Mayim Mayim

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Folk dance group in Kibbutz Dalia, historical photos by Zoltan Kluger, May 1, 1945.

Mayim Mayim (מים מים, "water, water") is a popular Israeli folk dance based on a song of the same name. It is performed with pleasure worldwide and is also known under the name Ushavtem mayim (after the initial words).

Emergence

The text is a verse from the Hebrew Bible: ושאבתם־מים בששון ממעיני הישועה׃, in transcription: Ushavtem mayim bessasson mimaynei hayeshua ; the translation is: “You will gladly draw water from the wells of salvation. "( Isa. 12,3  LUT )

Both photos show typical elements of the Mayim dance.

Emanuel Pugashov Amiran composed a folk song for it; whose text reads as follows:

Ushavtem mayim b'sason mimainei hayeshua

Ushavtem mayim b'sason mimainei hayeshua

Mayim mayim mayim mayim, hey, mayim b'sason

Mayim mayim mayim mayim, hey, mayim b'sason

Hey, hey, hey, hey

Mayim mayim mayim mayim mayim mayim b'sason

Mayim mayim mayim mayim mayim mayim b'sason

The choreographer of the dance was Else Jeanette Dublon .
In a letter to the editor of the Jerusalem Post on December 25, 1972, she wrote that she had choreographed the dance herself and performed it with Yehuda Sharett at Kibbutz Na'an in June 1937 ; The occasion was a water festival, as after seven years of searching, Na'an's vital well was drilled. Dublon and Sharett then made Mayim Mayim known in various kibbutzim in the late 1930s, and so he was also performed in 1944 at the first Israeli dance festival in Kibbutz Dalia (July 14-15, 1944). (At that time people did not speak of Israeli, but of Palestinian or Hebrew dances.)
According to Matti Goldschmidt , Mayim Mayim is the perfect example of a demonstration dance that was created in the secular environment of the kibbutz movement, "mostly in biblical fantasy costumes."
Else Dublon described her choreography as follows: “Yehuda gave me his song Ushavtem , which he orchestrated, and I made a real ceremony out of it. My dance started with a step that represented waves to me. The next part, where the dancers entered the circle, expressed the flow of water from the spring. The third part of today's folk dance, with the jumps, is not mine. There were no jumps in my version. Since I was choreographing inexperienced dancers, I had to develop simple steps, but I didn't want them to just do the Hora steps. The dance was danced by several circles of dancers, one circle in the other. "

Specialty

The dance begins with the Mayim step named after him, which means that it is actually a common name for a cross step in Israeli dances.

reception

For contemporaries, the water dance was an expression of the close connection between the kibbutz movement and agriculture. In the run-up to the establishment of the state of Israel, dance groups in the Jewish diaspora expressed their solidarity with Mayim Mayim .

After the Japanese surrender , the US High Command Mayim Mayim used "at nursery school gym classes and labor recruitment meetings as a means of rebuilding Japanese community." The American educator Ricky Holden made the dance popular among the Japanese population, with the result that his Melody is often heard in Japanese video games.

In Germany, the Mayim Mayim dance is often used in (Christian) religious education , wherever the symbol of water is involved.

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matti Goldschmidt: The diversity of the Israeli folk dance . (Spelling of the surname in the Jerusalem Post: Dublin.).
  2. ↑ Matti Goldschmidt: The variety of Israeli full dance .
  3. ↑ Zvi Friedhaber: The Development of Folk Dance in Israel. Retrieved December 26, 2017 (English).
  4. ^ Mary Ellen Snodgrass: The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance . 2016, p. 198 .
  5. ^ Mary Ellen Snodgrass: The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance . S. 199 .
  6. ↑ Hagay Hacohen: How an Israeli biblical song became a Japanese video game hit. In: Jerusalem Post. October 5, 2017. Retrieved December 26, 2017 .