By GREER FAY CASHMAN
DEFEAT IS one of the hardest things to accept in life, even when it doesn't take place in public. So it wasn't entirely surprising when Dancing with the Stars contestant Anna Aronov turned away from the camera and made a move to leave at the end of last week's finale when she learned that she and partner Haim Revivo had lost the audience vote to their competitors.
Revivo appeared to absorb the result much less emotionally, and as Aronov turned her back to the studio audience, he put out a hand to wipe the tears from her cheek.
Masha Troyanski, 22, who won the show alongside actor Guy Arieli, didn't know until seven years ago that she was Jewish. She'd barely heard of Israel and couldn't have imagined she'd find herself a star in this part of the world. The second of three sisters, Troyanski grew up in a Russian town close to the Chinese border and made aliya as a 16-year-old.
She lost her father, who was electrocuted in a work accident, when she was six months old, and has been dancing since she was four. Her mother enrolled her in a ballroom dancing class when she was nine - something many Israeli children of Russian background can identify with. Ballroom dancing remains a popular activity for Russian immigrant families, with many children in such families taking up the hobby before they reach age 10.
n THE WINNER of the first season of A Star is Born, Ninette Taib has just put out her first album. The singer's promotional campaign included a noholds-barred interview in Yediot Aharonot earlier this month, with Taib focusing in part on the reasons it took her three years to release her debut CD after her triumph on the TV singing contest.
She ultimately found a producer and good friend in musician Aviv Gefen, a hitmaker who wrote most of the songs on the new disc. Taib also discussed public perceptions of her relationship with actor Yehuda Levy, which began soon after her break-up from TV star Ran Danker and Levy's break-up with actress Efrat Boimwald.
In the eyes of the public, Taib said, there had something very special about her relationship with Danker, and when they split, it punctured her public image.
The singer and TV actress said she received lot of hate mail at the time, but she insisted she'd had nothing to do with Levy and Boimwald's going their separate ways. Photos accompanying the article show a huge difference between the sophisticated, svelte Taib of today and the heavier girl who emerged the winner of A Star is Born several years back. Aside from changing her dress and hairstyle, Taib has shed 12 kilos she says she put on in the army.
n SUPERMODEL and actress Shiraz Tal, 32, ecstatically announced a couple ago ago that she was finally pregnant after four years of marriage. Tal now knows she'll have a boy, a bit more information she's happy to share with the world.