Arts & Culture – Page 144

Poet’s passion shines

From the moment I read Pat Johnson’s interview with Faith Jones prior to last year’s Limmud, I knew I wanted to read The Acrobat: Selected Poems of Celia Dropkin (Tebot Bach, 2014).

The title of the collection wasn’t mentioned but the topic was: “erotic Yiddish poetry.” Jones, who translated Dropkin’s work into English with Jennifer Kronovet and Samuel Solomon, gave an overview of the poet’s background, which is explained in more detail in The Acrobat. That Dropkin writes with and about such passion is notable given her life’s circumstances. Born in Belarus in 1887, she and her family had to rely on the charity of relatives after her father died. While difficult, it meant that she could receive an education, and she became a writer. In 1909, she married Shmaye Dropkin, a Bund activist whose political activities forced him to flee czarist Russia, and, in 1912, Dropkin (and their son) joined him in New York.

“There,” reads the Translators’ Note, “inspired by the foment of Yiddish culture she found, Dropkin shifted from writing in Russian to writing in Yiddish…. She became a part of the thriving Yiddish literary scene, publishing widely in Yiddish newspapers and literary journals. Yet, she was publicly criticized by her male contemporaries for the perceived extremity of her work. All this time, Dropkin raised five children; a sixth died in infancy. She occasionally wrote stories and novellas in serialization for money, especially during the Depression when her family needed the income. Although the bulk of her oeuvre dates from the 1920s and ’30s, Dropkin never stopped writing poems. She wrote almost until her death in 1956.”

The Acrobat is not a comprehensive collection, but rather, as Jones explained in an interview with Leah Falk at yivo.org, the translators “chose the ones that we thought we could make into good poems in English…. The poems, even some of her quite important poems, that we did not think we knew how to work with, or that lost something in the translation that we didn’t think would be regained, we didn’t keep…. We weren’t able to capture them in the way that we felt really did them justice.”

A page-facing translation – i.e. the Yiddish poem is on the page facing the English version – those who understand Yiddish can not only engage in discussions about a poem’s meanings, but its translation. For example, the title poem, which is generally translated as “The Circus Lady,” gives an idea of the complexity of language, and the different images that are conjured by words that basically mean the same thing.

Dropkin’s poems more than withstand the test of time. Eighty-plus years later, they retain their immediacy. As Edward Hirsch writes in the foreword, Dropkin’s “lyrics come fully loaded. They are erotically frank and emotionally unabashed, deeply engendered, relentlessly truthful. They are terse and musical, like songs, and carefully constructed to explode with maximum impact.”

More than a decade in the making, The Acrobat is, remarkably, the first collection of Dropkin’s work in English, and she could not have gotten a better group of translators. Their love of the poetry comes through, as does their skill. One could almost be forgiven for thinking that Dropkin wrote in English. The Acrobat is truly an inspiring – and sometimes challenging – read. But it is more than that.

In speaking to Johnson, Jones admitted another objective. “I would like people to think about re-envisioning our forbearers as people who were more like us,” she said. “We need to really explore the people in our past and, as a historian, this is what I hope for most: that people will explore the past, understanding that these people were not like us, but in other ways were very much like us.”

In this, she and her colleagues also succeed. This is your bubbe’s poetry, as much as it is yours. And, while thought may be a little unsettling, given some of the subject matter, it is also very cool.

***

He and She
by Celia Dropkin (from The Acrobat)

He is a branch;
she – the green leaves on the branch.
From him to her flows
dark power, thick fertile sap.
She shudders with each touch of wind,
whispers and laughs,
turns the silver
of delighted eyes.
He is simple, mute.
Autumn dyes her deep
colors. The cold wind cruelly
exiles her from the branch,
while he remains the same, simple,
robust, mute.

Screenings educate, inspire

Forty years ago, Ian Merkel was involved in clandestine film screenings. The films were nothing Canadians would consider illicit, but in apartheid South Africa, color barriers meant it was illegal to show films featuring blacks and whites together, and the films had to be smuggled into the country. Merkel watched these contraband films in friends’ garages. When the police raided the screenings, people sometimes landed in jail. Even with this possibility, for a young Merkel, film was worth the risk.

photo - Ian Merkel — Ian Merkel *(photo by Gabriel Morosan)*

Years later, Merkel is still as passionate about the evocative nature of film as he ever was. He has been involved in many film related organizations in Vancouver, including as a board member and executive director of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival. Today, Merkel in involved with the potential of working toward social change through film, and has become involved with Reel Causes and the Vancouver Foreign Film Society.

“Film, for me and a lot of people, is the most memorable art genre,” said Merkel about why he believes film can change the world.

According to their website, the mission of Reel Causes is “to educate, inspire and engage the community around social justice, environmental and health-related issues.”

Merkel described how the organization began in an interview with the Independent. “Mohamed Ehab, a pharmacist from Egypt, had just moved here and wanted to meet people. He loved movies, so he began having movie nights in his home, then began bringing films in [from out of town] for the public.”

In 2010, Reel Causes registered as a nonprofit society and has since partnered with many B.C.-based nonprofits to promote health, environmental stewardship and social justice.

“We bring films that are not political or religious and partner with what we call community causes, in order to educate people,” Merkel said. “The belief is that the media of film is one of the most powerful ways to get people involved in causes. People connect as a group while they watch a film and are able to engage with our community causes to effect positive change.”

Reel Causes has an arrangement with Vancity that enables the organization to screen films once a month at Vancity’s theatre at Simon Fraser University and once every six months at the Vancity Theatre downtown on Seymour Street. They aspire to raise awareness and funds for the causes with which they engage.

“Our most successful event was a partnership with the Lipstick Foundation, which provides esthetic services to patients in palliative care in a hospice on the North Shore,” Merkel said. “We showed a movie called Happy. The Lipstick Foundation brought a big sheet of paper and cupcakes. Whenever a person wrote on the sheet about what makes them happy, they got a cupcake. We had over 200 people there.”

Coming up next for Reel Causes is a film dealing with youth issues and a partnership with Artquake, an organization whose mission it is to empower young people and build confidence through art.

Reel Causes is at a turning point as an organization, Merkel said. Several younger people sit on their newly enlarged board of directors and Merkel said he anticipates passing the torch to a new generation soon, while still maintaining some involvement.

