Winter 2023 PREVIEW

Guest Edited by Swadhi Ranganee

Photo by Manu Keggenhoff Photography; Chai Folk Ensemble

Photo courtesy of the company; Prathyusha Dwibhashi

Photo courtesy of Dwibhashi;

Staying Alive: Chai Folk Ensemble

at (almost) 60

How the Winnipeg dance company balances folk and contemporary styles

by gdalit neuman

Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre came alive last June 16 with the enthralling sights and sounds of the Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble, one of North America’s most established Israeli folk troupes. The performers’ energy and enthusiasm as well as pride and passion for Jewish culture were palpable not only to the audience in attendance but also to those watching the livestream from home. Their new full-evening work of Jewish and Israeli dance and music, A Great Light, marked the company’s return to the stage following a period of alternative activity during the pandemic, as well as the release of its new music album by the same name.

Each album Chai produces, according to its new co-artistic director, Jesse Popeski, is centred around a unique theme. In A Great Light, the theme is day to night. Pieces such as Or Gadol (A Great Light) and Erev Shel Shoshanim (Evening of Roses) showcase specific vignettes of time, as does Havdalah, inspired by a beautiful Jewish ritual of the same name that is performed on Saturday evenings at sundown to delineate between the end of the sacred Sabbath and the beginning of the secular week ahead.

Choreographies set to mostly well-known Israeli and Jewish songs in A Great Light reflect the diversity of this company’s repertoire, as well as the varied training of its dancers. Horas such as Zemer Lach (Song for You), choreographed by Jessica Casiro, and Hora Me’Uchedet (United

Photo by Jordan Nepon Photography

Bottom: Company dancers in show finale (est. 1970s) / Photo courtesy of Chai Folk Ensemble

Hora) by Chai’s former dance director, Rachel Cooper, perfectly embody the joy, airiness and exuberant energy typical of Israeli folk dance while Elan Marchinko’s Katonti (an expression of modesty, in this case in the presence of God), with its contemplative tone and graceful gestures, effortlessly straddles folk and contemporary styles.

A Great Light also marked a transition for Chai’s artistic leadership. On the dance front, Cooper, an accomplished and versatile dance artist and educator, has stepped away from her role as dance director and resident choreographer. The company has appointed longtime Chai dancer, and more recently its rehearsal director, Rachael Buchwald, as its new dance director. Chai’s artistic and vocal director, David Vamos, has also moved on after his 20-year tenure with the company, with the last seven years as artistic director. Taking his place as co-directors are Popeski, Chai’s longtime music director and a regular of the Winnipeg music scene, along with the company founder’s granddaughter, former vocalist Sarah Sommer, who returns to Chai following a five-year hiatus with many scholastic and professional accolades under her belt in music performance, teaching and directing.

Sarah Sommer the grandmother, and founder of Chai, was influenced by Zionist ideology many decades ago in a place as far away from Israel as one could possibly imagine. Born in Winnipeg in 1929 to a Jewish family, Sommer (née Rodberg) was involved in the local Habonim (“The Builders”) Zionist youth movement branch and, as the group’s social co-ordinator, organized Israeli folk dance events. She was later recruited by another Zionist youth movement, Canadian Young Judaea, to teach Israeli folk dance, and later still she was invited by the Jewish community of Winnipeg to choreograph a production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Sommer’s choreography for a Hebrew day school in the city proved popular, and in 1964 Chai was born, comprising eight girls aged 12 to 14, including one of Sommer’s daughters. Among Sommer’s biggest influences was a performance in Winnipeg in 1968 by the world-famous Israeli dance troupe Inbal. She even travelled to New York to study under them while they were there on tour. Unfortunately, Sommer passed away shortly after and never got to see the incredible growth of the company. She did, however, bear witness to Chai’s performance for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Ottawa in 1967.

Top: Chai Folk Ensemble (1968) / Photo courtesy of the company

From these humble beginnings almost 60 years ago, the Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble has grown to encompass more than 30 performers at any given time. Unlike other Israeli folk dance troupes, they strictly perform to live music, giving equal consideration to elements of dance, music and song.

As Popeski explains, music is a key ingredient in a show’s creation as it is selected after the theme: “The artistic director generates the idea. We’re starting big picture. Like, what is this show going to be? Is there a theme that’s loosely going to hold it together? We’ve talked about themes for a future show and from there finding a choreographer that would be suitable. Then it’s getting that choreography and that music to our directors, and they rehearse separately at first and then all come together in the months before the actual show.”

The company has toured Canada and the world and has long been a staple of the closely-knit Winnipeg performing arts community, often collaborating with other cultural groups in the city. “I think it maybe has to do with the size of the city versus a Toronto,” says Popeski. “We

can’t help but all interact or run into each other, or plan things together.” A perfect example is Chai’s recent December performance as part of a multicultural show titled A Celebration of Nations at Centennial Concert Hall, in Winnipeg, accompanied by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Another example is Chai’s long-standing Hora Hopak collaboration with Rusalka Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. Combining both folk dance genres into one choreography, the piece was first created in 1999 by Alberto Zirlinger (adapted in part from choreography by Tom Mokry) for a performance at Centennial Concert Hall. Fifteen years later, the companies were invited to showcase their collaboration at the official opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and a couple years later, they danced for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Annual Conference and Trade Show, also in Winnipeg. Fittingly, 20 years following their initial collaboration, Chai and Rusalka travelled to Israel together in 2019 to perform the Hora Hopak at the Karmiel Dance Festival, Israel’s premiere folk dance festival. They then toured Ukraine.

