"Malka Himel gave the most touching performance of the evening. "

Malka Himel, 26 year old Israeli singer, dnacer and mother of two, has been 'completely happy' with a single one of her performances.

The complete satisfaction came during the winter and it was a 20 minute evening song-and-dance show she gave the Toronto Jewish Old Folks' Home.

She was good: Mrs. Himel knew it and the old folks knew it.

"They were old and they didn't clap very hard" she was saying this week with her own brand of unaffected candor. "But many of them came up to me afterwards, said they wished I'd live to be 120 and so on: age is so important to old people"

Did the pleasure in the performance do anything for her? It did.

"It gave me hope, I was elated, it made me feel complete"

And she hopes soon to put a similar 20-minute show together for TV, or theatre, "or anyone who'll ask me".

Malka's roots go back to a little village in Poland, where she was born and lived three months before moving with her family to Tel Aviv. And though Malka means queen, her past is straightforward, unexotic.

"I did not even use a tommy gun in the war of independence (1948) a the age of 12" she said apologetically.

Two years later she was the child star of a US made film -- "A small scale Exodus" -- on the trials of settling Jewish immigrants in the new state of Israel and after that concentrated on singing and dancing, in both of which she is largely self-taught.

In 1953, during the Maccabi Games (Israel's Olympics), came the event that changed her life.

In the games, Malka was giving gymnastic displays with about 30 other girls and one day the organizers packed them all off to Jerusalem with the visitors.

"On the bus, on eof the Frenchmen there started getting very free, you know. So a fellow on the other side of the bus suggested they change seats."

 They did, in the end. And the fellow who suggested it was Toronto lawyer Sydney Himel, a former ace basketball player with the Canadian contingent. A year later they were married and their elder son is called Maccabi to mark the event.

For herself, Mrs. Himel is happy with the move to Toronto.

"I have been very lucky." she said, "to have started out here just when Toronto is coming into its own"

Development Of The Dance Makes Interesting Program
by Ralph Thomas, Toronto Star

Both ancient and contemporary dances make up the interesting program which Garbut Roberts and Charlotte de Neve have assembled under the title 'From Ancient Roots' (at Hart House again tonight)

Perhaps the most diverting theme of the program is that suggested in the title: the development of certain dances through the ages. For instance, the dance called the 'Paran' which cleverly demonstrates the South American Negro's weaving ino a new form, his traditional African tribal dance and the 16th century minuet.

Aside from their vivid and colorful choreography, these pieces showed clever and humorous construction - especially the dance 'From Ancient Roots' which ingeniously compared the traditional Hebrew dance with the dance of the young Sabra on the kibbbutz. It inroduced into a delightful contemporary dance a balletic telling of the Jacob and Rebecca story.

The remainder of the program dealt mainly with the 'ancient roots.' Presented were ancient Balinese dances, Indian mimic dances, and dnaces from the Noh and Kabuki theatre.

Fumio Atsuka gave a weak and often shaky account of the Noh dances, but his intoning of the atonal recitation of the Noh actor provided an inkling into what excites so many of the West in this ancient and abstract kind of drama.

... Charlotte de Neve, though generally impressive, came off second best to the strong, graceful and controlled dancing of Miss Himel.   ... Miss Himel was a Rachel worth the waiting, ...