At the same time, he looks forward to turning his attention to his other passion: promoting foreign films.

The Vancouver Foreign Film Society was formed in May 2014 as a result of the dearth of independent movie theatres in Vancouver. While the Ridge Theatre has been demolished and Fifth Avenue and the Park are now owned by Cineplex, the demand for quality foreign and international films remains high. Eight films were screened by the society last year and 12 screenings are planned for this year at Pacific Cinémathèque.

“The criteria for our films is that they are produced outside of North America, but for some French films from Quebec we may bend the rules because they are never seen outside of Quebec,” said Merkel. “We’ve had films from France, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Australia and soon will show films from Japan, India, Spain, Turkey and Thailand.”

For Merkel, providing his insider knowledge of how to procure films and put on events is a labor of love. “The impact of a film will inspire for pure entertainment or for social justice,” he said. “Film shows us things that happen around the world and people remember powerful images from film. I see that film can stimulate the mind and somehow retain the content so those images are lodged in your mind.”

For more information, visit reelcauses.org or vanforfilm.org.

Michelle Dodek is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Connecting past with present

Heather Hermant in ribcage, which will be at the Firehall Arts Centre March 3-8. (photo by Tim Matheson)

As a graduate student, Toronto spoken word artist Heather Hermant took a workshop taught by Diane Roberts, a former artistic director of Vancouver’s urban ink productions. Roberts asked her students to research and embody an ancestor, and Hermant chose her great-great-grandmother Riva. The process eventually led to the multimedia theatrical project ribcage: this wide passage, which comes to Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre next month.

ribcage centres on Esther Brandeau, a Jewish woman who, posing as Jacques La Farge, a male Christian laborer, came to Canada from France in 1738. Said to be the first Jew to ever set foot in Canada, she was discovered, interrogated and later deported when she wouldn’t convert to Catholicism. Writes Hermant in a 2013 Canadian Theatre Review article, “Riva stepped aside as I followed an archival labyrinth – in Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, and in every place that Brandeau was purported to have worked as a young man over five years across France.”

The 2005 workshop was Hermant’s introduction to Roberts’ Personal Legacy process and, writes Hermant in the CTR, it is “the first performance to move from idea to production through the Personal Legacy process. It was workshopped and presented in Vancouver as part of the 2010 Tremors Festival. The full production premièred at Le MAI in Montreal in October 2010.” A French version of the performance has also been created: thorax: une cage en éclats, translated by Quebec performer and scholar Nadine Desrochers.

“I began as a spoken word performer, and thought I would approach this performance as a series of spoken word pieces. In other words, what I usually did but longer, more material,” said Hermant, who is now a performer across several genres, as well as being a curator, scholar and educator. “When I began to work, I discovered that spoken word poetry as I knew it would not do it with this story. Partly, this had to do with language. I was working with French language archives and yet I write in English. On top of or because of that, a lot of the material I was creating was physical – gesture, movement. A lot of it was video. These were things that were unexpected and new for me since what I thought I was aiming for was spoken word poetry. So, it was a bit scary.

“But, in studio work with Diane Roberts, who directs the show and who has been there from the beginning of its creation, this is where you start. Starting with movement, for example, is a key to storytelling. According to Diane, working from the body first forces a kind of honesty that is difficult to achieve when using language. Luckily, it was in a performance class with Diane where I first discovered the story of Esther Brandeau. Words came late, which is odd for a poet, but in a way this was part of the story. It was as if an impossibility to fully know stood at the centre, and required all sorts of different approaches to do just that: to approach the story, which demanded its own form.”

As her research continued, Hermant realized the production would need a musical dimension. “I began to hear live fiddle and see live mixed video installation. When we came together in collaboration with composer/fiddle player Jaron Freeman-Fox, he composed most of the material in studio (as in dance/theatre studio) with me, working from my movement and the rhythms of some of my text.”

The video in the production, she explained, derives from her research in various countries, “often collected as a way of journaling” her work. “A bunch of the video material is from site-specific reenactments filmed by Melina Young. VJ Kaija Siirala and I worked in studio together to make all this eclectic rich footage into a mixed installation concept…. The video installations operate as a kind of memory space, their own kind of eye on what’s transpiring. Interdisciplinarity in this piece allows for different witness positions to come through, I think. Different ways of looking.”

Hermant doesn’t consider ribcage a play. “It is somewhere between spoken word and storytelling, physical theatre, a series of interdisciplinary tableaux, a performance installation, all of it in a theatre. I just understand it all as poetry, regardless of whether words are involved or not.”

As diverse as are the performance aspects, so too are ribcage’s themes: identity and sexuality, belonging and personal history, established roles and genders as well as rebellion against them. “Thematically,” explained Hermant, “ribcage is a confrontation with the meaning of history and how we know the past. It is about how we work and translate across languages, eras and bodies. It confronts holes and gaps and unknowns in any written record, and works from a place of longing, desire to know and to feel belonging and to understand the present moment. I created this piece because I was compelled by the personal resonances I found with the story of Esther Brandeau…. My show is about my own ancestral and personal histories, and the journey of my research, as much as it is about the story of Esther Brandeau/Jacques La Fargue. All of these stories enter into ribcage: this wide passage, through the different media and forms that I integrate.”

photo - Heather Hermant in ribcage — Heather Hermant in ribcage *(photo by Tim Matheson)*

Hermant noted that women passing as men, “especially in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries … was far more common than the exceptional cases seem to suggest. In addition to the most popular assumption and representations – that the primary motive for women who passed as men was to follow their male lovers, which circulates through pop culture across many eras, and of which there are indeed many documented historical examples – there were many cases of passers who did so out of economic necessity, there were many cases of passers who did so in order to partner with women, or a combination of these.”

For Hermant, the historical record must be regarded with care. “The important thing to me is to ask how a story is recorded, how it comes to us, what are the stakes for the person outed. In other words, it is vital to read askance and to distrust the document, even as the document gives us the story.

