Month: July 2018

Guest Post by Cantor Mark Childs: Beyond my Comfort Zone

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go", Guest Posts

Mark has served as Cantor of Congregation B’nai B’rith in Santa Barbara, CA since 1991.  He performs regularly in the Southern California area and beyond in both his own solo program and as soloist with major music groups.  He has served on local boards and is music director of the Interfaith Thanksgiving Service and a past honoree of the ADL”s “Distinguished Community Service.”  He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife Shari, and they have two sons.

 

If the pictures didn’t exist, I’m not sure I’d believe it. See Blog #3 for the genesis of my involvement in “Let My People Go.”  Through high school and college in SoCal (U.C. San Diego), I had plenty of stage experience and even learned a few tap steps along the way. But when JoAnne invited me, a cantor-in-training, to collaborate on this project, I felt like I was thrown in the “deep end.” Not only was this a professional modern dance company (we did get paid!), but the scope of this project was so foreign and beyond my comfort zone that I couldn’t imagine saying “yes.”

Here’s what I loved…

  • JoAnne was so darned positive and encouraging and valuing of any and all ideas. She laughed constantly with delight and defied every stereotype I had of New York choreographers.
  • Every company member was down-to-earth, friendly, nurturing, eager, and TALENTED.
  • I inherited Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ costume/pajamas.                                           In the costume/pajamas. Photo by Tom Brazil.
  • Being able to rehearse in the Henry Street Settlement House had a tremendous impact on me. Its history as part of the story of Jewish immigration through New York City has a lot of power in my heart.

Rehearsing at Henry St. with Deborah Hanna and Loretta Abbott.  Photo by Tom Brazil.

  • No one in my cantorial class was doing anything close to this. I constantly bragged “Yes…I’m a member of a professional NYC dance company.”
  • Collaborating with African-American dancers, a percussionist, and a choreographer was a tremendous growth experience for me.
  • The source material for the piece was profound.
  • The opportunity to travel and visit communities that I would otherwise never visit was priceless.
  • Louis Johnson didn’t seem to care that I didn’t expect to dance, and he laughed when I tried to resist.

Here’s what I didn’t enjoy…

  • Louis Johnson didn’t seem to care that I didn’t expect to dance, and he laughed when I tried to resist.

In Conclusion

Some audiences were captivated (I’m thinking Brooklyn), some snickered (I don’t remember that high school’s location). There were lovely receptions and interesting people wherever we went. While at K.A.M. Isaiah in Chicago, I was privileged to meet the great composer Max Janowski.

“Let My People Go” was an important piece. I’m gratified beyond measure that it survived and thrived after my departure with subsequent company members and cantors. I feel a strong bond with Avodah and others who were associated with “Let Me People Go.” These types of collaboration are needed more than ever now.

Note from JoAnne:  Thank you so much Mark for doing our very first guest blog.  And yes we especially need more of these collaborations NOW!!  If you have been reading MostlyDance and want to do a guest blog please send me an email and have your voice heard!

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A Performance Etched in all of our Memories

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go"

For 10 years “Let My People Go” played an important role in Avodah’s repertory.  One community after another put together dynamic programs forging new relationships or strengthening ongoing collaborations. In this blog I want to share memories of a Chicago  performance that stands out in my mind.  When I am with any of the performers who took part on Sunday, February 18, 1990, they often speak of how they remember it, too.

To begin with, this new season saw Newman Taylor Baker become a regular touring member.  Kezia wrote a wonderful salute to Newman in an early 1990s Avodah Newsletter:

Newman Baker…. brings inspiring talent and extensive credentials. His bio states only that he performs with Henry Threadgill, Reggie Workman and Abdullah Ibrahim; he studied music at Virginia State University and East Carolina University, and he has taught in the public schools and at college level.  But he also has patented and hopes to market a clever contraption which prevents a drum set from sliding on the floor while being played, has traveled regularly throughout the world and is a rich resource for information on the music and customs of many cultures. …. Newman’s impish smile can turn any crisis into just enough of a joke to be manageable, and we cheer as we hear the approach of the Indian bell which is always tied to his luggage.  Leaving his drum set and other jazz treasures at home, Newman has scored our piece with a collection of instruments which fascinates audiences and cast alike.  In our spare moments (with Newman’s generous permission), we are drawn to examine the shells, gourds, bells, whistles and other music-makers which click-clack, rattle, knock, jingle, whine and “boing” magically in Newman’s orchestration.  There is always excitement when we discover Newman has brought a new toy for his symphony, and we take turns trying to kidnap our favorite item, his giant rain stick, which sifts seeds and sands in a soothing whisper.  Newman’s most vocal instrument is his talking drum, which played by him speaks most eloquently; we heard with awe that this drum speaks the actual tonal language of certain African tribes.  Although Newman, always humble, prefers to appear a quiet character behind his instruments, we value his professional judgment (which we seek out) and his tales of travel, and he adds much pleasure to our trips.

