David Grinberg (Barcelona, Spain)
studied Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and taught
film directing at the Spanish-American University in Mexico. He
co-directed an Israeli-Mexican-Polish documentary film Life
Will Continue. His theatre company, Pro Modo de la Bulema,
stages plays dealing with Jewish life in Mexico. His new play
The Messiah
to be staged at the Estudis de Teatre in Barcelona, will deal
with Jewish history in the 20th century by
introducing Biblical characters into the key events of the last
century in Poland, Russia and Spain.
Pawel Passini (Wroclaw, Poland)
is a graduate of the Warsaw Theatre Academy. In
recent years he collaborated with the Centre for Theatre
Research in Gardzienice where he was influenced by their
avant-garde practice. Passini directed an adaptation of
Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, Crime by Witold
Gombrowicz at the City Theatre in Gdynia, The Curse by
Stanislaw Wyspianski at the Kochanowskiego Theatre in Opole. His
adaptation of Dybbuk staged at Theatre Nowy in Poznan
received critical acclaim. Passini was also awarded the main
prize of the 29th Theatre Confrontation Festival in
Opole. His new project in collaboration with Karolina Szykierska,
Baggage of Franz K,
is an experimental adaptation of Remigiusz Grzela’s book, which
explores Kafka’s fascination with Yiddish theatre and its
influence on his work. It will be staged at Teatr Polski in
Wroclaw.
Stefan Sablic (Belgrade, Serbia)
studied at the University of Dramatic Art in
Belgrade, the University of Tel Aviv, and the Reanot Institute
for Jewish Music in Jerusalem. He is a pianist, singer and
composer who has researched and recorded the musical traditions
of the Balkans. He is also a theatre director, who has staged
five plays in Belgrade. His new project, in collaboration with
the choreographer Boris Cakshiran, will be a contemporary
version of Isaac Samokovlija’s play on the nature of prejudice,
The Blonde Jewish Girl.
Isabelle Starkier (Paris, France)
is a theatre director. Her theatre training began
with Daniel Mesguich, and continued at Quartiers d'Ivry under
the direction of Antoine Vitez and later Philippe Adrien. In
1985, she created the Star Theatre Company, which is devoted to
the staging of new plays on contemporary political and social
issues as well as new adaptations of the clasics. After two
shows of feminist comedy, she directed plays by Joshua Sobol,
Brecht, Marivaux, Feydeau and Pirandello and a new production of
The Merchant of Venice. Her new project
Kafka’s Bal
by Timothy Daly follows in the tradition of Yiddish theatre and
reveals an extravagant universe alternating dream and reality,
assimilation and the search for identity.
Leah Thorn (London, UK)
is a performance poet appearing in theatres,
poetry venues and festivals nationally and internationally. Her
writing has been anthologised in publications in England and the
USA. She has received numerous awards, her poetry for very young
children was featured on the television programme Rainbow Days
and her poem Real Jews was featured on the promotional
sweatshirt for the 1999 San Francisco Film Festival.
See, Safe,
her project supported by the EAJC is an exploration of multiple
layers of contemporary Jewish identity through poetry and
story-telling, in collaboration with the musician Yanif Fridel,
electronic artist Moshikop and director Jessica Higgs. It will
be produced by the In Tandem Theatre Company in London and on
tour including at the Jewish Museum in Prague.
Michelene Wandor (London, UK)
is a widely published writer as well as a
broadcaster, theatre historian and accomplished musician, who
performs Renaissance and Baroque music with her early music
group The Siena Ensemble. With degrees from Cambridge and Essex
universities and from Trinity College, London, she has taught at
the Guildhall School of Drama, London, London Metropolitan
University and universities abroad. She has received many awards
and nominations particularly for her radio dramatisations.
The Music of the Prophets,
her project supported by the EAJC, celebrates the return of the
Jews to England in the 17th century and will be
performed at St Olav’s Church, London and the London Jewish
Cultural Centre.
Andrea Wesfreid (Paris, France)
trained in classical and contemporary dance at
the Conservatoire National Regional de Boulogne, the Centre
National de la Danse and with renowned dance teachers. She has
performed with Bruno Genty and Alfred Alerte companies and at
the festivals Cour de Capucins and Nous n’irons pas a Avignon.