“What is particularly interesting for me in this case,” she continued, “is this is purportedly a case of a female passing as a male and a Jewish person passing as a Christian. I like to call this person a multicrosser. I find we need to challenge the assumption that passing is simply a ruse. Classical literature is full of titillating stories of passers, titillating primarily for straight male audiences. My queer positionality perhaps makes more available to me a knowledge that changing gender can be a profoundly sacred process, that sexuality may or may not have anything to do with it, and that queerness as many of us know ourselves today has history. This doesn’t mean sameness across time. That last sentence is vital. In other words, how people understand themselves today and the terms through which they do so are not the same as how people understood themselves 200 or 300 years ago. This is an inherent challenge to reading, understanding and representing things as they were long ago. It’s partly why I have not chosen to create a work that takes place only contained in a long ago era.”

Describing ribcage as “a midrash on the archive,” Hermant explained, “It’s a meditation, a questioning, a digging in deep into the idea of archive, into archives themselves, into memory and telling, loss, desire, the written word and its troubles, a need to understand belonging, compelled by questioning and not by a need or a belief in the possibility or utility of resolution. In fact, to me, such a stance is an ethical stance, and some might say a profoundly Jewish one – though of course not exclusively so – i.e. the imperative of the question. So, yes, of course, my Jew-ish-ness (hyphenation intentional) is important to me and to my show. ‘Jewishness,’ however defined … and a grappling thereof, informs the piece profoundly. As does my non-Jew-ish-ness, my queerness, my experiences of gender, my feminist leanings, my francophone ancestry, my being a settler ally working with an aboriginal and intercultural theatre company on unceded Coast Salish territory, my work as a scholar in gender studies, colonial history and historiography, my teaching, my concern for land and water…. The list goes on. It is all important to me, all profoundly inform the show, and none of these is mutually exclusive!”

And these are not the only aspects informing the show. “Dealing with difficult histories does not preclude humor, playfulness or joy. In fact,” said Hermant, “these are essential precisely for dealing with difficult histories. I choose the topics I choose – or they choose me – because I feel a responsibility and a call to do so. And because, very simply, they compel me.”

ribcage, produced by urban ink productions, will be at the Firehall Arts Centre March 3-8. Freeman-Fox’s original music will be performed by Vancouver musician Elliot Vaughan.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Klezmer meets punk

Germany’s Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird play at the Electric Owl on March 6 as part of the Chutzpah! festival. (photo from Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird via Chutzpah!)

Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird live up to the hype. They are indeed “helping klezmer reach a new renaissance, seasoning it with folk, punk and deep-digging lyrics, full of sarcasm and wicked self-irony.” They most certainly belong “to this caste of Yiddish music agitators” and their music is “[a]n absolute must for lovers of unusual, intelligent, challenging, exciting folk music and a blast at every instant.” They are “forward-marching and backward-glancing,” making “truly great art.”

And that’s not the half of it. On their website (paintedbird.de), you can read more about what reviewers have said, you can download the lyrics to all their songs, you can watch several videos – and you can get an excellent idea of what to expect when they perform at the Electric Owl on March 6 as part of this year’s Chutzpah! festival. Kahn spoke with the Jewish Independent ahead of that one-night only show.

JI: Could you share a bit about your background – how you came to be a musician, how and when you came to live in Berlin, for example?

DK: I’ve been a musician all my life but I first started working professionally as a singer-songwriter in Detroit, and then in New Orleans in 2001.

I was a part of founding the Earthwork music collective in Michigan, which has grown to a large community of artists and activists. I produced four albums of my songs with them. I first really invested in klezmer music and Yiddish after attending Klez Kanada, in Quebec, for the first time in 2004. It was there that I met Alan Bern, who was my accordion teacher. He had been living in Berlin for many years and he offered me his apartment to sublet. I was already quite interested in German theatre, particularly Brecht, and I wanted to live in Europe, so it fit.

After going to the Jewish festivals and workshops that summer in Krakow and Weimar, I had the idea to start the band the Painted Bird. And it was around then that I really started learning not only German, but Yiddish and incorporating translations into my songs, and performing in many languages at once. The band has had many members but the heart of it for all these years has always been Michael Tuttle, whom I met in New Orleans, playing bass, and Hampus Melin, a drummer from Sweden, whom we met in Berlin. We wanted to create a band that would be able to take traditional songs, folk songs, in different languages and infuse them with a modern sensibility that we take from the other music we dig – punk, jazz, new music. And Berlin is the perfect city for this band. It’s a real cosmopolis.

JI: You’ve studied drama and your bio notes that you’ve been a professional actor since age 12. How does acting fit in with your music career?

DK: From a performance perspective, I’ve never made too much of a distinction between ways of being on a stage. Songs and plays are simply different modes of collaborative or solo storytelling. As a musician, I get to employ many of the techniques I need to write, direct or act in the theatre. And I’ve never really quit making theatre. I’ve done many productions over the years, in the States, as well as in Germany. I’ve been involved as a composer or arranger of music and songs for various productions, and I’ve been acting and directing again, as well.

I’m currently very involved in Berlin at the Maxim Gorki theatre, a wonderful space for progressive work these days. The new artistic director, the Turkish-born German Shermin Langhoff, is an inspiring, powerful voice for diversity and political engagement in drama. I’ve been a kind of “house-poet” for the theatre, working on several productions as composer, actor, musician, etc. I’m about to direct a small play in their studio theatre space, an adaptation of Romain Gary’s The Dance of Genghis Cohn. It’s become an important family for me, and has also connected to the international klezmer family, as well. I curate a concert series there, focusing heavily on new Jewish music.

JI: What drew/draws you to Yiddish as a language in which to write and sing?

DK: Besides the connection it may have to my personal background as a descendant of immigrants from what we could call Yiddishland, I’m attracted to Yiddish on a purely esthetic level. I like the way Yiddish sounds, how it feels to sing and speak it. It tastes good. I like the things you can express in Yiddish that don’t quite work in other languages. And I like the challenge of trying to translate that not only into English, but into a kind of performance that makes sense to an audience that may not have the cultural or historical literacy to know where it comes from. I think Yiddish has a lot to teach us about the world we live in today, as well as the world of a century ago. It’s a language which defies borders, which defies easy categorization, which defies simple historical narratives. It’s a defiant language.

JI: Your lyrics are poetry, full of meaning, commentary on history and contemporary society. How would you describe your core beliefs/values? Do they have any foundation in Jewish traditions/ teachings?

