmington session when they met on Feb 2, 2011

The Wilmington session had two instances of putting on shows in 2009, which you can see by clicking here. One of the shows was at the 2009 Arden Fair (pictured above), which the Wilmington session has attended and performed for the last 6 years. Sharon Kleban has provided this site with a list of what dances were intended for play but she's not sure in what order. So, we present below the scheduled Wilmington field trip play list designed for the 2009 Arden Fair in Alphabetical order

No group is more enthusiastic than Wilmington. Much of this comes out of the fact that most of the participants are interested in dance and have added Israeli to a long list of other folk dancing styles including English, Bulgarian and Greek. The instructor, Sharon Kleban (pictured above), spends the first hour demonstrating the dances before they are done and slowly through the evening, the dances and selections grow harder. After a while, generally an hour, it is general dancing with little instruction. Her playlist, the playlist of the June 3, 2009 class, gives a view of this as presented below.

On the first Tuesday night session in May, 2011, Sharon Polsky played a special playlist of Israeli dance music. Sharon has been dancing this genre since sessons were held at the University of Penna. during the late '70s, early '80s. Below is this list which to some degree commemorates Israeli Independence day and above are some photos of Sharon at one of her last classes at Beth Sholom before relocating to the Wyncote House in July'11.

Over the holiday season, 2009, the disk coordinator was able to partake of Sharon Polsky's Tuesday night class at Beth Sholom. Below is the scheduled playlist for that night. Sharon (pictured above) has been doing Israeli dancing in this area for over 30 years and her playlist represents this with more traditional selections intermingled with newly established favorites.

Here is the playlist from the last Cherry Hill field trip at Rieder House on Oct 24th, 2010. You can see a script pertaining to the group's visit to this location by clicking here. Above there are some pictures from this performance.

February, 2010 was a busy month for playlists. On Feb 21st, 2010 the Cherry Hill session performed twice during their field trip to Lionsgate. Below is the playlist of those perfomances. On this site, there is a script dedicated to keeping track of the Cherry Hill field trips and you can access this page by clicking here. Above are some pictures from the Lionsgate performance in 2009.

The Cherry Hill field trip to the Brith Sholom house in the Wynnefield heights section of Philadelphia is documented in a script which you can access by clicking here. This trip is notable in several ways: it is the first across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania; It is the first to have playbills created detailing the dances; and it is the first to have a professional photographer documenting the performance as exampled above by the pictures taken by Moshe Gordon. Below are the 12 dances in sequence as done during the performance.

As you know, this web site tracks the Cherry Hill field trips as indicated above several times in this script. We thought it would be useful to include Naomi's play list for these performances. Below is the playlist for what we think was Brandonwoord done sometime early in 2009 (some pictures from this performance are above). As you have seen above, these playlists for these field trips evolve over time. Note: The last 2 dances were done with audience participation. You can see the web page associated with this Cherry Hill field trip by clicking here.

On February 1, 2010 (known throughout the world as Groundhog eve) Jani Rosen took the helm at Beth Sholom as Don was away. Jani (pictured above) is an avid Israeli dancer and is a regular at that session, at Germantown and on Thursday at Adath Israel. In addition, she has taught several dances at Germantown and is looked to for leadership when the question of how a dance starts pops up. The music for the evening of mostly dancing and no teaching came from her IPOD. Here is a list of the dances actually played.

Note:those dances designated as JRE were played at the beginning of the session for over an hour and are of an easier nature. For the next hour, JRF's were played and are somewhat faster. Another half and hour was alloted to JRH's which are harder circles and at sometime the JRT's were played for the teenagers in the crowd. There were no partner dances played during this session.

At Hora Aviv, the Pittsburgh contingent is well known and make it to that camp each year except for 2010 when no one made it to the camp. Dancing out of the Squirrel Hill, JCC in Pittsburgh, they are lead by Cherie Maharam. Cherie was kind enough to EMail this theoretical playlist of the Pittsburgh session early in 2010 and we duplicate it below to prepare you to what you could expect to hear at that session if you were attending. Above are various pictures of Pittsburgh's dancers.

A recent addition to this website is the inclusion of the International dance party at Westfield Friends School Gymnasium in Cinnaminson. Closely akin to Israeli dancing (in fact, the older Israeli dances are generally part of the International dance repertoire), this group generally meets the first Saturday of the month (several pictures from an early 2010 session appear above), although other Saturdays have been substituted. They have supplied a play list from their March, 2009 session which is included below.

In addition, the site itself played host to Sharon and Aaron's Nov 20th oldies marathon which you can see by clicking here

Judi Levine, of the Cherry Hill session, recently lent the disk coordinator a CD of beginner and old favorite Israeli dance music which had been given to her by Jody Underwood (pictured above), who until 2005 was that session's co-leader. If you are hosting a beginner Israeli dance session, this might be a basis for your selection of music.

