Honoring Helen Tamiris

With bookings continuing to come in for Let My People Go, I began to think about adding new repertory that would fit in and expand the program offerings.  Elizabeth McPherson joined the company in the summer of 1990 having graduated from Juilliard in May. While in the company, she continued her studies at City College completing an M.A. in dance research and reconstruction. In a recent email exchange with Elizabeth, we could not remember which of us came up with the idea to add Helen Tamiris’s Negro Spirituals to the repertoire.  I only know that with 4 years of notation at Juilliard, a teacher’s certification in Labanotation and experience working on various staging projects as a dancer, Elizabeth had the ideal skills to reconstruct a piece that meant a lot to me. Things fell beautifully in place in the summer of 1993.

When I was 15, at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I studied with and performed in a piece choreographed by Helen Tamiris.  I look forward to writing a separate blog on that experience.  For right now let me say it was life changing and Tamiris inspired and encouraged me to focus on a career in dance.

Kezia and Elizabeth wrote about Tamiris in the Fall 1993 Avodah Newsletter:

Helen Tamiris, the daughter of Russian immigrants, was born Helen Becker in 1902 on New York’s Lower East Side.  By her own account, she used to dance wildly in the streets, until one of her brothers decided, “We must do something about Helen,” which resulted in her being enrolled at age eight in dance classes at the Henry Street Settlement House.   After graduating from high school, she was accepted at the school of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, where she received intensive ballet training and performed in the corps for four years.  But Tamiris found classical ballet confining and left the Met…. She went on to study the techniques of Dalcroze, Delsarte and Isadora Duncan, all three of whom are associated with the beginnings of modern dance. Tamiris, however,was interested in social issues and in conveying the energy of contemporary American life, and she stretched past the dance techniques available for study, shaping her own movement vocabulary and particular dynamic.

Among the works that Tamiris choreographed was Negro Spirituals– a suite of pieces created between 1928 and 1942.  In 1965, a year before she died, she set the work on students at New York’s High School of Performing Arts. That version was preserved in Labanotation and I was thrilled that Elizabeth could reconstruct  the pieces from the Labanotation score for our company.

An example of a tripletstep in Labanotation.

We contacted the Dance Notation Bureau, going through the appropriate steps to secure the rights to perform Negro Spirituals. They also loaned us the score and music to use in performance.

Kezia described so vividly what a rehearsal session was like with Elizabeth:

“Do I keep my right knee bent as I tap my foot?” “When I hear ‘Joshua’ do I pull my arms up or push them down?” “Am I allowed to smile while I do this?” It may sound like Avodah is wasting rehearsal time with silly party challenges, but these questions are signs of a company hard at work….. For each of the questions posed by the dancers, Elizabeth dutifully consults a thick manuscript remotely resembling a musical score composed of geometric shapes. “Yes.” “Up.” “You sure can,” she responds.

We had received a grant from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund that made the rehearsal period and first performance possible.  The performance in November 1993 was at our home base in New York City, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion located on West 4^thStreet.  Our relationship with HUC was very special and important to our growth and I will be writing lots more about that later. For the November program we were joined by Faith Journey, a musical produced by Jesse De Vore about Martin Luther King. Rabbi Norman Cohen (HUC faculty member and Avodah Board Member) moderated the program.  Among the performers in Faith Journey was Jeannine Otis who would later play a very important role with Avodah.

From the fall of 1993 until 2001 Negro Spirituals played an important part in Avodah’s repertory.  Not only was it regularly performed with Let My People Go, but the four solos and the trio of “Lil’David” were often included in Avodah’s regular concerts at colleges, community centers and synagogues.

Kezia was thrilled to be able to perform four of the solos at a Vassar College alumnae event (with additional coaching by retired Vassar faculty member and esteemed notator Ray Cook).  Tamiris was historically important in securing a place for dance in the WPA, and she served as Dance Director of the first Federal Summer Theatre, which (under the direction of Vassar faculty member Hallie Flanagan) was held at Vassar College.  Indeed, the four solos performed by Kezia had been performed at Vassar by Tamiris herself on July 10, 1937.

In April 5, 1995 Doris Diether wrote a review in New York City’s The Villager, headlined “In season of revivals, Tamaris works offered.”  She noted: “a dramatic performance by Elizabeth McPherson” in “Go Down, Moses;” Kezia Gleckman Hayman’s “Swing Low” was a brighter dance with a folk dance quality; Loretta Abbott had a lot of personality in “Git on Board, Lil’ Chillun;” Joshua was given a strong but graceful performance by Carla Norwood; and Beth Millstein and Hayman created frames around Freddie Moore as he gave a light but precise performance with high kicks to “Lil’ David.”

With permission of the Dance Notation Bureau I share three 30 second excerpts from the 1995 Performance. Elizabeth McPherson in “Go Down, Moses;” Beth Millstein, Kezia Gleckman Hayman, and Freddie Moore in “Lil’ David;” and Elizabeth, Beth, Kezia, Freddie joined by Loretta Abbott and Carla Norwood in “When The Saints Come Marching In.” The musicians are Jeannine Otis, Newman Taylor Baker, and a pianist.

Elizabeth McPherson in “Go Down, Moses”

Beth Millstein, Kezia Gleckman Hayman, and Freddie Moore in “Lil’ David;”

Elizabeth, Beth, Kezia, Freddie joined by Loretta Abbott and Carla Norwood in “When The Saints Come Marching In.”

The review and video excerpts are from a benefit performance at Hebrew Union College where we performed not only Let My People Go and Negro Spirituals but a brand new piece called Exultation, choreographed by Freddie Moore. Freddie is a very gifted dancer who began his formal training at The Ailey School where he is now on the faculty.  Among his credits are performing in Ailey II and with Donald Byrd/The Group as well as founding and directing The Footprints Dance Company.  I got to know Freddie because of his strong interest in liturgical dance.  He created  a beautiful four-section piece for us, to familiar hymns ending with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”

To end this week’s blog, I want to share how good it felt to be able to have Avodah perform regularly Negro Spirituals, a historical piece of modern dance choreography by Helen Tamiris, who so inspired my career in dance. Each time it was performed I felt a warm glow.  Thank you Elizabeth for staging it, and a deep bow of gratitude to each of the dancers who performed it.

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