DK: My core beliefs, which are never fixed, have their foundations in many things in my life. Some of those things are Jewish. Others simply come from being a child of Detroit in the late 20th century, being an ex-pat, being someone who travels a lot, etc. But some of what I received as a Jewish education goes against other values that I hold to. I try to take what I need from traditions and leave the rest alone. But this is itself a tradition. So, insofar as Jewish tradition contains a tradition of subverting other traditions, I’m a fairly traditional subversive.

JI: You also arrange the words of others, Heinrich Heine, Bertold Brecht, Itzik Manger, Leonard Cohen, and a wide range of writers. How do you choose, or what aspects of a poet’s words tend to interest/excite you?

DK: I work on what speaks to me.

I’ve loved Leonard Cohen since I was about 14 or 15 years old. I definitely owe the fact that I chose to be a songwriter and a poet largely to him. Brecht was the thinker and poet who kept me interested in the radical potential of the theatre to dynamically reflect the world in a political and lyrically effective way. My first plays that I worked on out of college were by him, in New Orleans and Detroit. Somehow, they were the best response I could find to the Bush era. Brecht wrote of living in “bad times for poetry.” I think I know what he meant. He was also a tremendous songwriter, who directly influenced people like Bob Dylan and performers like Nina Simone.

Heine and Manger were poets whom I really discovered in learning German and Yiddish. And now I understand that they are relatives of Cohen, Dylan (both Bob and Dylan Thomas) and others. They are just obscured behind the barriers of language and the catastrophes of history. I like to think of what a young woman I met once said after attending Klez Kanada and first encountering modern Yiddish poetry, she’s from Newfoundland, not Jewish, and she said: “I can’t believe it. It’s like a crime that I’ve been alive for 25 years and no one has ever told me about Itzik Manger!” I think a lot of people would feel that way if they could read him. He was amazing.

Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird’s 19+ show at the Electric Owl, 1926 Main St., starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30/$25. For the other musical performances, as well as the dance, theatre and comedy shows that take place during Chutzpah!, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Moose-led family show

Alex the Moose, aka Alex Konyves, performs at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Family Day on Feb. 9. (photo by Kale Wilson Beaudry of klphotograph.com)

The show had ended. Alex the Moose, though, had not left the building. Known to his friends as Alex Konyves, the man beneath the antlers sat next to me basking in the afterglow of his Family Day concert at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver on Feb. 9.

With sweat on his brow and a big smile, he and I sat looking towards the now vacant stage. No longer in moose attire, he was obviously pleased. “I was so excited for this show,” he beamed. “We were asked to do it a number of months ago, and put a great band together with Jesse Bentley on bass, Jeff Child on percussion, Emma Wong on vocals and myself on guitar and vocals. We had a blast. The kids here are really adorable, really sweet, really engaged.”

Alex the Moose, joined by a giraffe, a cheetah and a bunny, played for the children, but the parents and grandparents in the audience bobbed their heads and tapped their feet, too. Blending elements of funk, Latin, klezmer and rock and roll, the band opened with a bass solo from Jesse the Cheetah (Bentley) that would not be out of place at the Commodore Ballroom on a Saturday night.

“The trick is keeping it suitable for children, but also engaging for parents,” Konyves explained. “Some children’s music is not the most engaging for parents, and if they’re going to be playing at your house, on repeat, it’s nice to have music that’s engaging and fun, original and diverse.” Hence, the ensemble includes a range of instruments – the didgeridoo, two types of hand-drum, wind chimes, guitar, bass and voices. “We like to keep it eclectic,” said Konyves.

They opened with an original song – “Wake up in the Morning” – and aptly chose their current single, “The Pyjama Song,” as the finale. The group performed other originals, such as “The Bumblebee Song” and “The Iguana Song,” in which the group counts iguanas falling off a tree, in Spanish, as well as classics like “The Hokey Pokey,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

“The first time I played music for young children was at Camp Miriam when I was a madrich [counselor] there, and I had a young age group,” said Konyves, now 29. “At night, I’d put them to sleep by playing guitar and, three songs in, they’d all be fast asleep. It was really special.”

These days, Konyves, who is also the song leader at Temple Sholom, lists Raffi, Debbie Friedman and the Beatles as his musical influences. “Raffi talks a lot about child-honoring, where you really respect children in every regard. You don’t push product placements, you really allow them to make choices for themselves, and you give them your heart.”

Konyves also believes in making music accessible to children. “If you have any instruments in your house, put them out,” he advises parents. “Just like having books in your house, it should be the same with musical instruments.”

As our conversation wound down, an impromptu jam session broke out among the bandmates on stage. To the bellowing of the didgeridoo and the beat of the djembe, Konyves explained his love of playing for children: “Kids are very honest with you when you play. If they don’t like it, they’ll let you know.”

Based on the bouncing, jumping, laughing and smiling in the audience, they liked the Family Day show a lot.

Many of Alex the Moose and company’s songs are available for download at musicwithalex.bandcamp.com.

Benjamin Groberman is a born and raised Vancouverite. He is a freelance writer, and is pursuing a bachelor of education degree, with aspirations to teach in a Jewish high school. He is a resident of Vancouver’s Moishe House.

Mixing mercy and medicine

At the close of what Western countries call Valentine’s Day, a tenuous ceasefire went into effect in war-torn eastern Ukraine. Unfortunately, the days prior to the truce were not what you would call all “hearts and flowers.” Up to the last minute, both sides pushed to make territorial gains. We can be sure that no love has been lost.

Needless to say, tanks, rockets and guns do not tell the whole story of the armed conflict. Beyond the military operations are the civilians whose lives have been affected.

One critical result of the fighting is that the overall health situation in Ukraine has rapidly deteriorated. (Even in peacetime, however, the health situation was not on par with Western medicine.) Recently, the United Nations reported that drug supplies are running out and that the country has seen a rise in the number of tuberculosis diagnoses. As there are not enough shelters for displaced people whatever their health status, some of these individuals are being sent to hospitals. This in turn has created a lack of treatment space for acute medical cases. To date, these are the statistics on the war in Ukraine:

5,486 people killed and 12,972 wounded in eastern Ukraine
5.2 million estimated to be living in the areas of conflict
978,482 internally displaced people, including 119,832 children
600,000 have fled to neighboring countries, two-thirds of whom have gone to Russia

How can we in the West appreciate what is happening to the people living in the conflict zone? One unlikely way is to reconsider Geoffrey Smith’s powerful 2007 documentary The English Surgeon. The film deals with how medicine is practised in Ukraine and puts a personal face on what life (in more promising times, perhaps) is like for Ukrainians.

