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Oud v’Rikoud

The annual Jerusalem International Oud Festival has become the leading event of its kind on the ethnic music calendar. Now in its tenth year, the festival, which kicks off next week, lasts for 16 days and includes shows in both Jerusalem and Nazareth. But those of us fortunate to have attended last week’s “Boogie Nights” dance party got a special sneak preview.

Boogie is a Jerusalem institution. A twice-monthly feel good free movement extravaganza, Boogie is a place where you don’t have to worry about your dance steps or dance partner. You just flail your arms around, hop up and down and twirl to the beat which emphasizes energetic world music rather than the disco or trance found at more traditional dance clubs and bars.

This edition of Boogie featured an hour-long Oud performance in a separate room. The tight group of three actually performed on guitar, darbuka and a strange breathy sounding flute. The crowd lounged on yoga mats arranged haphazardly across the floor. Many clutched cups of Chai tea, a popular Boogie beverage – in keeping with its international flavor.

The oud is a strange-sounding (to Western ears) kind of Middle Eastern lute. It owes it origins to the Arab world but there are now practitioners from Turkey, Spain, India, and Greece. To mix it up even more, the opening night of the official festival next week features veteran Israeli rockers Nikmat HaTraktor (The Tractor’s Revenge) performing oud and electric guitar versions of Jewish piyutim (medieval poetry).

As for the funky rhyming name of the Boogie special evening – “Oud v’Rikoud” – the latter is Hebrew for dance. I wonder what they’ll call the next Boogie in two weeks which features another eclectic special event: an African drumming workshop and performance. I’ll most certainly be there and let you know.

Foto Friday – Reli Avrahami’s “Diary”

Beer Sheva-born Reli Avrahami is one of Israel’s premiere magazine photographers. A new exhibition of her work, “Diary”, will open next week at the Hadassah College in Jerusalem, where she once studied and is now a lecturer.

Avrahami has worked as a freelance portrait photographer since 1986, shooting celebrities, artists and politicians for Israel’s main newspapers and weekend supplements including “Maariv”, “Yediot Aharonot” and “Haaretz” where she is best known for her long-running series of Israeli family portraits.

In “Diary”, Avrahami invites viewers to look in on three generations of her own family: celebrations and tragedies, weddings and funerals, everyday life and unique occasions.

Her daughter – Botticelli curls cascading down her shoulders – en route to a Scout trip…

…the morning of her son’s induction into the IDF…

…her mother, fast asleep in a Netherlands zimmer motel…

or a “Girls Night In” with her sisters and mother.

“Diary” opens at 6:00pm, November 5, 2009 at the Hadassah College, 37 HaNeviim Street, Jerusalem.

Accessorize it

There are now so many accessory designers in Israel that they have their own fair. If you’re in need of a new handbag, belt, jewelry, scarf and whatever else qualifies as a clothing item that adds to your overall outfit, head to the ‘Accessories Shuk’ this weekend, Thursday through Shabbat, October 29-31, at Ganei Hataarucha in Tel Aviv.

With discounts of 20%-30% on the current season, and 60%-80% on previous seasons, deals are clearly to be had. And while I don’t know all the designers who will be present, I can tell you that Or Forbin, whose line of jewelry, Eva Teffner — named for her grandmother — will be there, and she offers some extremely clever and affordable costume jewels. She uses elements of collage, printing on metal and then incorporating that into the earrings, pendants and pins that are part of her inventory.

Nostalgia Sunday – Gil Gibli Investigates Past Crimes

Artist Gil Gibli is perhaps best known in Israel for the pen and ink cross-hatched portraits of Israel’s business elite that illustrate the pages of business daily Globes each evening. But Gibli is also a noted police forensic sketch artist — whose work has been cited in international professional literature — and when he looks back at the past, he often does so as an investigator into crimes whose trails have gone cold.

On his website, Gibli describes several cases where his forensic art brought the truth to light: reconstructing a portrait of Warsaw Ghetto uprising leader Pavel Frankel (pictured left) based solely on eye-witness accounts, bringing together two Yom Kippur War compatriots after 35 years, and the most chilling case: identifying a man, a nameless drifter, killed in a terror attack. The story – and Gibli’s uncanny ability to elicit details from eye-witnesses – was documented in the award-winning documentary No. 17 is Anonymous.

More of Gibli’s work may be found at his virtual gallery. He’s also a jazz aficionado and portraits include a series of jazz greats - more nostalgia, but of a cooler, gentler kind.

Gibl’s YouTube channel has several videos (in Hebrew) about his work.

Cooperative ceramics

The Israeli concept of cooperative kibbutz living may have been dealt a death knell, or, at the very least, signs of retirement over the last ten years, but the artist cooperative is alive, well and thriving.

For the uninitiated, the artist cooperative, often materialized in Israel as a ceramicists’ cooperative, is a group of artists who join together to rent a storefront and sell their creations. From what I’ve gleaned from my internet research — namely, not a whole lot — there are such cooperatives all over the world, although Israel seems to possess a large number of them. I like to think that’s because of our communal way of thinking, in which the thought is that it’s always better to work together than apart.

