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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