This film reveals how two dedicated neurosurgeons make do with scarce medical supplies with a goal to improve their patients’ quality of life. In the course of this sophisticated British-produced documentary, viewers become intimately acquainted with the hospital exploits of this medical odd couple: Dr. Henry Marsh, a British neurosurgeon, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dr. Igor Petrovich Kurilets. Smith’s movie is enlightening and viewers can glean much about Marsh’s point of view. In his experience, performing the surgery itself is not the hard part, it’s knowing when to treat that’s complicated.

Early in the film, Marsh talks about the importance for him of helping other people; he questions what we are if we don’t try to help others. When the movie was filmed, Marsh had already been volunteering in Ukraine for 16 years. He tells us that when he first started his project, he found surgical conditions comparable to those that existed in the West 60 years prior. He was appalled at the misdiagnoses he encountered, and by the stories of patients that could have been helped had they received appropriate medical interventions earlier.

The film exudes irony and humor as viewers get to know Marsh. He explains that he always liked working with machines and using his hands. He also enjoys the sensory aspects of working with wood. At one point, he says that surgeons like blood, and he likens surgery to a kind of sport.

Kurilets displays no less of a quirky wit. For instance, he points out a painting hanging on his wall. In the picture are happy Cossacks sitting around a table. Kurilets thinks there are many similarities between Cossacks and surgeons. He comments that in the painting, the Cossacks could be gathered around an operating room table. He appreciates the Cossacks’ aggressiveness. Actually, his own pro-activeness has gotten him into trouble with the authorities; he later reveals that he was unemployed for two years following repeated run-ins with the Soviet system. Ironically, he currently rents rooms from a hospital run by the KGB, his former nemesis.

Kurilets is still a doer today, albeit perhaps slightly more pragmatic than he once was. He has plans to build a new hospital. He underscores his philosophy of life by explaining that the point is not to just make plans – something that happened a lot in the former Soviet Union – but to actually do, to get things done.

In fact, these two individuals are pragmatism personified. Marsh and Kurilets buy brain surgery tools in the local open-air market. Kurilets’ Bosch drill comes from this market. Marsh also regularly donates equipment to Kurilet’s practice. In an understated way, we learn some of the real costs of surgery in this area of the former Soviet Union versus the West: the 80 Sterling drill bits that Marsh’s hospital uses once will be used by Kurilets for 10 years.

Marsh also confronts deeper issues. He struggles with being able to leave patients with hope, even when there is nothing that surgically can be done.

One patient who can be treated is Marian, a young, rural man of limited financial resources. Marian has a brain tumor that could either leave him severely disabled or kill him. The doctors tell him that the only way they can help is by conducting brain surgery, but without anesthesia. Marian agrees.

The operating room in which this incredible procedure takes place is so small that, at one point, a member of the surgical team has to bend down, almost crawling to get to the other side of the room. Even in this incredibly tense scene, Marsh reveals his wry humor by saying that the healthy section of the brain should look “like a good cream cheese,” not rubber. He does not underestimate the tremendous vitality of the organ on which he operates, however. In surgery, he says, “We are the brain.”

Sharing some of the soul-searching he does in his practice, Marsh humbly admits that he has made some big mistakes. He narrates the painful story of one young Ukrainian patient that he brought to England for surgery. Marsh reveals that both of Tanya’s surgeries went terribly wrong. Even today, he can’t put Tanya’s story aside. He tells Kurilets that he thinks about Tanya a lot. Kurilets agrees that there were lessons to be learned from her case. But Marsh doesn’t just contemplate Tanya; he seeks physical contact with this lost patient. In a haunting moment of tremendous honesty and humanity, he pays a visit to her family members. He reveals to Tanya’s family how nervous he was before the visit.

The English Surgeon is a powerful movie, stunning, but frequently heart-wrenching. It displays not just the truth of the situation in Ukraine, but the truth about people.

The film is available online without charge at documentarystorm.com/the-english-surgeon or on Netflix Canada. You can view an interview with the filmmaker at pbs.org.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

***

A number of organizations are trying to help civilians in Ukraine. Working at opposite ends of the life spectrum are two Jewish charities: the Survivor Mitzvah Project (survivormitzvah.org), which helps elderly Holocaust survivors residing in Ukraine, and Tikva Children’s Home (tikvaodessa.org), whose mission is to care for “the homeless, abandoned and abused Jewish children of Ukraine and neighboring regions of the former Soviet Union.”

***

While many are probably familiar with Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Everything Is Illuminated (which was also made into a film in 2005), the Good Reads website has assembled a list of other books dealing with Ukraine (goodreads.com/places/76-ukraine). The list contains fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults.

ZDS music inspires movement

Zvuloon Dub System is at the Imperial on Feb. 20, the first of several world-class musicians taking part in this year’s Chutzpah! festival. (photo by Naom Chojnowski)

“Come prepared to dance!” advises the Chutzpah! promotional material about Zvuloon Dub System’s upcoming show at the Imperial. Wise words, indeed. Just listen to a few bars of any song and you will find yourself moving to the beat.

Founded in 2006 by brothers Asaf and Ilan Smilan, the Tel Aviv-based band is part of an impressive world music lineup at this year’s Chutzpah! As part of its series on the festival this month, the Jewish Independent spoke with Asaf Smilan about ZDS’s evolution into an internationally known reggae group.

JI: How did you come together as the current incarnation of the band, and who will be coming to Vancouver?

AS: ZDS is a little bit like a sports team. We have an extended lineup with sub musicians, and when we go on tour, we need to do some personnel changes in some of the positions from time to time.

The core lineup of ZDS has included eight musicians since 2010. When we recorded our latest album, Anbessa Dub, we brought more musicians to the studio to achieve a certain sound. When we released the album, we wanted to credit all the musicians that took part in the production of the album – the sub musicians that play with us – so we credit all of them on our website.

