About This Show
As a companion piece to its upcoming show O JERUSALEM, The Flea Theater will present "Prayer" A Sacred Dances show on Wednesday, March 5 and Thursday, March 6 at 9:30pm. Ibrahim Miari, an Israeli artist most recently affiliated with the Acco Theater Center and the Haifa Museum, both in Israel, performs excerpts from "Prayer". Mr. Miari performed at the newly opened JCC in New York City in February and was asked by The Flea to bring the show downtown as a complimentary program to its next offering, A.R. Gurney’s O JERUSALEM. The short dance show will be followed by a question and answer session.
The piece is a modern ritual event composed of mythical texts, music based on prayers (both Jewish and Moslem) and sacred dances. The dances, which are 5000 years old and derive mainly from the Far East and Central Asia, were originally used as holy rituals by priest and priestesses. The Sufis, an alternative sect of Islam, created a meditative technique based on the dancer-mediator whirling himself continuously into a state of elation.