1. Israeli Folk Dancing: A View from Inside the Circle

 2. History of Israeli dancing  [Article 1]

 3. History of Israeli dancing [Article 2]

 4. Why is this fun? By Howard Wachtel

 5. Tidbits: About Israeli dance steps

6. More history...

7. What about the music?

Not your father's hora

Israeli dance enthusiasts pack classes offered almost every day in NY and beyond

BY DEBORAH HIRSCH
STAFF WRITER

August 11, 2004

More than 150 people cram into the 92nd Street Y ballroom in Manhattan, somehow managing to turn and sway together to a popular Israeli song without crashing into each other.

Atop a stage, a thin, white- haired man squints into a laptop, arranging the play list for the next set of dances. He seems calm, but that is deceiving.

"Woo, woo, woo, yeah, yeah, yeah!" Danny Uziel, 71, shouts into a mic, revving up the dancers on this Wednesday night.

Uziel, retired from the jewelry business, has led some of the largest Israeli folk dance crowds on the East Coast at his Manhattan and Long Island sessions. On the dance floor, he is a graceful fireball of energy, showing off more stylized chutzpah than some of the youngest dancers in the crowd.

Dancing almost every night

Uziel, of Rockville Centre, is one of about a dozen Israeli folk-dance leaders offering classes in the New York area nearly every night. Up to 700 dance regulars descend on the sessions, some even from nearby states. They come to exercise, socialize - and to connect with a part of Israeli culture that has grown far beyond its humble ethnic beginnings half a century ago.

The burgeoning scene has even spawned a cottage industry in CDs, videos and clothing.

"I wouldn't label it as an addiction, but I'm definitely a dance-oholic," says Shoshana Huber, 56, who leads a session in Brooklyn. "It's social, it's physical, it's emotional and mental. It's also a community that I really enjoy being in."

Although Israeli dance crowds skew more middle- aged, people of all ages, religious backgrounds and experience levels join in. "It's nice to be in a group where you feel like one, regardless of your background," says Charlie Pollak, 50, a Manhattan dentist.

And it's more than "Fiddler on the Roof" horas many associate with "Israeli dancing" that draws enthusiasts worldwide.

The modern-day version, with roots in traditional movements tracing back thousands of years, began to take shape after the formation of Israel in 1948. By the '50s, Israeli pioneers, hoping to establish a national folklore, had created about 60 dances incorporating elements from Russian, Balkan, Hungarian and other backgrounds.

"It's like New York, it's a melting pot of cultures that have come together," said Ruth Goodman, co-founder-director of the Israeli Dance Institute in Manhattan.

Contemporary patterns

The genre evolved and expanded to include more complicated, contemporary patterns as choreographers continually churned out new material, including couples' and line dances.

Today, a small cadre of choreographers - in Israel and other countries - has created more than 4,500 dances. About a hundred more are added each year and 300 done regularly, session leaders say. Each dance goes along with a specific song, unlike some other folk dance traditions consisting of standard steps that can be put to various ethnic tunes.

"It's not as simple as what folk dancing was initially intended to be, which was just footwork with people holding hands," says Sara Burnbaum, 52, a dance leader from Nyack.

Aside from circling the room with grapevine steps, dancers sashay, triple-step, twirl and pivot in intricate, syncopated patterns. The music shapes the style of arm movements. During Yemenite songs, dancers stay closer together and put a little extra bounce in their shoulders and footwork. Several newer Israeli rock songs call for more dramatic full-body swaying and hand motions.

For serious enthusiasts

To keep up with the fast-growing repertoire, serious dancers invest hundreds of dollars to learn the latest hits directly from their makers at about a dozen annual retreats around the United States (including three in the New York area) and 20 in other countries. Many of these camps were created in the past 15 years.

At the end of August, about 240 dancers will go to upstate Monroe for one such workshop, Hora Keff; others will go to Wisconsin in October for Chagigah-Hililum. At the camps, choreographers teach all day, and evening dance parties can last until 7 a.m. At a Miami workshop, Heather Skydell, 25, of Forest Hills, danced until 8:20 a.m., going right back to the floor for lessons after breakfast.

"It's a way to meet people, and it's a vibrant connection to Israel because of the music," says Honey Goldfein of East Meadow, who attends many weekend workshops and has led sessions around Long Island since the 1970s.

It sounds intensely exhausting. But whether at camp or at local sessions, dancers say their hobby is also a chance to relax among friends.

"People come in with the weight of the world on their shoulders and within four dances, everything's gone except for just dancing," says Sid Fidelman, 68, of Westbury, a retired businessman who leads three dance sessions around Long Island.

"There's that little microworld that exists for that time you're dancing together," Goodman says. "You tune out the world, you tune out the problems around you. You just wash that away when you're dancing."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

What do you think?
Veterans and “newbies:” Please share your observations about Israeli folk dancing with us. We want to hear from you, whether you’re a participant in our St. Louis group, or a dancer somewhere else in the world. We’ll post your comments here. Thanks! To share your thoughts, email us at: gloria@israelidancing-stl.com