We’ll come to Vancouver with eight members: Gili Yalo on vocals, Inon Peretz on trumpet, Idan Salomon on saxophone, Ilan Smilan and Simon Nahum on guitars, Lior Romano on organ, Tal Markus on bass and me on drums. This is the same lineup that will play tonight [Jan. 22] in Tel-Aviv.

JI: Is there something about the tribe of Zvuloon that inspired you to choose the name for your band?

AS: Back in 2006 when we start to play together, I used to live on Zvuloon Street in Tel Aviv. We used to rehearse in my apartment and we were surprised to see that many neighbors really liked what they heard. One couple from the other side of the street used to go out to the balcony to listen, another neighbor from our building used to come down to our apartment and sit with us, the man from the grocery shop on the corner brought us Arabic coffee and cookies. We felt strong vibes from that place. So, when we thought about a name for the band, we wanted to capture that special vibe in the name of the band and, because we’re playing roots reggae that relates to Rasta (that relates to the 12 tribes of Israel), we felt that Zvuloon was the right name for us.

JI: Have the reactions to your music differed between Jewish and mainstream audiences? Have you played in the Caribbean and/or in Ethiopia? If so, what was the experience like? If not, any plans to do so?

AS: There are small differences, but basically it’s the same reaction. Sometimes we’re playing in front of a mixed audience of Jewish people, Caribbean people, Ethiopians and mainstream audiences and our music can speak to all of them. This is the beauty of music, the power to touch the hearts of many people no matter where they’re coming from.

When we played last summer in Jamaica, we sang mostly in Amharic. The Jamaican people were really curious to hear how reggae mixed with Ethiopian music, so after we played at Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay, we got an invitation to come to play in Kingston at the Haile Selassie birthday celebrations organized by the Rasta people.

In Israel, we’re playing many times in front of Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian audiences and we can feel how the music brings people together and how people from different backgrounds can enjoy and dance together to our music.

When people who were not familiar with Ethiopian culture come to me after the show and ask me where they can hear more Ethiopian music, I get the feeling that we’re really doing something important that opens the minds and the hearts of the people.

JI: On Anbessa Dub, there are Ethiopian songs done in ZDS style. Can you talk about adapting them for this album?

AS: I started to listen to Ethiopian music in the early 2000s, a long time before we started to work on Anbessa Dub. After Gili joined the band in 2010, we started to know each other and, one day, we were sitting together and listening to music. I asked Gili if he knew a song in Amharic that I really liked. From that conversation, we started to think maybe we could play this song in the band in our version. A week later, I brought the arrangement to the band rehearsal and everybody really liked the new song, [as did] our audiences. Slowly, we added more Ethiopian songs to our set until we came up with the Anbessa Dub album.

During the work on the album, we developed a unique way to translate the Ethiopian music, which is based on 6/8 rhythms, into a reggae beat in 4/4, so the tempo of the song isn’t changing but the whole feeling is extremely different. When we worked on some of the songs with Ethiopian artists who knew the original versions, it took them some time to understand what we’d done to the songs.

JI: Freedom Time features English lyrics and Anbessa Dub songs in Ethiopian languages. Any plans to do a Hebrew album?

AS: Lately, I have found myself exploring the influences of biblical text on Jamaican reggae so maybe we’ll do something with that in the future. Last year, we released “Manginah,” our first single in Hebrew, so I believe that some day in the future we’ll come up with a Hebrew album.

image - Anbessa Dub CD cover — Israeli artist Moran Yogev created the cover of Zvuloon Dub System’s *Anbessa Dub* album.

JI: Who did the cover art of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba for Anbessa Dub?

AS: The beautiful artwork featuring King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was done by Moran Yogev, a very talented young Israeli artist.

I saw some of Moran’s works that combined elements of Ethiopian art in the newspaper and I felt that she could bring the right appearance to the album. I was very happy when she told me that she loves our music and would be happy to design our album.

JI: What’s the Tel Aviv music scene like these days? In what kinds of venues do you usually play?

AS: Tel Aviv is a small city but the music scene is quite big. You’ll find many talented musicians playing all kinds of musical genres, from Middle Eastern to jazz, from Ethiopian music to rock and roll and electronic music.

We’re playing in many venues, like the Barbie Club, Hangar 11, Levontin 7, the Zone and many other venues in the city.

JI: Are there any musicians, Israeli or not, with whom you would like to work?

AS: We have a list of musicians that we would like to work with, and from time to time we’re doing it. In the reggae field, we have worked with artists like U Roy, Cornell Campbell, Echo Minott, Ranking Joe, the Viceroys and others. In the Ethiopian field, we have worked with the legendary Mahmoud Ahmed, with Zemene Melesse and Jacob [Tigrinya] Lilay. In Israel, we have worked with Carolina, and Ester Rada. I have a dream to collaborate one day with Ehud Banai.

JI: What’s next for ZDS?

AS: I hope we’ll continue to move forward, to create more music, to tour as much as possible and to collaborate with more musicians and, by doing so, to develop our unique sound.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to share with our readers, please do.

AS: I invite each one of you personally to come to our show in Vancouver and to discover something new, music that unites people and cultures into a groovy soundtrack.

Opening for Zvuloon Dub System at the Imperial (319 Main St.) 19+ show on Feb. 20, 8 p.m., is Brooklyn-based band Twin Wave, which fuses jazz, soul, rock and pop. Tickets are $30, $25 for students. Other Chutzpah! music offerings are Les Yeux Noirs; the Borealis String Quartet, Eric Wilson and Boris Sichon; Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird; Diwan Saz; and, in Chutzpah!Plus, Ester Rada. For tickets and the full schedule of music, dance, comedy and theatre, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Mixed welcome at Downton

In Downton Abbey, Rose (Lily James) is smitten with Atticus Aldridge (Matt Barber). (photo from pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece)

Jewish characters have finally joined the impeccably attired throng at Downton Abbey, and it’s not an altogether happy day.

While Lord and Lady Grantham welcome the arrivals with exquisite manners and the perfectly calibrated amount of modest warmth, series creator and writer Julian Fellowes is a good deal less hospitable. He has devised a nuclear family of cardboard cutouts that fit unflattering Jewish stereotypes and generate viewer antipathy.

