Guitar AICE to play Yellow Submarine; And things that go bump in the night.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFAlien 311(photo credit: Courtesy)Guitar AICE to play Yellow SubmarineAlbert Dadon evidently has his fingers in several cultural pies. Dimona-born Australian resident Dadon is the brains behind Australia Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE), which, among its many activities, promotes the annual Australian Film Festival, the seventh edition of which starts in Israel on June 20 at cinematheques around the country.But in addition to his philanthropic endeavor, Dadon is also an accomplished jazz guitarist and a founding member of the Albare Project quartet, which will perform at Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine on June 22. The concert program will include material from the band’s fourth album, After the Rain, released last year. Besides Dadon on guitar, the Jerusalem quartet lineup includes Joe Chindamo on accordion and Fender Rhodes, Evripedis Evripedou on bass and Tony Floyd on drums.The Albare Project’s debut album, Acid Love, came out in 1992 and was a commercial success in Australia, also gaining acclaim in Japan and Israel. The album was followed up by three more, and a fifth CD, The Aquarian, is in the works and due to be released this August.In the last 20 or so years Dadon has become a leading figure in the Australian jazz community. He has been involved with the Melbourne International Jazz Festival since 2001, bringing the entire program of the renowned Umbria Jazz Festival from Italy to Australia in 2005. The following year he became the Melbourne festival’s artistic director and in 2008 he was awarded the Order of Australia in recognition of his work in the cultural field. • Barry DavisAnd things that go bump in the night How do you teach tolerance for, and recognition of the Other? If you’re the unique Holon Children’s Museum (HCM) you do it via a high-tech and imaginative Aliens Track in which engaging, colorful and tentacled Aliens “encounter” human children.More than a year in the making, the hands-on Aliens Track for children 8- 12 years of age gets across the idea that openness and dialogue will teach us not only that the Other is more like us than we imagine, but also that initially we’re as strange and scary to others as they are to us.The stage is set when a TV news announcer says that a UFO has been disrupting communications. Very soon, the “train” taking the children (in groups of 12 plus guide) is sucked into the UFO. From there the guide ushers the children through a series of encounters with the aliens in which they (hopefully) learn acceptance and respect before being returned to Earth via another spaceship. The trip through outer space takes around 2 hours, and if at first the children act skeptical, they soon happily suspend disbelief and go with the flow.Some 700,000 children have visited HCM since it opened in 2001. This is not a conventional museum with static exhibits on pedestals or in glass cases, but one that seeks to stimulate the children’s imaginations and expand their awareness of the world around them. The various HCM tracks effect this through narrative, interactivity and encounters that engage and stimulate the mind and the senses.The Aliens Track joins such as The Magic Forest or Following Butterflies. Possibly HCM’s best-know tracks are Dialogue with Darkness and Invitation to Silence, which introduce the participant – whether child or adult – to the world of the blind and the deaf. • Helen Kaye
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