She has also performed with the Jeune Danse Europeenne, Martin
Kravitz, and Natacha Kantor. She has danced her solo
choreographies at the festival Greg in Barcelona, at the Theatre
de l’Ermitage and Regard du Cygne in Paris. Wesfreid’s new
choreography,
Méditations judéo-physiques,
will explore Jewish memory and identity taking its inspiration
from the book of Zakhor and the music of Prokofiev’s
Ouverture on Hebrew Themes.
Performing arts: music composition
Alexander Balanescu (London, UK)
has trained at the Special School for Music,
Bucharest, the Rubin Academy, Jerusalem, Trinity College, London
and the Julliard School, New York. He was a member of the
Arditti Quartet from 1983 – 1987, before forming the Balanescu
Quartet. He has contributed to the many different fields of
classical, jazz, electronic, folk and pop music, collaborating
with filmmakers, choreographers, theatre directors and pop
musicians.
Second Breath
is a mixed media installation/performance based on the personal
experience of the sculptor Maurice Blik as a child of the
Holocaust. It will be shown at The Place, London, the Imperial
War Museum, Duxford and London, and there are plans for touring
in Romania.
Alon Burshtein (Florence, Italy)
is a composer who studied at the Paris
Conservatory and the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem. His work has
been performed at festivals and music seasons in Europe, Israel
and the United States. He has composed 15 film soundtracks and
was awarded the best soundtrack prize at the Haifa International
Film Festival in 2003. Burshtein’s new composition
Images
will be performed and recorded live on CD; it is inspired by the
Children of Israel’s exile and Diaspora experience. The premiere
of Images will be performed by the Filarmonica G. Rossini
in Florence.
Ferenc Javori (Budapest, Hungary)
graduated from the Music Academy of Ungvar
(Ukraine). In 1990, he founded the Budapest Klezmer Band. The
band has travelled extensively in Europe and North America. In
2000, the Pro Cultura Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences awarded the Kodaly Zoltan Cultural Prize to the
Budapest Klezmer Band for promoting Yiddish musical tradition,
and in August 2003 the band was awarded the Artisjus Prize.
Javori’s new composition,
The Wedding Dance
is a klezmer musical for a six-piece orchestra.
It
depicts a marriage in a little village in
Transylvania. It will be staged at the Budapest Operetta
Theatre.
Meir Malkov (Vienna, Austria)
studied composition in Vienna, where he now
teaches musical theory and composition at the Vienna School of
Music. Between 1994 and 2004 he composed several works for the
Ra’anana City Ballet including Sole, Gysel, Alyah and
Ballettissimo. An accomplished violinist, he has performed
in prestigious concert venues in
Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem. He has been awarded several
prizes, including by the Israel National Competition for Young
Composers. His new composition
Sephardic Fantasy
will combine
the multiple components of Sephardic Jewish
music: from chazanut to folk chants of different traditions
(Georgian, Bukharan, Italian, Balkan and Moroccan).
Richard Schmoucler (Paris, France)
studied violin at the Paris Conservatoire and was
awarded a first prize for violin and chamber music at the age of
19. He later studied at the Tchaikovski Conservatoire in
Moscow. On his return to Paris, he pursued his studies at the
Académie de musique Sion. His awards include a grant from the
Marcel Bleustein Blanchet Foundation and the prize Charles
Oulmont. He has been a member of the Orchestre de Paris since
1997 and also performs with the European Camerata and the
Orchestre de Chambre de Toulouse. His composition
Yiddishland
is based on Roma and Yiddish traditions and will be recorded by
the musicians of the Paris Opera.
Visual arts: exhibitions of new work
Monica
Blok (Amsterdam, the Netherlands),
was born in Uruguay and educated in Mexico and
the Netherlands. In 1986 she received the Prize for Mime
Performance from the Amsterdam Art Foundation and her art
installations have been exhibited across the Netherlands. In
1999 she founded
Stichting Simply B, a non-profit visual and
performance arts organization. Israeli-born
Hadas Itzkovitch (Amsterdam)
is a classically-trained ballet dancer. She has
performed and choreographed performances in Israel, the UK,
Germany, the USA and her installations have been exhibited all
over the Netherlands.
