A once in a lifetime experience…dancing within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem at Jaffa Gate. Four Thursday nights between October and November, 5 hours each. Most of the girls danced our dance 20 times.  The girls that danced with flags, as I did, and the ones that did a smaller version of our dance on another stage danced 40 times. It was exhausting and exhilarating. We were sad it was over. We were glad it was over. We bonded, we ached, we told dirty jokes on the way out (ok that was just me), we ran for bathrooms and screamed “THE DRAGON IS COMING!!!” (It was my idea for us girls that had to run through the packed gate area and change clothes quickly to scream our heads off running, as the dragon of the show was resurrected so we could move through the crowd faster to change outfits. By the end of the festival it was a part of the show.)

Costumes from the Opera House. Wooden goblets of wine. The hot…ahem, I mean really professional Italian musicians that came just to perform with little ‘ole us. The guy with the sugared almonds that kept humoring us. Those tiny outfits, the sword-fighting Russian speaking performers wore. The children that wanted to take photographs with us.

I fell in love with corsets after this performance. I loved the old Jerusalem stone walls just a little more after this performance.

Here is our full performance (I won’t mind if you want to skip the flags part in the beginning but the rest is a must!):

Here are some of the other performances that were there:

The Venetians

The Sword-Fighters