Click here to download LAST year’s Retreat program
KlezKanada’s Laurentian Retreat for 2013, the Chai Year, will be Monday August 19 to Sunday August 25.
Join us in the Mountains for the 18th edition of the KlezKanada Laurentian Retreat, Canada’s largest annual festival of Jewish/Yiddish culture and the arts. Featuring: an all-star faculty, world-class concerts, workshops for instrumentalists, singers, dancers, and visual artists of all levels, films and lectures on Jewish history, literature, language and culture, children’s and teen programs that set the standard for learning and creativity.
2013 HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE
- The 2nd KlezKanada Jewish Poetry Retreat
- Crash Course in Yiddish E Shul of (Klezmer) Rock E Featured Artist: Socalled!
- New faculty includes Moussa Berlin – master of the Meron Tradition in Israel, and Cantor Aaron ben Soussan – Moroccan Cantor teaching chazzanut and piyyutim,
- Plus returning faculty favourites!
- Yiddish Theater Intensive featuring new faculty member, Eleanor Reissa
- Lectures and workshops featuring the Jewish Graphic Novel
- Our annual not-to-be-missed GROYSER CONCERT
In addition “The Chai Year” will feature: several new and exciting faculty members, the return of our groundbreaking Klezkanada Poetry Retreat, a Yiddish theater intensive, and an exploration of the Jewish Graphic Novel.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve continued to refine and expand our workshop programming. These are a few examples of new hands-on learning opportunities at KlezKanada:
- Play klezmer and hasidic party music at excessive volume for dancing and more in the Shul of Rock. Producer/guitarist Avi Fox Rosen will lead this class for rockers (electric guitars and basses, drums, keyboards, singers and their loud friends).
- Interested in Yiddish Language? For people who speak no or nearly no Yiddish, but want to gain an entrance into this beautiful, expressive mame-loshn, KlezKanada’s Laurentian Retreat will offer a Crash Course in Yiddish. Our outstanding Yiddish faculty will get you introduced into the world of Yiddish using song, theater, lectures and conversation. And for those who already speak and understand Yiddish, we will continue our advanced Yiddish program of lectures and classes.
- We will have a special Yiddish Theater intensive featuring first time faculty member Eleanor Reissa. Eleanor is a Tony-nominated singer, actress, director, choreographer, writer and former artistic director of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater. She just returned from directing an acclaimed production of Hershel Ostropover in Israel, and Brecht’s Threepenny Opera in the United States.
The Odessa-nightclub scene, so richly and vibrantly played out in Babel’s stories and in Josh’s musical, becomes the setting for our Thursday night dance, as we turn our focus eastward and ‘re-orient’ our vision by bringing Turkic, Slavic, Balkan and Central Asian dance and music into collision and collusion with the Yiddish klezmer world. The eminent Dr. Zev Feldman, making his KlezKanada return, will fill in the theoretical gaps, while our music and dancing becomes a realpolitik connection between these cultures.
Explore our 2012 workshops and lectures using the menu on the right. We are still creating the program for this year so check back for our 2013 program!
