The Bar Mitzvah Party Starters
Photographs by Daniel Arnold
Words by Jen Doll
The business of professional bar and bat mitzvah party motivators—dancers, djs and emcees—is booming. But who are they?
IT’S A SUNDAY NIGHT in November, and I’m standing outside the United Lubavitcher Yeshivoth in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I’m about to attend my first bar mitzvah. It’s for a boy named Tzvi Hersh, and I’m nervous—not only because I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah before, but also because I won’t know a soul at the party. It’s an Orthodox crowd and I’ve been advised to dress modestly. Clad in a black dress that covers my body from neck to ankle, a blazer, and black tights, I feel like an awkward teenager, and the bar mitzvah hasn’t even started yet.
My colleague, photographer Daniel Arnold, arrives. We peek through the windows of the Yeshivoth, from which a festive pink glow emanates. Boys and girls and men and women, all nicely dressed in conservative Jewish fashion, pass by on their way inside. No one pays us any notice, but then a guy comes down the block, smiling and waving. It’s Meir Kay, and he’s the reason we’ve been invited to this party. A few weeks ago, I found him on Facebook. A 27-year-old who grew up in Connecticut and now lives in Brooklyn, he’s got a full beard and tousled brown hair, hazel eyes that you could, without exaggeration, call “sparkling,” and a big, infectious grin. I reach forward to shake his hand—a gesture he accepts before telling me gently that I should avoid doing so inside at the party, because, according to traditional Jewish practice, men and women who are not married or related should not touch one another. “I’ll go in and say hello and then bring you in to meet the dad,” he says, smiling as he departs. Despite my nerves, suddenly I feel like everything is going to work out just fine…
There are a lot of ways to get a party started, with or without a motivator.
Ava’s party motivator is Jason Zaplin, aka, DJ Zap, a 25-year-old New Jersey native who got into the business as a sports-loving, entrepreneurial 9-year-old, dancing at parties for kids in his neighborhood. “I had a buddy who lived next door, and we started a DJ business, J&J Entertainment,” he says. “I got contracted with other companies, dancing and doing my own thing. By 21 or 22, I’d started my own business, and at 23 or 24, it was like, let’s take Zap to the next level.” Zaplin got a culinary arts degree but didn’t go to college, instead choosing to put his energy into his company. (He has a lot of energy.) “My goal for when I’m 40 is to have a stable of young emcees like me,” he tells me.
If Meir Kay is embodied exuberance connecting boyhood to manhood and Chad Ricardo is the seamless, stylish professional, DJ Zap is in it for the dance. He’s there to make a difference with his moves, and he’s as serious about the business as if he were auditioning for Shark Tank. On a phone call, he tells me repeatedly that you’re only as good as your last party. “It’s a very competitive market,” he says. “What separates me is I get back to my clients 110 percent. We can’t win every party. We do the best we can to make sure our clients are happy.”
Today, his crew includes one male and one female dancer (she’s a senior in high school), a couple of set-up guys, and the DJ. They’re all wearing white T-shirts with blue “Ava’s Open” logos. Though many of the kids prefer to hang out on the bleachers (the girls, looking at their phones, wearing the tennis-themed socks provided by the host) or in a lounge area in front of the dance floor (the boys, looking at their phones, in the same plaid shirts we’d seen at Julia’s party), DJ Zap is indefatigable. “I got started because of dance [and] music,” he says. “I had a natural gift.”
He’s also aware of the challenges of this particular party—possible bat mitzvah fatigue, it being a lazy Sunday afternoon rather than a pumped-up Saturday night, and the competing demands of Snapchat and Instagram. He comes prepared with an array of sparkly, light-up paraphernalia, as well as Ava-branded stocking caps to get people moving and excited. I snag a purple bracelet that makes me feel almost like a real guest, even though I’m mostly lurking in corners and taking notes. “You can’t be Superman,” he says. “You’re dealing with so many different personalities. You’re kind of like a psychologist. We do the best we can to engage. But I’ll tell clients, it’s not my place to tell your kid to put their phone away.” Later, when we have a call to recap the party, DJ Zap tells me that Ava hadn’t wanted any games, which means there were fewer ways to keep the kids occupied. Eventually, they had a dance-off to get people back on the floor. It worked; by the time we left, at around 3 p.m., much of the crowd was in a circle cheering around a break-dancing kid as DJ Zap conducted the competition.
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Originally Posted by Topic.com
December 2017