Kitties, kiddies and Kong choreography

Dance dance revolution

The premier of "Fling" by the new dance company Maria Kong will take place tonight at 9 P.M. at the Nahmani Auditorium in Tel Aviv. All eyes in the Israeli dance community are on Talia Landa, Yaara Moses, Anderson Bras and Leo Lerus, four former members of the Bat Sheva Dance Company who left it to start their own troupe with the financial support of Landa's father, businessman Benny Landa. The four worked together on the show's choreography and also perform. For Fling, they worked with well-known artists: Miki Avni designed the costumes, Felice Ross the lighting and Tal Ben-Ari the soundtrack, original in part. Additional performances tomorrow (September 9) and a celebratory performance on Thursday (September 10) at 9 P.M., all at the Nahmani Auditorium

(Roni Dori)

A show that's the cat's meow

Two Eyes: Love, 2009, an international cat show, will take place Saturday (September 12) between 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. at the Neve Shikma sport arena in Rishon Letzion, the first such event organized by the New Israel Cat Alliance (NICA), affiliated with the international cat organization TICA, the only organization which presents American-style shows. It is also the first such exhibit in Israel to permit unpedigreed cats to compete for prizes. In the event, intended for all ages, 125 cats from Israel and abroad will take part, including some lacking a pedigree. Visitors will be asked to vote for the most beautiful cat of their choice, and to take part in a variety of activities and amusements. Among them, activities for parents and children on the subject of cats, on understanding the worlds of pedigreed and house cats, performances and make-up artists who will turn children into cats.

Admission: NIS 15 per child and NIS 35 for an adult. For more information, call 050-6235059 or visit the home page at www.nica.ucoz.com.

(Irit Rosenblum)

Ten years of children's opera

The Children's Opera Hour, which takes place in the foyer of the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, is marking its first decade. It began as a free series, its Tuesday afternoons remembered for children's enthusiasm for the singing and the costumes, and now costs NIS 30 per meeting. In return children and their parents receive an exceptional experience in this world of jumpy digital noise.

The 10th season opens today (September 8) with Mozart's Magic Flute, and will later feature a new production, Rimsky-Korsakov's Snow Maiden, directed by Niv Hoffman, as well as Rossini's Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and the Marriage of Figaro. Some of the operas are presented in Hebrew, with singers from The Israel Opera workshop. Moderator: Michael Eisenstadt. For ages 3-8.

(Tsipi Sa'ar)

The Israel-German connection

In his "Jewish-German Document" of 1965, the late poet David Avidan called for the normalization of "continuous and discontinuous relations" between Jews, specifically Israelis, and Germans. Avidan claimed that "the irony is that the mystical connection between the two peoples was and is much more than just any blood pact. It is sealed in blood but past the bloody stage, and continues, on the emotional and the intellectual level."

It appears that the vision of normalization in Israeli-German relations has changed over the past decade; it not only exists on the political level, but also on cultural and social ones. This relationship is at the center of the conference, "In the Eyes of the Beholder: Israel and Germany between Nazism, the fall of the Berlin Wall to Tokyo Hotel," which will take place Thursday (September 10) from 9:30 A.M. to 6 P.M. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Beit Maiersdorf, Mount Scopus campus). Organized by the university's Koebner Minerva Center for German History and the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung non-profit organization, the conference will be held in Hebrew and German, with simultaneous translation.

Israeli-German relations will be presented by speakers from both countries, including diplomats (Avi Primor and Peter Frigel), writers and other artists (Ruth Almog, Michal Zamir, Joseph Cedar and Knut Elstermann), journalists (Uri Avneri, David Witztum, Gisela Dachs, Gad Lior and Richard Schneider); and researchers (Prof. Yifat Weiss, Dr. Amal Jamal, Dr. Annette Lau, Arieh Kizel and Giora Rosen). The historian Prof. Moshe Zimmermann and Ebert-Stiftung director Dr. Ralph Hexel will speak at the opening and closing sessions.

Those interested in participating are asked to register by telephone 09-9514760.

(Avner Shapira)

British theater in Jaffa

"Harper Regan" by Simon Stephens, one of the most promising young playwrights in Britain, opens at the Gesher Theater in Jaffa, under the direction of Oded Kotler. This is Kotler's first collaboration with Gesher. Stephens, 38, has written eight plays to date (Pornography, Motortown), most of them staged at the Edinburgh Festival and the National Theatre in London. In this work he deals with violent and demanding contemporary society by examining a set of family relationships. Leora Rivlin (in her first appearance at Gesher Theater) plays Harper Regan: a woman who sets out on a strange journey to discover her personal truth. She leaves her husband (Dov Glickman, also in his first role with Gesher) and daughter (Lucy Dubinsky) one autumn night, is exposed to the dark side of human existence, and in the end returns to her loving family, free of illusions.

Set by Michael Kremenko, music by Avi Binyamin. Additional cast includes: Dudu Niv, Daniel Charnis, Neta Shpeigelman and Boris Ohanov. The first performance will take place Saturday, September 12 at the Noga Theater in Jaffa

. (Zipi Shohat)

Language arts

Tonight two exhibits open at the Jaffa port. First, Tzivi Geva's Biladi Biladi, complementing his one-man exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum. The works were created in the beginning of the 1980s, and examine the relationship that develops between figurative images such as maps, plants and birds, to which textual and calligraphic elements - Arabic words spelled in Hebrew letters - are added. Curator Hadas Maor writes in the text accompanying the exhibit that "via these elements, Geva critically examines local symbols of identity and offers an alternative political-cultural-geographic map."

The second exhibit, which launches the Dvir Gallery's new space in the Jaffa port, is by Douglas Gordon, composed of several video installations inspired by the architecture of the church in the papal palace in Avignon, and which projects figures of animals - donkeys, snakes, peacocks and so on. In his images of animals' characteristic of fables and parables, Gordon deals with the duality of good and evil. Both openings take place at 6 P.M. in Storehouse 2, Jaffa port.

(Ellie Armon Azoulay)