Chai Folk Ensemble will perform in Toronto, Vancouver and Detroit
WINNIPEG —The Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble,
Winnipeg’s 44-year-old Israeli dance troupe, recently won a gold medal
at the annual Winnipeg Dance Festival.
The internationally renowned Chai dancers competed in the festival on May 19, for the first time in many years. Chai won the medal, with the highest marks ever in the competition.
In mid-June, Chai is off on a tour that, under the leadership of volunteer executive consultant Earl Barish, has become an annual event. For this year’s Am Yisrael Chai Independence Tour, the young artists will perform at the Toronto Centre for the Performing Arts on June 15; in Detroit (for the very first time) on June 17; and in Vancouver, in a June 19 performance sponsored by the Louis Brier Jewish Aged Foundation.
“Pearl Gladman from B’nai Brith was in the audience when Chai appeared in Toronto last year,” Barish says. “She was so impressed with the show that she arranged with B’nai Brith and Maccabi Canada to invite Chai to come back again this year.”
The Detroit performance is in honour of Arline Bittker, a longtime B’nai Brith leader in that city. Chai appeared in Vancouver two years ago to help the Louis Brier Home and Hospital.
The tour will “bring the ensemble back to some of the very stages from which the magic of Chai’s performances first touched national audiences,” artistic director Tracy Kasner-Greaves says.
“Chai’s national reputation has been growing steadily over the past several years, and it is an honour for us to be chosen by so many communities to represent the essence of Israel’s milestone birthday.”
Barish says there were other cities that wanted Chai this year, but the company couldn’t fit them into the schedule. “Perhaps next year,” he adds.
It was in 1964 that Sarah Sommer, a popular music teacher in Winnipeg’s Jewish school system, had an idea for a new Jewish-Israeli folk dance group. She started the company with a half-dozen teenage girls, students at Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate. Unfortunately, Sommer did not live to see the fruits of the seed she planted.
Chai, with a staff of 45, including dancers, singers, musicians and technical people, performs a variety of Israeli and Yiddish pieces, many of them choreographed for the company. Dances from countries in which Jewish culture has flourished – Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Greece, Brazil, Russia, Poland and Israel – are part of the company’s repertoire. Performances include horahs and Oriental rhythms, klezmer and chassidic melodies and the latest Israeli hits. Each year, the ensemble tries to introduce new material.
Chai has performed across Canada and has made appearances in Florida, at Walt Disney World; in Mexico City at the Festival Aviv; and has toured Israel in 1998.
Chai returns to Winnipeg after its Vancouver performance to begin preparing for its next local performances at the Israel Pavilion’s Shalom Square during Folklorama, from Aug. 3 to 8.