What a fun night! Thanks for coming and celebrating all the birthdays – it was a great party. And I know all the 70s dances tested some of our memories… but it sure was fun to dig back a little bit… and sweat a little bit. Dances in those days were so much more energetic than today’s.
We re-learned Hagavia, a dance by Danny Hayman from 1970. Here’s a video that shows it the way I taught it – the man is also facing center in part two, except for the cross-over/high-five step… It was interesting to learn that many of you do this part facing the woman! Can anyone find a video of it being done that way? I wonder where and when these became two strands of the same choreography!
Erica Goldman began Israeli dancing in New York as a child alongside her father, another folk dance fanatic. After many years performing with several New England area Israeli dance troupes, she branched out into other kinds of folk dance as a member of the Mandala Folkdance Ensemble and then the Collage Dance Ensemble, with whom she competed at the Golden Karagöz Folk Dance Competition in Turkey in 2003. In 2004, Erica spent the summer as the Dance Director of Camp Alonim (at the then Brandeis-Bardin Institute), a Jewish overnight camp where Israeli dancing is truly an obsession among the campers. She was hooked; after working for nearly eight years for a software company in Boston, she quit her job and moved to L.A. and has been teaching Israeli dance nearly full-time ever since, both in the US and abroad. Erica was the Israeli dance teacher at New Community Jewish High School in Los Angeles and also coordinated their Israel exchange programs with three high schools in Tel Aviv until 2014 when she returned to the East Coast for grad school. A grateful Wexner Fellow, Erica earned her MBA from the Heller School and her MA in the Hornstein Program for Jewish Professional Leadership at Brandeis University, and now is Director of Program and Operations at JPRO Network. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Erica teaches workshops and classes to all ages! She's also available for "Teach the Teachers" style workshops for your school or can consult on improving the Israeli dancing at your camp - email Erica to inquire about any of these!
Dance With Erica 