Newman with his blanket of instruments  (Photo by Tom Scott)

and with an excited young audience member (photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman).

Also new for the season was Christopher Hemmans.  When Rob wasn’t available to tour I called my good friend Linda Kent, a member of Juilliard’s dance faculty, to ask her if she knew of a student who would be right for “Let My People Go.”  She highly recommended Christopher and he quickly learned the part.  My first vivid memory of the unforgettable trip was when the plane took off and I heard a scream from the seat behind me — and then Loretta saying calmly to Christopher that everything would be all right.  We learned that this was the first time that Staten Island-native Christopher had ever been in a plane.  When we landed in Midway airport in Chicago several young boys were totally fascinated with the tall athletic Christopher, sure he was a famous basketball player.  Today Christopher lives in Germany where he teaches Yoga and regularly performs in Broadway shows.  To learn more about Christopher here’s a link to a blog written in 2013 with an impressive list of the shows he has appeared in.

Mark Childs was really looking forward to this performance at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago because Max Janowski, a leading composer of 20thcentury Jewish music and composer of some of the most famous modern synagogue music, was Director of Music at KAM. KAM has a long and distinguished history as one of the founding congregations in 1874 of the Union for American Hebrew Congregations now known as the Union for Reform Judaism. They also had an outstanding reputation for their commitment to social justice.

Arriving in the Hyde Park area of Chicago, we found the housing was particularly elegant. The day before the performance we were taken to a lovely lunch by Mrs. Janowski, as Max was not in the best of health and was not able to join us.  Seated upstairs in a lovely restaurant, we had a friendly waitress that Newman has kept in contact with to this very day.  When Christopher couldn’t decide between two entrees, Newman suggested that he order both, which he (and perhaps Newman) did, to the good-humored surprise of Mrs. Janowski.

KAM had a long-standing collaboration with Liberty Baptist Church and their Sanctuary Choir was awesome. Under the musical direction of Marcus Love their voices soared.   I was standing in the back of this beautiful Byzantine-inspired synagogue at Greenwood Avenue and Hyde Park Boulevard across the street from what we now know was the Obama family’s Chicago home.  The synagogue was packed.  As the program ended with “We Shall Overcome” the audience stood and linked hands, and voices uplifting in song brought tears to my eyes.

Deborah shared that:

What I remember was the incredible space in which we performed, the immensity of the acoustics and the beautiful, heartfelt response of the audience and their comments.  They spoke of how the performance  reminded them of the shared efforts between the Black and Jewish communities during the Civil Rights movement. I remember congregants afterwards speaking to one another from their different churches saying how they should get together more often for interfaith projects… how much history they shared in common, how emotional they felt… and how we as performers felt their involvement on a deep level.

The Chicago Tribune in their Quick Picks section recommended the program referring to it as a day of dance and harmony.  It was!!  I saved the Quick Picks article and the program cover from the performance.

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Bringing Groups Together: Two-Month Tour of “Let My People Go”

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go"

The next two performances were in the New York area.  Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Memorial Baptist Church of Harlem jointly featured “Let My People Go” as part of their tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.  The congregations had an ongoing cooperative relationship.  The Friday night Sabbath Service found Memorial’s Pastor Preston Washington joining the Rabbis of Rodeph Sholom in leading the service, followed by the combined choirs of the Baptist Church.  “Let My People Go” concluded the evening.

A week later on Saturday evening the choir of Brooklyn Heights Synagogue along with the choir of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church of Ft. Greene opened a program at St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Church, organized by Brooklyn Heights Synagogue (of which I was a member) under the leadership of Rabbi Richard Jacobs, a former Avodah dancer.  We are fortunate that this performance of “Let My People Go” was videotaped by Randy Hayman; here is the link to watch it. When I watch the video it reminds me of the dedication of the performers and their incredible passion as they leaped, sang, and spoke James Weldon Johnson’s words.

The season included three college performances. The first was sponsored by Brandeis’s Hillel Foundation and the University itself, for Black History Month. The second was part of a Jewish Arts Festival with Black History Month in Bowker Auditorium on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA.  The third was sponsored by Hillel and Eracism, an anti-racism student group at the University of Pennsylvania.  Two students were quoted as saying the program was part of Black History Month and that the show was aimed at improving race relations on campus.  The Pennsylvania Gospel Choir performed after “Let My People Go.”

