Paper short abstract:

An ethnography of an Israeli night club, where only Israeli Yemenite music and dances are performed, will help us to understand how the Israeli cultural framework is constantly under redefinition as the articulation between a European cultural model, diasporic specificities and Zionist ideology.

Paper long abstract:

Every Saturday night, when Shabbat is over and everyday life is about to resume again in Israel, the night club Mecholot Teiman ("Dances of Yemen") opens its doors in Tel Aviv. From 100 to 200 young Israelis are arriving little by little, and the dance floor starts to fill up.

While almost any international observer would agree to describe the place as a night club, it would be probably more difficult for him to recognize the dance style: it isn't any kind of rock, neither techno, hip hop, jazz or salsa.

"It is Yemenite dance of course!" would answer almost any Israeli.

"Maybe, but definitely not what I use to do in Yemen" would reply an old Yemenite Jew who did dance in Yemen before arriving in Israel at the beginning of the 1950s.

Indeed, the two pieces of dance which may mainly be observed during the night at Mecholot Teiman are the result of a dynamic contact between a Jewish Yemenite specificity and an Israeli historical and political redefinition of cultural practices based on Zionism ideology and European standards.

But what is reshaping what ? Is Mecholot Teiman simply an international model of night club (late opening, general darkness with colorful spotlights, alcoholic drinks and loud music, large dancing floor and small tables) where "international dances" are replaced by Yemenite dances? Or does the Israeli-Yemenite specificity of dancers and singers involved have an influence on this setting? Does the international setting of night club influence in turn the Yemenite dances performed there?

An ethnography of the context, along with formal analysis of the dance itself, will help us understand the process of this reciprocal influence, and the constant articulation between local and global which dominates the Israeli cultural framework.