Showtime: The singing paratrooper

The Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod is offering a host of family and children-oriented activities this week.

By BARRY DAVIS
Kikar Dizengoff 311 (photo credit: Joanna Paraszczuk)
Kikar Dizengoff 311
(photo credit: Joanna Paraszczuk)
The singing paratrooper
Meir Ariel began writing and performing songs in the 1960s when he was still a resident of Kibbutz Mishmarot. However, he made the national stage in 1967 after serving as a paratrooper in the Six Day War, when he released his own satirical version of “Jerusalem of Gold,” which he called “Jerusalem of Iron.” That earned him the unofficial title of The Singing Paratrooper.
Ariel died prematurely in 1999 and since then, his widow, Tirza, has held an annual tribute concert. The memorial shows attract a wide swath of some of our leading pop and rock musicians, with participants over the years including the likes of Shalom Hanoch – who also lived on Mishmarot and helped Ariel write his earliest songs – Shlomi Shaban, Berry Sakharof, Arcadi Duchin and Shlomo Gronich.
The latter two are on the roster of performing artists at this year’s Ariel concert, which will be held on August 29 at the Ronit Farm Amphitheater in Kfar Shmaryahu, north of Tel Aviv. Other musicians who will be offering their own renderings of Ariel numbers on Sunday include Efrat Gosh, Ethnix, Eran Tzur, Dori Ben-Ze’ev and Shuli Rand.
Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show begins at 8:30 p.m. For tickets: *8965 and www.tkts.co.il.
Art for the whole family
The Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod is offering a host of family and children-oriented activities on Tuesday and Friday. The Tuesday program includes experiential slots for the whole family, with a hands-on workshop in the museum’s Ma’abadada activity center, and an arts quiz for children, parents and grandparents based on the life and works of the founder of the Ein Hod artists’ village, Romanian-born Jewish Dada movement artist Marcel Janco.
Friday’s Arts Weekend at Ein Hod program features an In the Footsteps of Sculptures at the Village treasure hunt and an environmentally oriented workshop on making figures of fairies and princesses from recycled plastic bags from the village’s grocery store. There will also be a shirt and T-shirt printing activity for children aged eight and over.
The Janco Dada Museum is open Sunday-Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Friday 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For tickets and more information: (04) 984-2350 and www.jancodada.co.il
Getting to know the Tel Aviv of yesteryear
The Discover Tel Aviv Center is offering a host of walking tours (in Hebrew) around the first Jewish city throughout next month, starting on Friday, September 2, with a visit to the Lev Tel Aviv area. The tour will take in some of the most picturesque thoroughfares of the district, including Montefiore, Mazeh and Balfour streets, and will offer historical nuggets about the local architecture and people of the 1920s and 1930s and take a look at the city’s cosmopolitan outlook of the time. The tour starts at 5 p.m.

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Two hours later, another tour will reveal some of the 19th-century cultural and architectural gems of Old Jaffa, taking in the port walls and some of the archeological finds discovered in the area.
The following day, there will be tours of the Dizengoff Square area and the historic Shapira neighborhood, taking in the multicultural human mosaic in the district around the new Tel Aviv bus station.
On September 8 there will be an English-language tour of Tel Aviv Port site, covering the history of the harbor from the 1930s up to its restoration and modernization over the last decade.
For more information: (03) 510-0337, tiki@discover-telaviv.co.il and www.migdalshalom.co.il
Shade dancing
The Suzanne Dellal Center in Neveh Tzedek, Tel Aviv, will host the 16th edition of the annual Gevanim Bemachol (Shades in Dancing) competition from September 7 to 10. It is a biannual event designed to showcase original works by young Israeli dance professionals.
This year’s new works include Takana by Gil Carlos Harush, which features a social gathering that goes terribly wrong. It is based on the spirit of South American soap operas and the films of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Meanwhile, Smadar Goshen’s Urbania show portrays urban social interchanges among four very different women whose paths cross during a taxi ride.
Elsewhere in the Gevanim Bemachol program there are works by Sharon Weisswasser – 42 Inches, which is based on Richard Bach’s celebrated 1970s book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and explores the interface between dance and animation; Idan Yoav’s look at fated romanticism, Almost Human; and Translation in the Text by Lee Meir, which marries dance with acting in an introvert-extrovert mind-set synergy.
For rickets and more information: (03) 510-5656 and www.suzannedellal.org.il