A unique collaboration in Norfolk, Virginia brought the Urban League and the Jewish Community Center together to sponsor a performance on Sunday night in the Chrysler Museum Theater.  It was the first time but not the last that we performed in a Museum where security is heightened and one enters through special doors.  The philosophy behind this sharing was well expressed by Mary Redd:  “One of the things the Urban League is about is building bridges.  So I think ofLet My People Go in terms of letting all people be free.” She went on to share in an interview published by the Virginia Pilot and Ledger Star, “The performance, which comes in the middle of Black History Month, coincides with Urban League Sunday.  That’s an annual awareness day commemorating the founding of the National Urban League in 1910.”   The following Monday morning the company performed at a local high school in a lively morning assembly (see the following poem by Kezia for more about the morning).

The last two performances were back in the NY area. On Saturday night in Plainfield, New Jersey, the performance was sponsored by the Association for Rehabilitation with Kindness, a joint organization of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and Temple Emanu-El of  Westfield,NJ.  The organization focuses on the rehabilitation of housing.  This performance was especially meaningful for me, as Rabbi Kroloff, an Avodah Board Member, was the leader of Temple Emanu-El and it was in his office that the idea to develop a program like “Let My People Go” was first discussed (See Blog 2).  We were thrilled to get excellent press in the New Jersey section of The New York Times, where Barbara Gilford, having seen the performance earlier at Rodeph Sholom wrote, “The work has both substance and texture with eloquence and emotional forces suffusing spoken and movement sequences. Images and bodies seamlessly melt into one another. A vision of the Israelites in Egyptian bondage becomes a tableau of black slavery as black and Jewish voices become one cry for deliverance”(February 19, 1989).

Additional press in Newark’s Star-Ledger by Valerie Sudol included a quote by Louis Johnson:  “’This was a wonderful project,’ he said of his work with Tucker. ‘The piece deals with issues that are right in front of us every day. It’s about life as it’s lived here and now, not in some remote time or place’”  (February 12, 1989).

From L to R: Loretta Abbott, Deborah Hanna, and Mark Childs

Photo by Tom Brazil

The last performance of the season was on Sunday, February 26th, at the Henry Street Settlement in their wonderful old theater.  Deborah Hanna wrote of that last performance:

There was a very modest Sunday afternoon audience as I recall, but our performance was breathtaking. After this intense tour, we had arrived to such a free, creative and connected place between all of the performers that we were actually improvising new things, anticipating and working together with that magical harmony that performers live for… That priceless, beyond time and space experience that unfortunately happens so rarely in a performing career.  In the end, it didn’t matter where we were or who was in front of us… that last performance was all ours. (From Avodah Memory,  February 29, 2004 by Deborah Hanna).

Deborah Hanna (foreground) and Loretta Abbott

Photo by Tom Brazil

The drummer who had first begun the piece was not available and so we had two subs during the season: Eli Fontaine and Newman Taylor Baker.  While Eli would occasionally join us again over the next several years, Newman became a regular Avodah touring member and incredible collaborator.  More to come about Newman.

Kezia, in the March 1989 Avodah Newsletter, playfully and elegantly summarized the season and I end this Blog with her poem:

And About That Black-Jewish History Project….
IN the beginning, were doubts, we admit;
Would visions and methods and temperaments fit?
Soon the group’s gathered, and quickly we’re friends.
Just into rehearsal, surprises descend:

We’re told we must sing. “We’re just dancers,” we rant,
Cantor Mark, told to dance, cries, “I can’t; I just cant.”
(If Louis said “Fly!” he’d want wings to unfold);
Rumpelstiltskin, we need, to turn straw into gold.

En route to our premiere, we can’t help but fret;
We realize we’ve not done one full run-through yet!
They love all our dancing, the music, the text.
They don’t know we still whisper, “Help!” Which part comes next?”

For two months we travel, most weekends and more;
The dust in our homes slowly covers the floor.
Our friends rarely see us; we don’t get much rest,
But the piece grows with each show, from better to best.

We’re scheduled with choirs or questions and answers;
New groups come together in sponsoring dancers!
We hope that such links grow as fast as our piece;
(Next year, how ‘bout soul food with matzoh ball feasts?!)

A high school performance – a morning assembly –
That audience still makes us smile, remembering;
We run and we roll and we moan and we scream;
It’s the funniest thing that they ever have seen!