In any case, I stumbled upon yet another ceramists’ cooperative in Machane Yehuda the other week, Pri HaAdama (Fruit of the Earth), which features the work of 14, yes, 14, different ceramicists. The collection is wonderful, with many pieces to choose from and at surprisingly low prices.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention two other favorite ceramic cooperatives, Shmone B’Yachad, or Eight Altogether, at 8 Yoel Solomon Street in Jerusalem’s Nachalat Shiva neighborhood, downtown. The other fave is Shlush Shloshim in Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv, on 30 Shlush Street (You can find Marcelle Klein’s work there).

Foto Friday – Robert Gorsoun sees Israel’s beauty

Robert Gorsoun is a photographer who takes pictures for the love of it. Wherever he travels, he snaps pictures and Israel is beautiful through his lens…

…the Banias in Israel’s north…

…a rainbow, captured in mid-storm over the Herzliya beach…

…a field of flowers by the roadside, stretching on forever…

…a water lily…

…or flowering cacti at the Utopia Orchid Park…

…and on through to the crater at Mizpe Ramon.

More photos by Gorsoun — including some spectacular panoramas that don’t fit on an Israelity page but should be seen — are posted on Panoramio.

Spontaneous Thriller

So, have you seen that video of Oprah opening her 24th season with a ’spontaneous dance’/'flash mob dance’ along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile? If you haven’t,

Story is that her staff — and 20,000 people — pulled off the surprise, for Oprah, of performing a choreographed piece to the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” And now this kind of spontaneous dance is becoming a worldwide trend, one which, natch, is making its way to Israel.

Several production companies and the City of Tel Aviv-Yafo are putting on their own spontaneous dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” scheduled for next Friday, October 30, at 12:30 in Dizengoff Square (the one with the Agam fountain at the middle).

If you want to participate, however, you gotta learn the dance, and by that I mean the dance steps to ‘Thriller,’ those danced by the moondancing maniac Michael Jackson. You have just one week:

Nostalgia Sunday – Lod Mosaic

It may be more historic than nostalgic, but the big news in archeology last week here was that the Israel Antiquities Authority made an interesting discovery while detaching a magnificent floor mosaic for transfer to the IAA conservation laboratories in Jerusalem. They found ancient footprints! Apparently, while working on the plaster bedding (done before laying down the mosaic) the artisans trod on it in sandals and in bare feet.

The floor is a story in itself. According to the IAA: “The 1,700 year old mosaic, which is one of the largest and most magnificent ever seen in Israel, was exposed in the city of Lod in 1996 and was covered again when no resources could be found for its conservation. Thirteen years after efforts were made to raise the large amount required to treat the unique artifact, the IAA received a contribution from the Leon Levy Foundation that is specifically earmarked for the purpose of conserving and developing the site, in cooperation with the Municipality of Lod. The mosaic was re-excavated, exhibited to the public and is now being removed from the area for treatment in the IAA conservation laboratories.”

“The mosaic, which constitutes a real archaeological gem that is extraordinarily well-preserved, is c. 180 sq m in size. It is composed of colorful carpets that depict in great detail mammals, birds, fish, floral species, and sailing and merchant vessels that were in use at the time. It is believed the mosaic floor was part of a villa that belonged to a wealthy man in the Roman period.”

Hopefully, the floor’s restoration holds the key — along with other innovative social welfare efforts reported on by ISRAEL21c — to turning Lod around from the center of drug-related crime to the tourist haven it ought to be. The IAA stated that, “The municipality, in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority, plans to integrate it into a tourism circuit that will include a number of historic sites in the city.” Given the magnificence of the artifact, there is every chance that the plan could work.

Foto Friday – The Israel Photography Exhibition 2

POV, the Israeli Photography Exhibition at Hatachana, the Old Train Station in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek, came out swinging earlier this month with individual retrospectives of works by well-known Israeli photographers. Additionally, there were also collective exhibitions on view at Hatachana — well worth visiting — and on YouTube. These include works by leading photographers, yet-unknowns and news agencies, the unsung heroes of photography in the field.

Last Summer

Israel Sun photo agency

Tomorrow’s Photographers

Foto Friday – The Israel Photography Exhibition

POV, a retrospective of new works by Israel’s leading photographers/curators took place this past week at Tel Aviv’s newest landmark, the refurbished old train station structure in Neve Tzedek (pictured left). For those who missed the show (and that includes your humble scribe), POV has provided video portfolios for the group, as well as individual photographers. A portion of these works are presented in this Foto Friday column, with more to follow. Enjoy! And for those who can’t wait, visit the POV website and YouTube channel.

Show Portfolio

Moshe Shay

Yuval Tebol

David Perlov

 

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  Israel is often seen as a place of conflict and strife. In reality there is much more: there's business and research; art and culture; community and family. At ISRAELITY, Israelis blog their daily thoughts, experiences and insights. It's the real Israel, not the media's Israel. It's people living ordinary lives in an extraordinary place.

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