The Karmiel Dance Festival, part 2

Playing hooky: I take off a big chunk of the day to go to the Karmiel Dance Festival, now in its final day. Took pictures, but once again the Blogger dudes are messin' with the picture uploads. Nu?

Last night Gill and I go to see Inta Umri, a celebration of classic Arab music, mostly songs made famous by the great Egyptian singer Oum Kalthom, whose silhouette hangs over the stage like a gigantic, majestic golden coin. (I love the fact this likeness of Oum Kalthom shows her as a matronly woman with saggy jowls and a hint of a double chin. Egyptians like their women full-figured…) The headline singer, Galit Giat, is good, and the Nazareth Orchestra is reliably awesome (they are blessed with one of the best oud players in the country), but the real surprise of the night is the very young and amazingly talented Hiba Bathish, also of Nazareth, who at 18 has a huge voice and wonderful stage presence. There is a bit of decent belly dancing, too. Gill thinks that the first dancer is quite fat, but as she continues to dance, he adjusts his opinion! The other dancer, also technically very good, lacks the necessary body fat to produce the different variations of shimmies and vibrations. Ya gotta have it before you can shake it!

So today I catch a midday performance of traditional dances from China. The performer, Chang Ping Ben Tov, is a professional dancer who was born and raised in Beijing, where she studied the traditional dances of China’s many different ethnic groups. She then studied modern dance in the US, where she met her husband, an Israeli (ergo the last name Ben Tov). They now live here, and her Hebrew is great, though slow and distinctly Chinese in accent and cadence. She stands alone on the stage, explaining each dance so that we can better appreciate the nuances. She demonstrates three different ethnic groups. It is a marvelous show, and so satisfying that I don’t even bat an eye when my next ticketed event is canceled.

The festival takes over a big chunk of the downtown area. Events are held in a dozen different venues. There is a lot of Israeli folk dancing (much of it participatory), as well as modern dance, ballet, ethnic/international, ballroom, and more. There is a choreography competition, a wheelchair dance exhibition, and enough variety to satisfy everyone. We get visitors from all over the country (and, in fact, the world), and all around me I hear people talking about how pretty Karmiel is (thanks, we know), swapping war stories, looking for the bathrooms, and pouring over festival schedules.

And, of course, there is the junk food. I love street food. Not the corn that has been boiled for six hours or the scary hot dogs, but the big flat Syrian pita with labaneh and dark green olive oil, and endless cups of Turkish coffee to keep you buzzing through the afternoon. There is also fresh pomogranate juice, tangy and sweet, which is one of my weaknesses.

The street fair part of the festival has deteriorated over the years; none of the high-end arts and crafts items are there, but there is a wealth of really tacky junk, including (inexplicably) a whole table of obscene pig figurines. In the middle of all this sits a coffee tent, with mats on the ground and tarps up for shade. I sit and watch a very small boy (perhaps four years old) dancing for his family. He gathers a small crowd of spectators who applaud at the end of each number.

The traffic jams on the way home are daunting, but we only have to go through this once a year, and it is worth it. I get home and must answer to Fat Girl, who is furious at the delay in her daily tuna ritual.