They not only enjoy, but they do understand,
And perhaps they see clearest the point right at hand:
If the world were just like the small crew of our show,
No one would need cry, “Let My People Go.”

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We Open in Cleveland: Last-Minute Adjustments

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go"

Note from Kezia:  Running a dance company, particularly touring, involves a lot of last-minute surprises.  JoAnne was masterful at calmly solving all sorts of challenges, as she reports . . . .

Less than twenty-four hours before we are due to board our flight to Cleveland,where the first performance of “Let My People Go” will be part of a Friday night service, I get a call from our drummer, Leopoldo.  He informs me that he has bought a plane ticket for his girlfriend for our flight and she will be joining us on tour.  Gulp…. Now I need to provide housing for them, as a couple, and make sure we have room in the van for eight, or two cars . . . .

To keep costs down we often had home hospitality when we were out of town.  It was a bit late to ask Temple Fairmount to change the hosting arrangements, so after pacing up and down a bit and wondering what to do, I remembered that I had a second cousin who lived in Cleveland, perhaps near the temple.  I put in a call and indeed he and his family lived in the neighborhood of the temple and delightedly agreed to house Leopoldo and his girlfriend.  Problem solved.

Next, pack the costume bags for the performers.  We were lucky that in Avodah’s costume closet (a makeshift area under steps in our finished basement) were beige jumpsuits from an earlier piece that worked perfectly for “Let My People Go.”  The three women each tied a scarf at the waist to add some color.  The drummer was responsible for his own outfit.  “Let My People Go” was an easy show to tour since generally it was performed alone or with one or two other pieces, while a usual concert might have six different pieces and costume changes.  The drummer had the challenge of packing his talking drum and other small percussion instruments.  Each of the three drummers who would accompany us this first season brought a different assortment of percussion instruments along with the talking drum, adding their unique flavor… and more about that later.

Packed and ready, off we went to Cleveland.  About half-way through the flight, Kezia came over to me and said she had been drafted by the other dancers to plead that they “please have ONE run-through before the performance without being stopped and without being given any additional changes.”  I promised this would happen, as I realized that Louis’s imagination always saw something new to change,and even throughout our final rehearsal with him, he had continued to make lots of revisions.

And so we arrived at Temple Fairmount, greeted by Rabbi David Gelfand and Cantor Sarah Sager, in plenty of time to have our run-through. Luckily we were in a stage setting so there were no unusual adjustments of entrances or exits and I remember being very impressed with how smoothly the run-through went.  I kept my promise and did not stop the flow or make any changes.  I may have given a few notes, mainly positive on how well the piece went.

That evening, January 13, 1989,“Let My People Go” was premiered at Fairmount Temple in honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday.  The performance went extremely well and I was so proud of how the company performed.

Deborah Hanna wrote about the first performance:

There were so many entrances and exits and lines to say and songs that we hadn’t had time to get it all under control.  Our first performance was at a huge synagogue in Ohio with a marvelously large bema or stage – a great space – and expansive for all the running in and out that the piece entailed.  We all had our notebooks positioned in the wings and as we dashed out for a few seconds between one exit and the next split second entrance I recall quickly reading my notes to remember where I was supposed to re-enter and as what character.  The whole performance went like that.  (An “Avodah Memory” from Avodah dancer Deborah Hanna, upon JoAnne’s retirement as Artistic Director, February 29, 2004)

Meanwhile, Leopoldo and his girlfriend were warmly received by my cousins, whose daughter particularly had fun with the guests.  The rest of the home hospitality, provided by the Temple, also worked out.

The next morning we were off to Canton, Ohio, for both a workshop and a performance.  More than 350 adults and children attended, representing both the Jewish and Black communities.  The evening included the performance of “Let My People Go,” a video presentation on Israeli tributes to Dr. King, a dance workshop and a dessert reception.  The whole event was free, having been funded by a grant from the Canton Jewish Community’s Federation Community Development Endowment Fund. I felt a real sense of delight in how this event was truly a community-wide interchange.  I also noticed that even though it was just the beginning of a series of performances, the six dancers were becoming a family, enjoying working with each other.

What Rabbi Chuck Kroloff and I had envisioned at our meeting the previous spring was happening.

Loretta Abbott leading the workshop with children from the community.

Children get a chance to meet the performers and ask them questions.

Performers, L-R: Deborah Hanna, Rob Danforth, Loretta Abbott, Leopoldo Fleming, Kezia Gleckman Hayman

Both of these photographs are from the Stark Jewish News, February 1989 (no photo credit was given).

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