Tuesday, May 15, 2018 10:55 PM

Another city, another square, another dance: at the Gate of the City, hundreds of people, most of them dressed in white, swirl and step to folk and popular songs. It's an annual local tradition, leading up to the holiday of Shavuot. For the slow songs, the movements are somewhere between a Texas line dance and Tai Chi, progressing in wide gradual circles rather than rows. The faster songs move in similar circles, as people spin with complex footwork that I don't think I'd be ever be able to remember, much less perform. These dancers, much older on the whole than last night's crowd, seem to have learned the dances as children and have the steps hard-wired into muscle memory. Again, I have to leave for work before the dancing ends. Again the music fades, but is not consumed by drones. From the bus stop, I see a couple dancing in the light from a shuttered falafel shop to the rhythms that, blocks away, we still can hear.