Remains of Hair,
their joint project supported by the EAJC, is a four channel
video-sound installation, telling the stories of four Jewish
women named after the Biblical matriarchs. It will be exhibited
at the Kuntur Fine Art Gallery, Amsterdam.
Gabriel Heimler (Berlin, Germany)
studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
He works in Berlin where he co-founded a group of Jewish artists
Meshulash and is involved in curating arts exhibitions held in
the framework of the Berlin Jewish Cultural Days. He is a former
editor of the journal Golem and a member of the
Association of Berlin Artists. His works have been shown in the
following exhibitions: Zone D at Lauderdale House, London; Mehr
Licht! At Lichtburgforum, Berlin; Kontrovers, Galerie Giesler,
Berlin; Carnaval, Galerie Huis-clos, Paris. His new exhibition,
Le Cycle de la Genèse,
will include 24 acrylic paintings on themes from the Torah
viewed from the perspective of contemporary Jewish history and
literature.
Michail Molochnikov (Berlin, Germany)
is a graduate of the Moscow Architectural College
and a member of the International Federation of Art. His
drawings and calligraphy works have been widely exhibited in
Russia and Germany: the International Art Fair, Moscow; Central
House of Artists, Moscow; The State Russian Museum, St
Petersburg; the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; International
Kunstfestival, Magdeburg; Love and Wings, Galerie Belabush,
Berlin Paradies, Bunker Alexanderplatz; Between Text and Image,
the NCCA, Moscow. His works on the Hebrew alphabet
22,
to be shown at Gad Gallery in Berlin, will combine silk-screen
printing and drawing and will be accompanied by a text on the
mystical values of each letter.
Zvonimir Palanski (Nis, Serbia)
is a sculptor and professor of literature, whose
work in both areas is concerned with Jewish texts. His art works
have been shown at many exhibitions: the Annual Exhibition of
the Association of Fine Artists, Applied Artists and Designers,
Nis; the International Biennale of Miniature, Kiksic; Menorah,
Culture Centre, Nis and Meerscheinschloss, Graz. The exhibition
of his new works at the Students Cultural Centre in Nis,
entitled
Menorah, the Light of the Truth,
will include 60 sculptures in iron.
Abraham Pincas (Paris, France)
is a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he
teaches painting techniques. His work has been shown in many
group exhibitions such as the Exhibition of Bulgarian Artists in
Paris, Jewish Art and Representation, Paris and the Nelson
Mandela Unity Series in Davos. Solo exhibitions in recent years
were held at Galerie Zafira, Paris ; Tian Jin, China; Mishkenot
Shaananim, Jerusalem ; Spertus College of Judaica, Chicago and
Platt Art Gallery, Los Angeles.
Coats of Light, Coats of Skin
will consist of
ten mantles made of felt and silk, and
will be shown at Musée Galliera, Espace Culturel
Bulgare, Paris.
Judy Price (London, UK)
has degrees from the University of Greenwich, the
Royal College of Art and Central St Martins College of Art and
Design. She is a lecturer in photography and video at Kingston
University. Her project,
Blind Spot,
which will be exhibited at the London Jewish Cultural Centre, is
an installation using lens-based media, photography,video and
sound and archive footage to explore questions of memory,
identity, loss and un-belonging.
Adam Vackar (Prague, Czech Republic)
has studied in Tokyo, Prague and Paris with
residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. His recent solo
exhibitions, Body and Soul, Nouveaux Riches and the
Greenhouse Effect, were shown in Paris and Prague. In 1999,
he explored the subject of Jewish identity and endurance when he
made a site-specific installation in Terezin Concentration Camp.
His work has been also been exhibited in Japan and Cambodia.
Open Source,
his EAJC-supported project, will be an art installation in the
former synagogue Na Palmovce in Prague, a building badly damaged
during the Communist regime. It will be exhibited as part of the
Contemporary Art Festival in Prague, May-June 2006.
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