Dance to the music! Israeli dances come alive each Sunday afternoon.

Byline: Beth Cooney

Feb. 6--Leng Tan-Linnen is not the most likely of Israeli folk dancers. She is not Israeli. Or even Jewish. Yet the Chinese-American woman has made the dances of Israel, which draw from a variety of international styles, her passionate and personal own. "I love everything about Israeli dance, the movement, the joy I feel doing it, even the songs -- although I can't always understand the (Hebrew) lyrics," says Tan-Linnen.

Although she studied international folk dance for more than 20 years, the Israeli dances she learned along the way inspired Tan-Linnen most. "To me, everything else was boring compared to the Israeli dances. They are very joyful, very free, not as rigid as some of the other dances." Determined to share her enthusiasm, in October, Tan-Linnen, and her dance partner, Ygal Asayag, began offering an Israeli dance classes in Stamford. They rent a studio from the Pender Keady Academy of Irish Dance in Springdale and …