"It is unique in that it is composed of deaf and hearing dancers performing together. Kol Demama is unique also in the way it originated; it is unique in its founder-director, 49-year--old Moshe Efrati, a seventh-generation Israeli and in his own way, a genious, ... In 1965, something happened that changed the course of his life and led to the formation of Kol Demama. Avraham Reich, director-general of the Association of the Deaf in Israel, was seeking ways to expand the interests and develop the capabilities of the deaf. Previously there had been an emphasis on physical training but Reich wanted to explore new and innovative ways to engage their energies and develop their artistic sense.

"Reich asked Moshe Efrati to device dances for the deaf on a professional level, not just the simple steps and round-rings of folk dance. Efrati took up the challenge. He chose deaf boys and girls who seemed to possess a feeling for rhythm and bodies flexible enough to coordinate movement.

".....("Sound Silence and Dance"), Efrate explains how he formulated his methods of communicating tempo and rhythmic syle with something like an electric stimulus, not only to each individual dancer but to a group, a team. What he has called   r y t h m i c    c i r c l e s    a n d     t e l e g r a p h i c     v i b r a t i o n s    transmit signs for coordination to the deaf dancers, performing the same function that music and sound do for the hearing.

And the LORD God said: 'It is not good that the man should be DEAF ... and he formed.. [based on Genesis 2:18]
Having learnt in 2008, that 750000 in Israel - i.e.10 % -are deaf or partly deaf...
I'm fervently singing prophecies, that the deaf will hear one day:
Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind, but My servant? Or deaf, as My messenger that I send?
See also in "Rejoice in the Wilderness"

An article which was published
in   1 9 8 3 ,
but which I read only in April 1985,
perhaps after I had seen the show,
and which I re-read on my voyage
to Mika's first dance performance
the first in the 5 1/2 years of her life

"How then do the deaf actually learn to dance? Not merely by watching others. The hearing teach them with signals of hand, eyes, lips, legs, head and body, with hand-clapping, foot-stamping and stick-thumping to indicate movements and timing. But the deaf also teach the deaf [shouldn't it be: the deaf also teach the hearing?]- and both deaf and hearing dancers draw satisfaction from their joint efforts. Yet it was not easy, especially as the more accomplished the company became, the more uncompromising Efrati's choreography became. "In the minds of the deaf and the hearing there is the same language', he says.

"The works performed allow no concession to physical limitations. They are fully-fledged, modern works, vibrant in their creative force. There are no tricks: the hearing and the deaf have learned to work together with stunning intensity. Indeed, the deaf dancers produce an innermost passionate vibration themselves which complements the dedication of the hearing dancers, so that audiences cannot distinguish which dances are deaf and which are hearing.

"A visit to a class or rehearsal is as impressivwe as a performance. The dancers "talk" in the breaks; here, too, it is not easy to ascertain who is deaf and who is not. Several of the hearing dancers have learned lip-reading and sign language. There are smiles, exchange of jokes; everyone is relaxed and at ease.

"Kol Demama gives some 35 performan-ces a year in Israel and all the choreo-graphy to date has been created by Moshe Efrati. He is an emotional choreo-grapher, influenced by philosophical texts, biblical stories, expressionist and modern forms. Like all good choreo-graphers, he bases his works on the bodies of his dancers but is guided in his conception by a mood or a message. For his "Chapters, Voices" he drew upon quotations from Martin Buber: "People disclose themselves to their fellow men in a manner different - not quantitatively but qualitatively - from that in which animals disclose themselves to other animals, to their mates. Man resembles animals in the approach by exclamation, while the approach by speech is by its nature exclusively his", and, "Destiny and liberty are welded to each other. No one meets his destiny until he has achieved liberty." The score for his work was composed by Noam Shariff but also uses the vocal sounds that the deaf make, with startling effect.

"In "Textures" Efrati again uses the voices of the deaf, with music by Ami Ma'ayani. Once more the underlying theme - though not any literal pattern - is drawn from Buber; "If we go on our way and meet a man who has advanced towards us and has gone on his way, we know only our part of the way, not his - his we experience only in the encounter".