“As a Jewish person, to go to Israel with a group of people who

Costumes in Quotations

As a Singaporean Canadian Tamil woman, I wonder what separates me from my “costumed” presentation?

by ashvini sundaram

Jasmine flowers, draped and pleated silk , a round sticker between my brows, and bell-shaped earrings evoking a picture of movement and fluidity. “Could you please wear your costume?” they ask me during the production meeting, but I find myself in a state of dissonance: which part is my costume?

As a bharatanatyam dancer, I have become a living symbol of traditional South Indian culture to Canadian audiences, colouring into the cultural mosaic we so pride ourselves in. Having spent most of my life in Canada, however, I find my piece in this mosaic feels less square, and my honest representation as a Singaporean Canadian Tamil woman demands more complexity. I wonder, then, what separates me from my “costumed” presentation? What aspects appear performative, and how can my dancewear more truthfully represent my evolving cultural identity?

With these thoughts in my mind, I came across an idea at the 2022 Dance Studies Association conference plenary in Vancouver. Powwow regalia often includes accessories like feathers, porcupine hair, moccasin and breastbone, and Sandra Laronde framed the regalia to be an expression of the land. “The body is embodying the land,” Laronde said. This resonated with me as a possible answer to my questions about migration, identity and authenticity.

Growing up, I felt lost in many worlds. I often didn’t feel “Indian” enough or “Canadian” enough and, sometimes, not “Singaporean” enough. I always sensed an impression of absence, and as a result, I clung to whatever cultural threads held me in affective, cellular, muscular memory of heritage and place. I found these in my mother’s sarees made of gold and pure mulberry silk, with woven motifs inspired by Pallava architecture and paintings, and in my grandmother’s hands, braiding my hair with coconut oil, keeping it nourished and long. I especially found comfort in music: nothing transported me like the patterned beating of two drum membranes tempered in the humidity of the Tamil Nadu air. But I also grew up breathing in brisk Canadian winters, measuring north against mountain peaks on the horizon, cedar and pine in the wind. My body remembers all of this.

The bharatanatyam “costume” for women is also a memory and an idea. Jasmine and carnation flowers, kemp stone jewelry, long braided hair, kanjivaram silk outfits and mehndi-stained hands evoke not only the region of Southern India but also ideals of femininity and spirituality, derived from the devadasi performance tradition, framed

in bridal wear. In our times, both within and beyond the Indian subcontinent, dancers resort to plastic or paper hairpieces resembling strands of jasmine or carnation flowers and/or false hair extensions. For convenience and comfort, the saree drape is reduced to a fivepiece kit that attaches via hooks, ties and buttons. I personally use a red Sharpie marker to colour my hands, mimicking traditional mehndi stains. The overall look, despite my picture-perfect bridal appearance, feels synthetic. Instead of embodying the land of my memories, I embody the silhouette of a place I yearn to keep with me and share with others. I embody plastic fibres and the fumes of toxic dyes. With memories stretched across oceans, my identity will always be complex, but I have begun to fill in the silhouette that my costume had become, replacing my fake flowers, plaiting my natural hair. Rose petals plucked from my garden, bright and delicate, brought summer’s transience into my dancing. My short, pinless braid brought freedom and momentum. I adorned a saree from my mother’s closet, laboriously pleating and ironing for hours, practising geometry, measurement and meticulousness. This has become a necessary ritual as I prepare to represent myself onstage as a bharatanatyam dancer. I continue to draw inspiration from my own lived realities, embodying new experiences of land and home, not as a costume but as an extension of myself, a canvas for layered and intentional expression.

Sundaram (MFA) is a bharatanatyam-trained dance artist and choreographer.

Ashvini

Sundaram / Photo courtesy of the artist

What We Wear

Dancers on the significance of dress and other material performance items

What’s in our wardrobe, our props or the way we choose to do our hair and makeup? Ashvini Sundaram’s essay in this issue, exploring these questions, highlights what may be at stake in the material items we bring into our dance work: feelings, memories, entire histories (both personal and cultural) wrapped up in objects and clothing that sometimes become extensions of our bodies, affecting our movement qualities, adding weight or softness, impacting the physicality of the self.

Here, five dance artists explore this theme.

Candace Kumar, Ralph Escamillan, Christina Wajashk-Restoule, Paromita Kar and Carmen Romero offer insights into the significance of dress, fabric, props and other material performance items that are integral to their work.

Christina Wajashk-Restoule

/ Photo by Bruno Henry

NARTHANA – A dance (abridged)

Domi

Gunda gatha gatha Gunda Gatha gunda Dahin!

Or one, two, three, four

Planted as a Seed of rituals Sprouted to a sense of space Reminding us we are on this earth and the world spins around us. The dancer drawing energy from Thirty two directions all around, connected by a beat and song, by drum and melody.

Don’t you think these forms evoke Images, shapes, emotions?

Thath Dom Dom mitha Dom

Dear friend, look. We breathe to a rhythm Rain falls to a rhythm Birds sing to a rhythm How beautiful, How this tradition takes our palm to the pulse of nature.

Deepa Hettige is a multi-discriplinary performance and radio artist.

by deepa hettige

Kitha Kitha Domi Thath Jith Thon Nam