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Friday March 16, 2007

Local kids taking their art skills to Maccabi fest

by steven friedman
correspondent

Twelve enthusiastic Bay area teenagers are preparing to showcase their artistic talents at the second annual JCC Maccabi Arts Fest for a week in August in Deal Park, N.J., overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the Garden State Parkway.

Created as an alternative to the athletic and competitive Maccabi Games, the JCC Maccabi Arts Fest enables Jewish teens to “perfect their disciplines, engage with Jewish teenagers, celebrate their cultural identity and develop their individuality through artistic expression,” according to Darren Schwartz, director of Club 18 at the JCC of San Francisco and delegation head for the area, “and have the Maccabi experience in a non-competitive way.”

The specialties at the JCC Maccabi Arts Fest include creative writing, visual arts, computer graphics, radio broadcasting, instrumental music, theater arts, dance, multimedia, and vocal music. There is also a theme that each performance or work of art must reflect. Last year it was the seven days of Creation.

Organizers expect close to 500 participants from the United States and abroad. Last summer there were two international delegations, one from Ashkelon, Israel, and one from Odessa, Ukraine.

“Each discipline has an artist-in-residence who works with the kids for a week, and then there is a community showcase,” explained Schwartz, who has been at the JCCSF for more than a year after working for three years at the State Capitol in Sacramento.

Schwartz held auditions March 4, in dance and vocal music that attracted several potential participants. Students from other specialties submitted demo tapes or copies of their art.

“The auditions and submissions are not for someone who is learning to play an instrument or beginning in another art form,” said Schwartz. “We need people who have backgrounds in their specialties. Students can still audition or submit by contacting me at the JCC” at (415) 292-1261, or dschwartz@jccsf.org.

Helen Liebman, a 15-year-old sophomore at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco, has experienced both the traditional Maccabi games and last year’s Arts Fest. She said the Arts Fest is better because there is “no competitive tension and you can make a lot of friends.

“Last year we discussed the theme in group session and I did a painting that was a day of chaos,” continued Liebman, who likes drawing with charcoal and painting on wood, using the grain as a guideline. “There was a tornado of colors and God’s hands. It was part of a greater mural.

“My submission was a painting on wood of flowers from different points of view,” she said. “I also did a Hawaiian sunset that is proudly hanging in Darren’s office.”

Meredith Charslon, a San Mateo seventh-grader at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco, auditioned March 4 in modern dance and was pleased with her performance, even though the floor was sticky, she said.

“Intensely, I’ve been dancing only for two years,” said Charslon, who will be one of the few 12-year-olds at Arts Fest, if not the only one. “But I’ve dancing for fun since I was three. My sister was in the athletic Maccabi games and said how fun it was, so I wanted to be a part of it. But for the Maccabi games you have to be 13. The Arts Fest allows you to enter at age 12 if you’re going into eighth grade.

“I am looking forward to working with a different choreographer,” she said, “and getting to go to New Jersey because I love the East Coast. I am also pretty excited to get on a plane and be away from home for a week.”

Elijah Post is in the eighth grade at the Presidio School in San Francisco and addicted to the Matrix trilogy. His submissions included movie trailers for his upcoming spoof and tribute entitled “The Matrix Retarded.”

“I also did movie previews, trailers, and credits for a live news show, ‘CBSDE Live,’” said Post. “I am looking forward to Arts Fest so I can learn more about digital imaging because Windows Movie Maker is so limited.”

Post has a Web site, www.workbreach.com, and one of his sports blooper videos has drawn 40,000 views.

Sydney Calander, a 15-year-old sophomore at JCHS, is learning about triptychs — three-paneled painted pieces — so she sent in a charcoal drawing with an ear, mouth, and eye, entitled “Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil”. She attended last year’s Arts Fest in Baltimore.

“I had the most amazing experience in my life,” Calander said. “It was wonderful meeting Jewish kids from across the country and the world and having art bring us together.”

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