I came cynically to the show of the telenovela stars.

Two minutes later, I was screaming like the kid I used to be

Thousands of viewers returned last night at the Menorah Hall to their childhoods when the telenovela stars of yesteryear - Felipe Columbo, Florencia Bertotti and Rocio Igersabel - performed with the hits in Spanish that we all grew up with.

Get a glimpse of this nostalgic evening

Doron Pankas

09/19/2022

Monday, September 19, 2022, 09:44 Updated: 09:59

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From the show "Lukura" (Doron Pankas)

Passover 2003. I, 17 years old, am waiting at the airport for the arrival of the stars of the "Rebels".

Rosh Hashanah 2022, the same field, the same hotel, the same hall (only the name is different).

The 36-year-old me is no longer waiting for them.

Knock shawarma 5 minutes before the show and that they will wait for me.

Dressed in a mantle of cynicism and white hair that has come with age, surrounded by many women my age, I move indifferently and embarrassed to my chair, rolling my eyes at every exaggerated scream of someone in the audience who thinks that a production assistant who went on stage is Felipe and remembers the reaction of my friend who refused to come with me to this evening: "I don't Going to spend 500 shekels to see Chen Aharoni get crazy on stage with a Mexican construction worker."

Two minutes into the show and I'm back to being that innocent child, carefree and resentful, fascinated by the stars from Argentina, singing and dancing enthusiastically, screaming with the audience: "Tango cadrama para cosas buenas!!!".

There were a lot of Cosas Buenas this evening.

The "Lukura" show held last night (Sunday) at the Menorah Hall in Tel Aviv is actually the upgraded version (on several levels) of

's telenovela show , "Singing in Spanish".

After hosting the star of "Tiny",

, in two concerts held in November of last year at Zappa Midtown - Chen and the production company Stardust International set themselves a goal that I personally did not believe they would meet: to fill Menorah Hall.

They enlisted the help of the great telenovela stars of the first decade of the 2000s,

("The Rebels"),

("Floricienta") and

("Almost Angels"), but while these managed to fill more than one lamp - Today they had to rely on the nostalgia effect to do the job.

He certainly did.

The hall was full.

Embrace the nostalgia.

The stars of the telenovelas and Chen Aharoni in the show "Lukora" (photo: screenshot, Daniel Aharoni)

"Lukura" is the kind of show where what happens in the audience is sometimes more interesting than what happens on the stage - and not because it is a huge audience or because the performers are not strong enough (well, maybe some of them did a less good job. We'll talk about that soon).

The audience was the theme of this show.

More than once I found myself curiously turning to the audience to check if the thousands of people who came felt the same as me - remembering the words, the steps, the movements, the childhood of all of us.

Without cynicism - because as you already understood I removed it from me at the beginning of the show - it was exciting to see the audience singing and dancing enthusiastically as if we were children again.

"If you find the little boy in you, don't let him go" sang the little ones.

We all found him this evening.

Chen Aharoni had a hard time holding back the tears when he found him - and perhaps summed it up best: "I personally was a child without many friends and these series, these people, were my friends. What's amazing is that they taught us to make dreams come true and that's exactly what I'm doing now." .

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Felipe Colombo lifts up the Menorah Hall (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

Felipe Colombo sang us Te Sone.

Did you dream about us Peli?

Felipe Colombo sings Te Sone, from the show Lokura (Doron Pankas)

went down to the audience at every opportunity.

Felipe Colombo in "Lukura" (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

When Chen Aharoni shared videos of himself singing songs from the telenovelas in his underwear somewhere during the Corona closures of the cursed year 2020, he did not imagine that two years later he would appear with the same songs on Menorah's big stage - and next to the stars of the telenovelas he grew up with.

When it comes to his singing abilities, Chen Aharoni no longer needs to prove himself - but last night he also proved that he is a huge performer.

He devoured the stage and left behind dust for stars from Argentina.

In 2018,

closed a performance at Menorah Hall and canceled in the 90th minute claiming she was ill.

Rumors circulated in the industry that the real reason for the cancellation was that it failed to sell tickets.

4 years later, Chen Aharoni sang her hits in a full hall.

Drop de Mike Chen, drop it.

The quartet opened the show with a short string of hits and then went on stage one by one to perform - each with the songs from the telenovela he represents.

From time to time Chen came up to sing us some of Natalia Oreiro's hits and "Tiny" and joined them in exciting duets.

Even if the Argentine stars have somewhat forgotten the Israeli love and warmth they received here in their youth - they received a very respectable portion of it this evening.

Felipe and Flore are not impressive vocalists but the audience loves them.

When Felipe sang Sera Porque Te Quiero with Chen and was busy during the whole performance with an earphone that fell out of his ear, the audience didn't care.

When Fleur gracefully sang Y Asi Sera with ear-splitting impreciseness, the audience stood on their chairs and waved their hands and cell phones dazzlingly in the air.

The audience's cheers were too loud to even notice that the things on stage could have worked better.

Let them sing in full playback, as far as we are concerned, everything goes.

Rossio is already a not bad singer and performer at all and when she sings the hits of her series,

From videos in underwear to an almost sold out show at Menorah (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

A huge performer.

Rocio Igersabel sings the hits "Almost Angels" (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

Surprisingly, the generation gap was hardly felt in this show.

"Tiny" was mostly broadcast in the early 2000s and "The Rebels" a little after it - when "Almost Angels" came up only in 2007.

Those who grew up on "smallness" and "rebels", like Chen Aharoni, did not grow up on "almost angels" - and vice versa.

But the audience, no matter what generation it was from, cooperated with every singer who came on stage.

The quartet ended the show with the big hit of the "Rebels", Bonita De Mas.

Felipe, about to turn 40, spoke to the audience in English, came down to them several times during the show and summed it up with the words that appeared on the screen behind him: "It's been so long since the last time I was in Israel. My life, ours, has changed a lot in many ways and despite the time that has passed, Here in Israel, I was flooded with powerful emotions. I really like being here with you."

Florence Bertotti.

Maybe not the strongest vocalist, but the audience is in love with her (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

Feel the crowd.

He was the central part of the show (Photo: Daniel Aharoni)

The show is based entirely on nostalgia and luckily for those involved in it, enough time has passed for us to indulge in it.

In the last year we have definitely been doing it.

We had Nadia, the legendary singer and star of "Pinet Or", Soledad Pastorotti who performed here last April, the star of "Almost Angels", Lali, who will perform here at the end of the month - and yes, the legendary Facundo Arena will also come to us with the presentation of his single this November, Then he will appear at the Ra'anana Music and Arts Center.

It is not clear if it is the economic crisis in Argentina that brings them to Israel or a real need to see us, but between us - we are also not clear if we have a real need to see them or if they are just another way to go back to the past and remember how good it was to be a child.

• culture

Tags

• the rebels

• pettiness

• Almost Angels

• Telenovelas

• Chen Aharoni

• Florisienta