Before we rush to judgment or leap to conclusions, however, we should allow for the possibility that the uncomplimentary presentation of the Aldridge family in Season 5 is merely a teaser for Season 6 (and beyond, given the series’ extraordinary popularity in the colonies). It’s not a stretch to imagine Fellowes using the Aldridges as a means of exposing and examining British antisemitism as Downtown Abbey rolls into the late 1920s and early 1930s.

As everyone knows, PBS’s hit Masterpiece series has long featured a character with Jewish ancestry. Lady Grantham, aka Lady Cora Crawley, is the American-born daughter of the late Isidore Levinson. Cora is Episcopalian, like her mother, but she doesn’t view Jews as “the other.”

I must reveal a spoiler, namely that Lord Grantham’s niece, Rose, doesn’t see Jews as different, either. That is, not when they’re as hunky as Atticus Aldridge, a square-jawed banker’s son who chivalrously shelters Rose with his umbrella in one of the least-inspired meet-cutes in the annals of television.

One could trace Rose’s open-mindedness to last season’s colorblind liaison with a black jazz singer, and her naive modernity to her fight with Lord Grantham over bringing a wireless into the sacred realm of Downton Abbey. But Atticus is so assimilated and so devoid of personality that he wouldn’t register as Jewish if he didn’t tell us. In other words, Rose is smitten with an Englishmen of her status and breeding, and whose Jewishness is incidental rather than fundamental. In fact, the moment when he confides that he’s descended from Jews who left Odessa after particularly brutal pogroms doesn’t belong to him but to his listeners – bitter, broke Russian expatriates of the pre-Revolution regime who insult Atticus over their shoulders as they walk away.

Now, Atticus is of the right class and has parents of means, and those are the credentials that matter in Downton’s rarefied world. However, his perpetually unsmiling father, Lord Sinderby, is less sanguine about his son’s involvement with a shiksa, and the utterance of the epithet stamps him as intolerant and clinches our dislike.

There are certainly valid arguments against intermarriage, and Fellowes could have written an impassioned monologue for Lord Sinderby that expressed the costs and worth of Jewish identity, and the weight and meaning of traditions and rituals. Instead, Lord Sinderby has a couple angry lines that leave the impression that he prizes money and influence above all else. While much is made of Lord Sinderby’s family values, namely his hatred of divorce, it’s presented as evidence of his inflexibility and anachronism rather than allegiance to vows and moral behavior. As for Lady Sinderby, she is totally gracious and agreeable, but in an unwaveringly superficial way.

To keep things in perspective, Downton Abbey is an upstairs/downstairs soap opera that is generally more concerned with the romantic complications of its female characters (Rose, in particular) than with the big picture of class-conscious Britain. I find the series most interesting, though, when it invokes and reflects the changes in British society after the First World War (and evokes contemporary parallels). Fellowes has introduced a story arc that’s tailor-made for illuminating antisemitism between the wars. On those grounds, I’m already anticipating Season 6.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Rise of modern management

Since Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, arguing the importance of the division of labor and launching the era of specialization, a formal managing role – initially personified by the owner of the enterprise – became necessary to coordinate the diverse tasks and operations of machines and workers.

As a modern profession, management is relatively new. It rose in importance during the 20th century as formerly unskilled preindustrial workers transformed into skilled workers, and their increasingly specialized knowledge and skills needed coordinators and supervisors to ensure the attainment of organizational objectives. Although the managerial role subsequently shifted from owners to professional managers, the latter tended to pursue similar goals as the wealthy elite who retained corporate ownership interest.

Comparing business owners in two of the largest English-speaking nations, the United States and the United Kingdom, suggests they were quite distinct from each other. The American business leader was typified by Horatio Alger-type stories of rising from the depths of poverty to the height of financial success. The rapid economic growth of the Gilded Age in the decades that followed the Civil War contributed to a stereotype of achievement, suggesting the existence of “equality of opportunity.” This American cultural striving for – and adulation of – achievement reflects the strength of individualism in American society. In contrast, the role of the businessman in Britain and Canada was different. Australian sociologist Sol Encel suggests that the typical representative during the 18th and 19th centuries was not just a male who owned a small business but one who was capable of seizing the opportunities provided by technological change to increase the size of his plant or create a completely new enterprise, revealing “a tradition of hard work, self-denial, the ploughing back of profits and the gradual building up of small firms into large ones.” There was less ruthless competition and vicious battles with trade unions compared to the United States but, similar to the U.S. tradition, British leaders of industry were viewed as “self-made men,” typified by a Scotsman like Samuel Smiles.

Encel rightfully alludes to Alger and Smiles for they provided flattering images of individuals who successfully built up their enterprises ostensibly on their own initiatives, whose achievements were admired by their peers and workers alike. There is a notable absence of such images in Australia where, in contrast with these other cultures, Encel observes, “Businessmen, apart from isolated individuals, are not generally regarded as having contributed prominently to the ‘development’ of Australia.” Credit for this largely belongs to members of the working class who championed egalitarianism and preferred flatter hierarchies, often to the chagrin of the more individualist managerial class.

As the managerial role evolved following the Second World War, it was no longer seen exclusively in the context of business. In the words of American management guru Peter Drucker, management “pertains to every human effort that brings together in one organization people of diverse knowledge and skills.” In a modern sense, “management” applies as much to the functioning of nonprofit organizations – from religious institutions, charities, social service agencies and public academic institutions – to the world of business and government. The term “manager,” therefore, signifies a role known by various titles, from supervisor, director and department head, to team leader and coordinator, among numerous other possibilities. Regardless of the title, contemporary managers focus their efforts on controlling, directing or coordinating the work of others.

Although the activities of managers have evolved to include a more supportive role to help the work efforts of people by coaching and otherwise supporting their labors, whether first-line, middle or top managers, they have customarily been defined as people to whom other people directly report. This arrangement suggests vertical hierarchy with management above workers, so the term manager applies to holders of positions of authority who not only possess the ability to influence how people work or behave but also indirectly impact their quality of life. Hence, the origins and implications of differences between Australian and Canadian egalitarianism and the role of political ideology in the development of the managerial outlook expose subtle variances in managerial culture. Management models also provide a window to identify salient Anglo-Celtic cultural features in managerial style. How workers organized is also revealing.