On Jan. 17th, 2010, the Greater Phila North by Northeast marathon was held. Oh, you didn't hear about this. Well, the disk coordinator, on this web site, combined the 3 events going on that day under this nomenclature. The first event was the regular Germantown Sunday morning Israeli dance class where the first dance on the list below was taught by Grant Shulman. Starting at 1:30, Don held a special class at Beth Am in Abington where he taught the next 3 dances, all circles, some of which he had taught in other locales. The day finished with 4 couple dances (the last four in the list below) being taught at the Klein JCC the evening by both Don and Rob Markowitz. Below is the teaching repertoire of the various classes that day.

On Sunday morning, Feb 28th, 2010, the Disk Coordinator spelled Grant for the last 40 minutes of the weekly Sunday morning Germantown session. To be fair, Grant provided a list of possible plays for that time period, and to be even more fair, given his peculiar personality, the Disk Coordinator (and we've placed the informal disk coordinator logos above) played the list in a general reverse alphabetic order. So Below, in reverse alphabetic order, is the playlist for the Disk Coordinator's 40 minute stint as DJ.

On April 5th, 2009, the disk coordinator substituted for Grant at Germantown that Sunday morning. The following play list (and you can see the original written documents above) was presented to the Germantown dancers. We present this to you so that if you are in the position of substituting for Grant, you have a basis of dances to begin with as you proceed with your preparation.

She came a long distance, 30 hours from Melbourne, Australia (and we hope it was worth it to her) but it was a electrifying appearance by Aura Lipski to Don's session on March 24th, 2011. We hope one day to create a script describing this visit (which included a one-time group photo as indicated above) for this web site, but in the interim, using Aura's website at www.israelidances.com for research, we present a discography of music that she has composed, sang or both.

Since 2006, Toronto has played host to the Toronto Isreal Israeli dance festival occurrring on the holiday weekend celebrating the July 1st Canada Day Holiday. 2011 was no exception and several Philadelphia regional dancers made it up there to participate and enjoy the city. Above, you see pictures of Lee and Sharon as they enjoy a boat ride on Lake Ontario. Click here for an in-depth look at this workshop through the eyes of the Phila. based dancers. The following list is the dances taught at the 2011 festival.

At the 2011 Toronto IsReal Israeli dance festival, a new concept, Mini Karmiel, was introduced. Twelve new pieces of music were selected and assigned at random to twelve choreographers who were asked to create a dance consistent with the music. The twelve dances were performed in front of the Toronto attendees by a dance group based in California, Keshet Chaim. The pictures above show this group in performance at Toronto and other venues and you can click here to access this group's web site. Anyway, each attendee of the Toronto workshop voted on their favorite. Below is a list of the dances performed and the eleventh of these dances was the winner in the voting.

Enroute from Dallas to Hudson Valley New York, the teacher and choreographer, Roberto Haddon (pictured above), visited Don's Sunday and Monday session and Sharon Polsky's Tuesday session. Besides a great dancer, he has a great personality which showed through on this 3 day visit. Besides his own choreographed dances, he taught two others and so below is a playlist of Roberto's teaching during those 3 days and his own choreography. You can see a script revolving around Roberto Haddon's appearances at Don and Sharon's beth Sholom classes on Nov 1&2, 2010 by clicking here

This web site has been doing some research on Cafe Israel, started by Rob Malerman in the late '80s. One of the documents is the first Cafe Israel newsletter in 1993 as he opened a Tuesday night session. In this newletters several dances are indicated and we have reproduced this list here in alphabetical order.

On January 29th, 2012, Marc (or is it Mark) Rauer played DJ, in Grant's absence, at the Germantown Jewish Centre's Sunday morning session. We understand that Mark was going for a record of number of Israeli dances played within a 2.5 hour period. To attain such record, he would have to top 47 separate selections. Unfortunately this was not to be as he fell short by 3 selections. Someone took a picture of the board where the selections are posted each Sunday and this picture records the 44 dances he played for the Germantown crowd that morning. No doubt, knowing his personality, there will be another attempt at breaking this record but in the interim we list below in their exact order the dances played that morning.

Over the second weekend of Feb'12 (Feb 9 through Feb 13) several Philadelphia based dancers sailed out of Miami on the Royal Caribbean's Liberty of The Sea to enjoy an Israeli dance workshop taking place on tyhe ship that weekend. You may have seen the advertisement for this under the name, Machol Yam 2012. The Israeli dance participants included Wendy and David Friedman, Elaine and John Frank, Menacham, Iris Levy and Elana Tepenzeft. In addition, Aaron Rosenberg, who for a while was based in the Phila. area, joined the dancers at a pre-cruise marathon before the ship set sail. The choreographers for the cruise included gadi Bitton, Yaron Ben Simhon and Yaron Carmel.

The participants were presented both a CD and DVD pertaining to dances were either taught or available for teaching. We present below the contents of the Machol Yam 2012 CD in the order that this music appeared.