Hazira Performance Art Arena will present New Dance 2013 – from June 25 – 27, 2013, at the Gerard Behar Center, Jerusalem. Artistic director Sahar Azimi, selected a cohort of choreographers to explore their own process in dance through an acquaintance with other arts, participating in workshops and coaching sessions. The participating choreographers are: Michal Herman, Shlomi Bitton, Lilach Livneh, Ran Ben Dror, Uri Shafir and Sophie Krantz.
The choreographers will present their works in two programs:
Mikbatz Aleph: Flik Flak by Michal Herman, Hora LaNe’ehazim: Research Performance by Lilach Livneh, Hits …

The Yiddishpiel Theatre will present Hillel Mittelpunkt’s play A Visitor’s Guide to Warsaw, performed in Yiddish, starring Lia Koenig. This will mark Koenig’s first time performing in the Yiddishpiel Theatre. The premiere will take place on June 26, 2013 at ZOA House in Tel Aviv.
Israel prize recipient Lia Koenig is an incredible actor with a strong stage presence. She starred in the original Habima Theatre production of the play in 1999, and returns to reprise the role so many years later.
Mittelpunkt said of this production that “even then, when we …

Malenki Theatre will stage a revival of Hazkena veOseh HaNissim (the old lady and the miracle worker), a play adapted from the works of Daniil Kharms by Boris Yentin and Igor Berezin, translated into Hebrew by Roy Chen and directed by Igor Berezin.
Malenki Theatre first produced the play to critical acclaim in 2003. This month, in celebration of the theatre’s 10th anniversary, the play will be revived for one week only, with the original cast. Two of the cast members, Michael Gluzman and Tania Aya Stolnitz, will be coming to …

Imagine a life in which “every morning is like waking in somebody else’s bad dream.” The British Theatre Company 1927 keenly observe urban decay and despair as it strikes its most vulnerable denizens: children. In a theatrical extravaganza of actors, live music and animation, with imaginative flair, impeccable precision, a fine sense of the bizarre and Gothic pizzazz, 1927 takes us where we might not venture on our own: the grim realities of contemporary urban life.
1927 presented The Animals and Children Took to the Streets at the Israel Festival, and …

JAMD – the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance is coming to Jaffa Port this Tuesday, June 18th with a FREE performance of dance. The Academy’s ensemble will perform works from an international dance repertoire of choreographers from England, Israeli, Sweden and the US, as well as student winners of the Gertrude Krauss choreography competition.
It’s a great opportunity to see a new generation of dancers and choreographers in action in a terrific venue – and all for FREE! Jaffa Port Warehouse 2 (Choreographer’s Society venue), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at …

This summer the Jerusalem Film Festival celebrates its 30th anniversary. So many wonderful Israeli films have premiered at the festival over the years, as audiences discovered new directors and actors. Providing a platform and venue for viewing and lively discussion of film, the festival has played an important role in the development of Israeli cinema. Recognizing and encouraging excellence in film, the Jerusalem Film Festival presents an exciting line-up of Israeli feature films in competition for the Haggiag Award for Best Full-Length Feature Film.

Past winners include Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, and …

Israeli audiences will soon have the opportunity to see Ziad Doueiri’s feature The Attack at the Jerusalem Film Festival, taking place from July 4 – 13, 2013. The film embodies the controversies and complexities of this region in its subject matter – a terror attack occurring in Tel Aviv – and in its reception. Lebanese cinemas will not be showing this film, nor was it selected by Lebanon to represent the country at the Academy Awards, despite critical acclaim.
Although Doueiri had initially received permission from Lebanese authorities, the film was …

Birthdays, graduations, holidays, festivals and weddings: those dates we mark with a star on the calendar, await their arrival, count the days in anticipation. The Israel Festival is one of those times and traditions, and the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève fulfilled the promise this past weekend with a performance that lifts one up out of the ordinary, into realms of wonder.
The word ‘ballet’ conjures certain visions in the mind of the audience, the company dancers not only possess the excellence inherent in this vision, they exceed expectations, bending …

Choreographer Wang Yuanyuan describes crisis and uncertainty in poetic image and movement, creating beauty from the raw materials of urban alienation, the unending struggle for survival, the unraveling of the natural environment, and despair in the face of the future. Haze, created as a response to the woes of our contemporary time, merges the spiritual and environmental haze, as the dancers leap, twirl, roll and jump through a landscape shrouded in mists, conveying at once the fragility and force of the human body and spirit.
The Beijing Dance Theater premiered Haze …

Dance. What’s in it for the audience? An aesthetic experience? Intellectual? Emotional?
There is a vast distance between viewer and practitioner in dance. Dancing and watching dance are such different activities: for the dancer onstage, it is an intense experience of the mind and body, working in symbiotic hyper-drive; for the viewer, it is inevitably, a physically passive experience, and sometimes, one of emotional and intellectual disconnection and even confusion. To put it plainly: aside from a loyal band of acoloytes and dance aficionados,  dance, contemporary concert dance, is not popular.
Unlike …