Below is the content of the November - December 2000 edition.
| In this issue you will find news on …. |
If you're really keen you can also read earlier editions:
President’s Annual
Report
The
following report was presented at the Group’s AGM on 6 November.
The first year of the century has been quite a low-key one for the Group. Membership has been steady, with Monday attendance being good for most of the year. Our financial situation has again improved steadily throughout the year.
The year
started with David Lane going over east for a short holiday. He hasn’t returned yet!
For many years David put the music on on a Monday night and he was a
very regular member of the Performance Group.
Now we are looking for more men to perform!!
We continued with the recent trend of an annual beginners’ course with average attendance; about twelve. Thanks to John, Eve and Sara for their teaching and to Joy, Leone and others for their support.
The key workshop event for the year was Andre’s set
of workshops in August. He
introduced 13 new dances which, as usual, were well choreographed with good
music. Many thanks to Eve and Paleque for their support including billeting
him during his stay.
With the new workshop dances and the Monday night lessons we have covered about ninety dances, a number that some members think is too many dances for a year. The list is included with Grapevine!
This year saw Laurel de Vietri established as a new teacher with a focus on dances from central and southern France. My sincere thanks go to all of our regular teachers, Palenque, Eve, Sara, John and Laurel. My thanks too to John for recording the new dance music onto CD’s. This time last year I gave the Group a challenge and invited some of our more experienced dancers to reintroduce some of their favourite dances that we have lost over the years. We had limited success in this in that I taught two dances at party nights. Maybe we’ll renew that challenge for 2001!!
One other suggestion
made this year was to hold some two or three hours week-end workshops focusing
on what were once popular dances that have been lost over the years.
Somehow the year has passed without this.
Maybe next year?!
We had few Committee
meetings and fewer issues of Grapevine
but that in itself is probably not a big problem.
So, what of next year,
the year 2001, our 25th year?!.
Well I am hoping that we can string together some good events and
visiting teachers to make it a special quarter of a century for the Group.
Let us know please if you’d like to be involved in the planning and
organising.
So at the end of 2000 I
say ‘thanks’ to all who helped or were involved in making it another good
year for the Group.
All the best for
Christmas and the New Year!
Martin Williams,
President, PIFDG
I’m off on a
holiday to Mexico and Guatemala for 9 weeks,
see you for Australia Day .. with luck!!
Hasta la Vista
Martin; El Pres!!
On September 24, 2000,
eight members of PIFDG took part in 'Un P'tit Gout de France' at Kulcha in
Fremantle. The afternoon, which was presented by Les Enfants de Provence, was
very much enhanced by the presence of Tony, Martin, Pam, Palenque, Pat, Anne,
Peter and Lee. The premises were
decorated like a Provençal Village and the market place of food and goods for
sale went down well and added to the ambience.
The ‘Last Five Coins’ gave the whole performance a
feeling of being in a French village with their superb playing of airs from
Provence, Dauphine, Pays Basque, Berry, Aveyron and Auvergne on traditional
instruments.
Members of the audience joined the dancers in many of
the dances and the smiles and cheers told of their enjoyment - or was that a
result of the Pastis and Kir being served?
The afternoon was
finished off with a rather strange but 'sympa' celebratory meal at Le Cafe de
Paris where the music and dancing started all over again!
Laurel,
Raphael
and all of Les Enfants de Provence
If you ever happen to be
anywhere near England in August and you particularly enjoy Israeli dancing,
you should consider going to Machol Europa which is held every August in
England. Machol Europa is
one of the two REALLY BIG Israeli folk
dance seminars in the world
outside Israel- the other being Hora Keff held annually in New York.
The Machol Europa
seminar is live-in and runs for six days with a follow-up in London on the two
following evenings. After
hearing announcements at PIFDG for several
years of a brochure being available about Machol Europa I finally took the
plunge and enrolled in 1996 and loved the experience so much that I returned
there in 1997.
Machol Europa really
opened my eyes to the power and zing of more than two Hundred people dancing
together in the same direction to magical Israeli music. The venue was the De Montfort University in Bedford, about an
hour or so north of London by coach (longer if you drive yourself!) Student
accommodation is available on campus – mostly sharing rooms and bathrooms.
When people grumbled about having to share the bathrooms I never let on that I
had the same single room with its own bathroom both years!
There are two large
gymnasiums which are used for teaching. The larger gym is used by the advanced
group as their numbers are bigger and was also used for evening dancing and
entertainment. The more select intermediate group, of which I was part, used a
slightly smaller gym. Theoretically both groups learn all the same dances from
the same teachers but the intermediate classes are for those who "wish to
learn at a slower pace and do not mind if they learn a few less dances".
But many of us in intermediate thought that we were being taught the
dances just as quickly as in the advanced group and we seemed to be taught all
the dances.
Every day there would be
six solid hours of teaching. A
very good feature was a half-hour warm-up session before classes every morning
and cool-down for five minutes after each session. Every evening there would
be revision of all the dances taught that day lead by the various teachers.
For this there were generally two or three concentric circles
with the "show-offs" and the quick learners in the "inner
circle". Sometimes
everyone would be asked to swap over so that the people in the outside circle
could get a better view but that improvement often didn't last for long.
The six teachers were
extremely talented and generally taught dances which they had choreographed
themselves. It is quite
wonderful to be part of a group learning new dances being taught for the first
time in Europe and which had perhaps only been choreographed weeks earlier.
The teachers/choreographers are amongst Israel's best and several of them
attend Machol Europa year after year such as Mosiko Halevy - respected as a
beautiful dancer and choreographer but some thought he was a rather dry and
pedantic teacher. Moshe Telem, by profession a farmer, is very energetic and
gregarious and renowned for leading all-night marathons at Caesarea and at the
annual dance festival at Karmiel in Israel.
My favourites were Shmulik Gov'ari and Shlomo Maman - both fantastic
younger choreographers AND dancers AND teachers. Shmulik has superb style and balance whilst Shlomo can
bend and twist as if he were made of rubber.
Everyone really enjoys all their classes.
Every night dancing
continues till about 2 am with an all-night marathon session on the last
night. The final session where the teachers and staff walk round farewelling
participants brings tears to many eyes.
At the conclusion of Machol Europa, everyone is given a tape of the
music plus complete notes of the steps of the dances. Videos of the dances can
be purchased. The videos always feature footage of "atmosphere"
because that is one of the things which makes Machol Europa so special -
envisage people from more than twenty different countries taking it in turns
to dance on the dining tables to the music of an accordion and the fun and
frivolity lead by the irrepressible Moshe Telem, Shlomo and Shmulik.
Mealtimes are memorable for the delectable food (generally vegetarian),
the camaraderie between dancers both Jewish and non-Jewish many of who return
year after year, and the entertainment afterwards.
In the year of Riverdance, an Irish group gave a performance for us. I
felt inspired and although I'd heard that you had to book eight months ahead
to see Riverdance in London I managed to jag a returned ticket for a matinee.
In the first year I was
at Machol Europa, I was one of only two Australians there.
In the following year a party of about fourteen dancers (mostly Jewish)
came from Melbourne. It seems that those Melbournites don't understand that Perth
is part of Australia because when I suggested after a few days that a
commemorative photo of the Australian contingent would be nice, I was told by
one of them "Oh, that photo was taken yesterday" - without Western
Australia's sole representative!
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Last Updated March 2001 - Produced by Web in the Hills
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