The Machol Shalem Dance House celebrates its 10th year of activity, fostering, supporting and providing a space and stage for independent dance in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Dance Festival, artistically directed by Ofra Idel and Ruby Edelman, will take place from December 18 – 21, 2012. The complete festival program, and additional information is available in English on the Machol Shalem website.
Special highlights at the festival include an evening under the artistic direction of Yasmeen Godder and Itzik Giuli on Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at the Gerard Behar Center. The evening will feature works choreographed by Einav Eshel, Yael Turjeman, Avigail Sfez, and Tami Lebovits, performed in two sessions, at 20:00 and 21:30.
International guests at the festival will be the Zawirowania Dance Theatre from Poland, who will perform Closeness on Thursday, December 20th, at the Gerard Behar Center, with an additional show on Saturday, December 22, 2012 at the Nachmani Theatre in Tel Aviv at 20:30. Company member Karolina Kroczak will conduct a workshop for dancers at the Kolben Dance Company Studio on Friday.
The gala opening event will take place on Wednesday, December 19th, at the Gerard Behar Center. Among the pleasures of the evening will be the premiere of a new work by Shlomi Bitton, celebrating the dancer/choregographer’s return to Israel – cause for celebration indeed! Talia Paz and Michael Winter will perform Haunted by the Future – a dance created for them by the late Nigel Chernok. Dance premieres at the festival include works by Ana Elisabeth, Daniel, Ofra Idel, Sascha Engel, Gil Kerrer, Aharon Manor, and Yuval Goldstein.
Choreographer and director Graham Smith from the Freiburg Theatre, Germany will attend the festival to conduct workshops for youth as the prelude to The Percival Project – a co-production of the Freiburg Theatre and Machol Shalem Dance House. Youths from Israel and Germany will begin joint work on the show in August 2013, the completed work will be performed at Machol Shalem Dance House at that time, and in Freiburg in 2014.
Machol Shalem will be hosting international festival directors who will have the opportunity to view Israeli dance first hand and take part in festival activities, including a panel discussion on international collaborations that will take place at the Goethe Institute Jerusalem on Wednesday, December 19th. Guests include: Uwe Kastner, director of the Lucky Trimmer Festival, Berlin; Wlodek Wlodimirez, director of the Zawirowania Festival, Warsaw; Elena Christodoulidou, artistic director of the Dance-Lab Nicosia and Dance Waves Festival, Cypress; Marta Ladjanszk, artistic director of Dance Lab 1 and the Dance Lab 1 Festival, Budapest, Hungary; Lucyna Walaszczyk, artistic director of the PTT Center, Poznan, Poland, and Polish Dance Theatre; Jay Wegman, artistic director of the Abrons Arts Center, New York. This is the first time that MSDH will be hosting a program of this kind, made possible through the support of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tickets and venue information for all festival events are available on the Machol Shalem website.
