The Sephardic Connection: The Story of the Spanish Jews recreates the interaction of Spanish and Sephardic Jewish dance traditions that existed in Spain in the fifteenth century when the Sephardic Jewish, Christian, and Moorish populations co-existed.

Jewish families were already found in Spain when the Romans settled the Iberian Peninsula in the second century. In the ninth century, Moroccan Arabs (Moors) conquered southern Spain, and for the next 500 years their music and culture dominated. Sephardic Jews were effective translators and diplomatic mediators between the Kings of Spain and the Muslim Sultans. In the aftermath of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, one can still observe the interrelationships of Islamic, Jewish and Christian art, language and music in Spanish culture. The Sephardic Connection explores this complex cultural connection through dance and music by telling the story of a Sephardic family and their lives prior to and after their exodus from Spain in 1492. 

Within the dances of Andalusia (southern Spain), many of rhythms of the toque (guitar music) incorporate both Jewish and Moorish influences. Alborada’s core group of dancers, musicians and singers is expanded for this performance to include guest dancers performing dances having Sephardic influences, a cantorial singer in both Ladino (a Spanish Hebrew dialect) and Hebrew, and guest Sephardic musicians. The set in the first half will recreate a courtyard in Cordoba, Spain; the set in the second half will demonstrate Turkish and Moroccan influences in a Sephardic settlement in Turkey. Music selections are chosen from Flamenco and Sephardic traditions. The Flamenco dances chosen for this performance demonstrate Sephardic or Moorish influences, such as the Petenera, Bulerías, Tientos and Siguiriyas. The Siguiriyas cante is derived from the cante jondo as well as the religious songs and chants of various origins: Jewish, Moorish, Christian, Gypsy, and Indo-Pakistani. The song and dance reflects the "playeras"-- the songs of mourning sung during the procession to the graveyard.

Petenera, the centerpiece of this production, is a dramatic Flamenco dance, the cante of which describes a Sephardic Jewish woman.  Additional dances combining elements from Flamenco and Sephardic Jewish styles have been choreographed in an effort to replicate dance traditions indicative to fifteenth century Spain, before the exodus of the Sephardim. Fusion dances in the second half will reflect the cultural influences of the Sephardim with those of the countries they fled to, predominantly Turkey, including a fusion dance created to the melody of the traditional Jewish folk dance Miserlou. Another highlight is a fusion Flamenco and Sephardic music composition set by Alborada Music Director Carlos Revollar in conjunction with Yoel Ben-Simhon from Sultana Ensemble.

Sephardic musicians The Noga Group have been selected to perform. The singing technique of the Flamenco cantaor (singer) bears a keen resemblance to the cantor in the synagogue, as demonstrated by Alborada’s Flamenco singers and guest cantorial singer Laurie Fechter, who researched and chose traditional Ladino songs for this production, such as Cuando el Rey Nimrod.

As the family realizes they must leave Spain, their grief is expressed in the cante jondo Flamenco dances, La Caña and Petenera. In the Petenera, the family’s matriarch, La Petenera, decides to remain in her homeland as she sends the rest of her family away to safety outside of Spain; this piece closes with a Ladino song of lament, Los Bilbilicos. The second half of the performance opens with the Ladino/Hebrew song Ein Keilloheino. The reuniting of family with their matriarch in a Sephardic Jewish settlement outside of Spain is demonstrated by dancing the Flamenco dance Siguiriyas. Two dances will then be performed to represent the integration of the Sephardic Jewish population into the culture of Turkey, the first is the "Bracelet Dance," demonstrating Sephardic and Turkish influences and performed by the Daughters of Sophia Tribal Dance Troupe; the second is the fusion composition Tangos de Oliva (combining Flamenco, Sephardic Jewish and Turkish/Moroccan influences). Additional Flamenco dances and Ladino songs are interspersed throughout the program. Costumes reflect the clothing seen in this era, including authentic representations of traditional Sephardic Jewish dresses and headpieces. Sephardic women in fifteenth century Spain wore clothing with less adornment than typically associated with Spanish Gypsy clothing. 

Info to go in a box/not part of text of article

JUNE 9, 2007 at 8 p.m.

George Street Playhouse

9 Livingston Avenue,

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

TICKETS $23.00 General, $20.00 group discount $17.00 Seniors/ Students

Tickets (732) 416-1647

For further info. (732)255-4071Funded in part by Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the American Music Center Live Music for Dance

On May 15, the Gimel Class (third grade) students of the Adath Israel Congregation Religious School were thinking of butterflies. It isn’t Spring Fever, however.

Last month, as part of the school’s workshop series for Yom HaShoah, these students learned about a young girl named Hannechka who survived the Holocaust in hiding in Poland. She survived the ordeal by imagining herself as "flying like a butterfly." They discussed the images that butterflies generate, each making a garden marker describing those feelings- "freedom, beauty, light, cheerful." Then they planted a garden in planters that has been flourishing in the synagogue’s bright and sunny rotunda.

Now as we turn our Jewish calendars toward Shavuot, a holiday celebrated with greenery and flowers, students will replant that garden. It will be a celebration of both the new life the Jewish people received at Sinai and also a remembrance of one and a half million young lives lost during the Holocaust. But, unlike many student-planted gardens, this will not be placed in a side or rear area of the building, but will have a location at the front entrance of the synagogue. It will be adjacent to the large pink marble monument dedicated to all of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

This project was the combined effort of the school’s educational director, Hedda Morton, and the resource center coordinator, Sharon Frant Brooks. Frant Brooks was selected to attend an educator’s seminar last summer at Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center in Jerusalem. She brought back many pedagogic materials for all grade levels. Frant Brooks conducted workshops for all the students, with displays of collages, tryptichs, and giant tzedakah boxes as a result. The workshop for the Gimel students, however, will have a long-term impact on the synagogue and its congregants.

"It is my hope," Frant Brooks said, "that each and every spring will bring a return of the flowers and the butterflies, as a reminder of both the young lives lost and the rebirth of the Jewish people, both at Sinai and in modern day Israel."