Communicating
Through Movement
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR
STAFF WRITER
Mideast
meets
Midwest
during cultural
exchange.
f entertaining an audience of
1,000 elementary-, middle- and
an
high-school students was the
goal of the Tnuatron dance
company, they appeared to
have achieved it during a per-
formance at the Masonic Tem-
ple last Thursday.
And if creating cultural
understanding was the
goal of the Mid East\ West Fest,'
that too appeared to have been
achieved as children from Israel
and America danced together
on the stage of the Detroit the-
ater.
"Today our language is dance,
tomorrow it is song and the
next day it will be tongue," said
Dr. David Porter, assistant su-
perintendent of the Detroit
Public Schools. "But it is all spo-
ken for peace and understand-
ing."
Tnuatron, an Israeli dance
troupe which takes its name from
a combination of Hebrew words for joy,
movement and theater, spent the week in
the Detroit area as part of the Mid
East \ West Fest, an international exchange
to promote understanding.
The festival is sponsored nationally by
the Dayton Hudson Foundation, the W.K
Kellogg Foundation and the Ben Teitel
Charitable Trust and locally in part by the
Jewish Community Council and Hillel Day
School.
Detroit was one stop during a 26-day tour
through seven cities in Indiana, Illinois and
Michigan.
During their Detroit stay, the troupe,
made up of girls between the ages of 10 and
18, held workshops on Israeli folk dance for
Detroit high-school students, performed a
benefit for the Michigan Cancer Foundation
at the Birmingham Theater and danced for
students from Detroit public schools and
Hillel Day School.
At the Masonic Temple show, the troupe
performed for 75 minutes, throwing in some
karate moves with dance styles as varied as
modern, jazz and ballet. A final number vi-
brantly blended African dance performed
by Detroit high-school students and Israeli
folk dance.
"The Detroit students developed a sincere
appreciation of Israeli culture," said Dr.
Denise Parcel Davis, principal of Northern
High School in Detroit. .
Above: Tnuatron dancers perform
their opening number.
Right: "The Machine" dance
was a crowd pleaser.
"When they saw each other and could
communicate in some way, even if it was the
shared experience of being teen-agers in this
world, they could relate to each other," Dr.
Davis said. "You could see the magic when
they finally connected. It was a beautiful,
beautiful thing."
For fifth-grade students at Hillel Day
School, the cultural exchange went a little
deeper. In the same vein of promoting
cultural understanding, students at Hillel
and at Detroit's Schultz Middle School
became pen pals last month and met
for the first time at the dance perform-
ance.
Pen pals Senita Perry of Schultz and
Moira Kessler of Hillel discovered at the per-
formance that they share a love of dancing.
Both girls take classes to enhance their
skills.
"It was really nice and exciting," Moira
said. "We are going to write more about
dancing."
The schools plan more activities includ-
ing two exchanges next year. 0