Several years ago, we think it was 2013, this website documented the changes in the dancing schedule that summer brought to the Philadelphia region. We thought we'd do it again this year given the number of changes. So below we show, by picture and verbal description, how the local (Philadelphia regional) 2017 summer Israeli dance schedule went. [Ed Note: This is being written as the Labor day weekend approaches. We'd like to thank those who submitted the photos used below in this script. This includes Andrea Wallach, Grant Shulman, Wendy Friedman, Marc Rauer and Susan Novak.

We are using May 1st, 2017 through Labor day as the time period we are dealing with in this script. Summer dancing got off with a bang as Beth Sholom celebrated Israeli Independence day on Monday, May 1st. Hopefully sooner than later this website plans a specific script on the celebration that night but we'll start this script with a video taken at that session. You are watching the session do Ashrey Ha'ish choreographed by Dani Dassa in 1982.

This was not the only time through the summer that the Beth Sholom session held a celebration. In a month and a half, June 16th, the session would celebrate its 4th anniversary. Talma and the crew went all out to entertain the session's dancers. Here are some pictures of the dancing that night - to the left taken during the early part of the evening and to the right taken later in the evening as more dancers have arrived. Notice on the third picture, Susan Novak - with her back to us - is holding an orange object. This was a party favor delivered to the crowd by Talma, Marek, et al who bring you Beth Sholom's Monday night dance session.

This montage hones into the above-mentioned party favorite - a specifically created frisbee for the Beth Sholom dancers. Notice the inscription commemorating the event. And, for those dancers not satified with a frisbee, the last picture shows that the session amply provided for those who came hungry. [Ed Note: We should mention that this web site has created a script detailing Beth Sholom's four year existance which you can access by clicking here. Since that script shows pictures and montages at random, there is a 25% chance you may see another use of these frisbees - entertaining one of our editor's cats.

During the summer Beth Sholom continued to meet every Monday so there was no change of schedule or routine. This can not be said about the Germantown Sunday morning class which in July and August meets on Wednesday nights. Below we will document this but let's look at what seems to be a new end of Spring tradition that Germantown has established. Starting in mid June, 2016 the session met at Deb and Dan's house (a few blocks from the facility) for a luncheon. This was repeated this year on the afternoon of June 11th. These pictures are from the luncheon held in the couple's back yard. You can see more pictures of this 2017 luncheon in our Personalities script.

The next several montages focus on Don's Thursday night session, especially the one on May 25th right before the Memorial day weekend. These pictures show what seems to be dancing as usual that night at Adath Israel. But, looks are deceiving in two ways. Although no one, except possibly for Don, realized that this would be the last dance session held at Adath Israel for the next 3 months (dancing at Adath Israel would return on Sept 7th and then in October). Furthermore, except for two Thursdays at the Art Museum, dancing for the summer would be moved to Wednesday nights and held at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El (to be shown later in this script).

However, there is another interesting aspect to the session that May 25th. Multiple cartons of Ice cream, packages of cookies and other goodies are being set up on a table next to the entrance. Regular dancers are reminded that this seems to occur at the end of May each year. Don makes no announcement of this as the session continues to dance so it can't be a birthday or celebration for an Israeli dancer. It's seems too early for this to be celebrating Memorial day in some way. Every year a rumor starts midway through the session that this is a celebration of someone's birthday, but it would appear that the individual celebrated is not connected with Israeli or any other type of dancing.

We pan into the table for these two shots. Included with the food is documentation as you can see. Finally, having studied the documentation and talked with the dancer responsible for this each year, we can hereby declare that this celebration is the annual Ian Fleming day at Don's session. You might ask: Who is Fleming? A famous Israeli dance choreographer? Perhaps a long lost Philadelphia area dancer? Exactly why this event and how did it originate? Well, you can see our research on this by clicking here.

For the last several years the Cherry Hill session, led by Shaorn Polsky, has relocated to Marlton during the summer. This has physically meant moving from Temple Beth Sholom at the border of Cherry Hill and Evesham, up through Greentree Road to Adath Emanu-EL at the intersection of Greentree and Elbo. This has become the summer home of the Cherry Hill session. This montage shows a few pictures of Adath Emanu-EL's interior and exterior layout.

Sometime during the summer Sharon was involved in a bad traffic accident and hurt her leg to the point where she couldn't dance. Someone who knew the dances had to be in charge with Sharon's absence from the floor. In this we can thank Susan Novak who came to the rescue. For several weeks Susan attended and led the dancing on the floor while Sharon controlled the music. Unfortunately, we have very limited pictures of this - as taken by Susan - as indicated in this montage.

Let's return to Germantown's activities for the summer of 2017. About a month after the last Sunday morning session Germantown switched to Wednesday night and moved within the facility from the Marcus auditorium to the Temin Canteen room in the basement. On Aug 9th the session probably set a record for the summer as 19 dancers were on the floor at the same time as represented in this montage.

Since 2007 or so Thursday night dancing has been situated at Adath Israel. But, sometimes there is a need for a change of venue and Don many times uses Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El. In fact, prior to the regular use of Adath Israel, TBH-BE was the location for Don's Thursday sessions. While there was no formal announcement on this, apparently Adaph Israel was not available to host sessions of Israeli dance during summer'17. Apparently TBH-BE was available on Wednesday nights and this is where and when Don's summer'17 sessions were held except for two Thursday nights at the Art Museum. These pictures display the room and dancing this summer at TBH-BE. To be fair, attendance has been lighter but this is probably caused by conflicts with the change to Wednesday and the vacation plans of the local dancers.

There were some changes to the Summer'17 schedule a bit north of the Greater Philadelphia area. Readers of this web site know of our interest in Rutland, Vermont where Andrea Wallach, who until a few years ago was a local Israeli dancer, has been running a small, but enthusiastic, class. Unfortunately, to Andi's way of thinking, her agreement with the Rutland Jewish Center precluded weekly dancing. She thought this fortnightly schedule didn't create the muscle memory needed for Israeli dancing. So, this montage shows the Email announcing a new location and schedule.

As you can see from the Email above the beginning date for this new class at the Rutland Recreation Center was Sunday August 6th. But since the center had supplied a key to her, Andi went over there a day earlier, on Saturday night, to try out the equipment and the room as you can see in this montage. [Ed Note: The pictures in this and the next two montages were supplied by Andi

These pictures show that Andi wasn't alone in trying out the room and the sound system as she is accompanied by an unidentified male dancer in doing some partners. We know that Andi's class is strictly circles so this dancer was probably passing through Rutland that weekend and Andi invited him over to try out the room and the music. Anyway, the next day Andi reported that 3 dancers made up her initial Sunday morning class at the Rutland Recreation Center.

In the intervening few weeks of August Andrea's class attendance has increased. This montage contains a picture of dancing one Sunday later in August and you can see a variety of sexes and ages enjoying the session. And, with this and the notification that (1) Pittsburgh and Newark, De. danced through the summer as usual and (2)Cinnaminson and Wilmington were off for the season, we have covered the Summer 17 Israeli dance season for those classes this web site keeps track of.