Unions in Australia and Canada emerged in the late 19th century as powerful representatives of workers in their dealings with management. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, there was a rise in employment arrangements with individual employees rather than the workforce as a collective entity, a development that reflects a largely Anglo-Protestant management’s preference to reduce as much as possible union involvement in employment policy matters. Even in instances when union involvement could not be excluded from the bargaining process, the heightened focus on the individualization of employment has been evident in the increased use of performance-based pay systems over job- or grade-based pay, and with greater reliance on individual goal-setting procedures and appraisal, and more direct communication with individuals instead of unions as an intermediary. Prior to the rise of this individualist trend, however, collectivism strongly affected employment policies due to the strength of unions and the ideological and ethnic influences that helped shape Australian and Canadian society. The ideological influences on each culture were not identical. But what do the terms individualism and collectivism mean when applied specifically to the context of management? Above all, they provide a useful way to see influences on labor-management relations.

Arthur Wolak is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. He received his PhD in management from Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Australia. He has published articles in Australian, Canadian, U.S., U.K. and Israeli academic journals, as well as written for numerous newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Independent. This is an excerpt from his book The Development of Managerial Culture: A Comparative Study of Australia and Canada (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Dance launches Chutzpah!

Maria Kong opens this year’s Chutzpah! festival on Feb. 19. (photo by Guy Prives)

The 15th season of Chutzpah! kicks off Feb. 19 with Tel Aviv-based dance troupe Maria Kong. Founded in 2008 by former Batsheva Dance Co. members, Maria Kong combines dance with art, sound, light, visual effects and technology. And, for the opening of Chutzpah! they take their performance off the stage and into the audience – or, rather, they bring the audience “backstage.”

The JI spoke with Israel’s Talia Landa, Maria Kong performer, artistic director and co-founder (with Anderson Braz from Brazil), in anticipation of the presentation in Vancouver of Backstage, which will take place at Red Room Ultra Bar.

JI: From where does the name Maria Kong come? What is its significance?

TL: We are “Virgin Marias” and “King Kongs” (not necessarily defined by gender). Together, we make Maria Kong.

JI: There is so much innovative dance coming from Israel. What makes the dance scene so “fertile” there?

TL: There could be many reasons why that happens; some more obvious than others. Israel is a great place where people from all over the world meet, connect and meld their talents in order to create magic. It’s a place where creativity and innovation are a driving force in our lives, hearts and souls. We have our fair share of challenges, so we are pushed to approach them with unique solutions. It’s no secret that Israel is the land of high-tech and start-ups; it only makes sense that this creative research and innovation would spread to the world of dance. We have a drive to do things passionately and intuitively, triggered by an inner impulse to never stop moving.

JI: Your vision centres on teamwork. How does Maria Kong’s creative process work in general? How is it decided what ends up in a performance? As artistic director, do you have “final” say?

TL: Maria Kong’s creative process works like this:

1) An idea is born.

2) The idea is placed on the table.

3) The team members from all of the different divisions (dance, music, light, sound and technology) come together to share their unique input and express their particular perspective.

4) The idea transforms from a 2-D piece of paper on the table, to a three-dimensional creation, which we continue to develop together.

Yes, perhaps I have the “final” say, but each creation undergoes many stages of dialogue before the concluding decision is made.

JI: The show planned for Chutzpah!, Backstage, is choreographed for “off the dancer’s stage,” so to speak. In what ways, if any, is the performers’ (and technical crew’s) preparation different for this type of show from that for a stage-based performance? And is there anything the audience should do to prepare?

TL: Backstage is unique in the way that it takes any given space and transforms it into a stage, but not in the conventional manner where the performers are on stage and the audience takes their seats. In Backstage, the members of the audience can grab a beer, join friends at the opposite end of the venue, change views, and experience the performance from a number of different angles.

The audience, time and space are a fundamental element of Backstage. Every venue has its unique infrastructure and particular vibe. In order to prepare for our performance for Chutzpah!, we inserted the Red Room Ultra Bar’s measurements and properties into our computer programs, as we aim to ensure that the graphics and choreography fit the venue and our energies can dance with the people of Vancouver. We reshape our bodies, mind and soul in order to create a tailor-made unique experience in each performance.

Should the audience do anything to prepare? Bring an open heart and wear comfortable shoes.

JI: Backstage, and other Maria Kong pieces, have featured live musical performances, including known vocalists. Will the Vancouver show feature live vocals? If so, can you share from whom?

TL: We are very lucky to have great friends with great talents who are happy to join us on our journey to this great festival. I don’t want to give it all away, but I will share that one of the special guests we are bringing is very close to my heart, and happens to have Canadian roots.

JI: For the simple fact of being an Israel-based group of artists, there was a call by some in India to boycott your performance there in November. How do you respond to such efforts?

TL: Maria Kong is a team of artists with a shared vision: a vision of common values. Our artistic creations are a result of open dialogue and passionate collaboration between the Israeli, French, Brazilian, Russian and Japanese members. We strongly believe in the language of movement: a language that knows no border and holds no passport. It is boundless, endless, holds no limits – a language of human connection, a language of physical and spiritual communication, traveling through all forms of artistic creation. Think of yourself, right now, as you read this text. You are probably in a room, inside a building, within a city, territorially bound by a country, on this wild earth that contains us all. As you continue going through this text, our wonderful earth is dancing in perfect synchronization with our sun, infinitely spinning within our endless universe. The beautiful language of movement is our core – it is fundamental to our survival, and an inseparable element of our existence.

JI: If there is anything else you’d like to add, please do.

TL: I would just like to say that the artistic director of Chutzpah!, Mary-Louise [Albert], along with her team, are the coolest people ever to have believed in us and chosen us to come and share our magic in Vancouver. We are really looking forward to it. So thank you, and see you soon!

Backstage will be at Red Room Ultra Bar Feb. 19, 21 and 22, 8 p.m., and Feb. 22, 4 p.m. Tickets are $29/$25/$20. By way of dance, Chutzpah! 2015 will also feature Shay Kuebler Radical System Art, Idan Sharabi and Dancers with Vanessa Goodman, Bodytraffic, ’Namgis T’sasala Cultural Group and, in Chutzpah!Plus, Serge Bannathan/Les Productions Figlio. For the full schedule of performances, tickets and other information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.