Gratitude for Early Influences

Whether it is building a dance studio, keeping a dance company running for over 30 years, starting a film company that has now has completed 7 films, or selling our art-work on ETSY, I realize a certain pattern in my life and work.  It is with deep gratitude I acknowledge two qualities that were wonderfully reinforced for me: creativity from my Mom and a sense of (and joy in) business from my father.

I am a war baby, meaning that shortly after my birth my father was drafted and went off to fight in WWII.  My Mom and I lived at his mother and stepfather’s house, a large three-story house in Pittsburgh that was filled with all kinds of energy. His stepfather was a family physician and his office was in the home with the waiting room at the front of the house.  My grandmother loved people and music. Their youngest child Bill was at that time a student at Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon) and lots of his friends from the music and drama department filled the house.  As a young toddler I got lots of attention from them.  A cousin a year younger would visit and we were a bundle of energy.

I enjoyed pretending I was a Doctor.  When I finally became one, it was of a different kind!

Uncle Billy letting me play his cello.

Mom and I spending a few special moments with Dad when he was on leave.

My mom had lots of time on her hands so she encouraged my creative endeavors.  This continued throughout my childhood.  Although my grandmother took me to see my first touring Broadway show, Peter Pan with Veronica Lake, it was my Mom who took me to see Moira Shearer in Swan Lake when I was five or six and the Saddler Wells (now the Royal Ballet) came to town.  Mom continued to encourage me by enrolling me in dance classes and responding positively, as I got older, to ideas and projects I wanted to pursue.  When I wanted to teach dance classes in our basement to earn money she easily made it happen.  I always felt her support even as an adult. She enthusiastically came to performances, entertained the dance company members when we toured to where she lived and was always a good listener when I wanted to talk and talk about a creative project.

Mom (Dr. Janet Klineman) got her Ph.D. after we were grown up and had a career in Special Education.  She was very devoted to the complex children she worked with, and compassionate to their parents, showing them ways to help their challenging child.  It was only after she retired that she rediscovered her artistic talents. Her father had painted and she had done some painting when she was younger but nothing had come of it. She started taking classes in watercolor painting in Sarasota when she was close to 80 and continued painting until three weeks before she died at age 90.  In fact the last picture she did of her dog, Mickey, hangs in our house in a prominent place where I see it every day.  It is a daily reminder to me that nurturing and expressing my creativity is essential!!

Mom’s painting of Mickey.

My father was a salesman.  When he returned from the war he joined the company that his father (who died in the flu epidemic of 1918 or so) and uncles had founded, Majestic Sportswear.  I grew up hearing his enthusiasm for the line of clothes he was selling.  I remember sample sales at the end of the season.  At times I even helped him organize order forms.  So his business talk, including meeting goals and enthusiasm for what he was selling, was also an influence. While at times he didn’t understand “modern dance” and what I might be trying to express he never put it down and usually agreed to support what I was proposing.

As a teenager I joined Mom on a trip or two to New York City where Dad had quarterly sales meetings and I remember his tolerant and patient presence as he and Mom waited at stage doors while I eagerly got autographs from Julie Andrews after My Fair Lady and Susan Strasberg after Diary of Anne Frank.  Then there was another time in Pittsburgh when Mary Martin came to town in a one-woman show… while I waited to get her autograph Dad had a lively conversation with her chauffeur.  Later, after graduating high school and while I was studying dance in NYC and attending Juilliard, I would join him and several of his fellow salesmen for dinner and a night out in the City, often not getting home until 3 AM.

Both Mom and Dad were persistent, each in their own way, and so that quality coming from both of them has served me well.  In fact, Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (recommending an Avodah concert) said, “There are not too many practicing choreographers of dance based on religious themes in these godless days. In her quiet way, JoAnne Tucker is one of the most persistent and one of the best, creating simple, luminous and heartfelt dances based on Jewish tradition” (January 9, 1998).

Of course both parents presented challenges and there are things I didn’t like about growing up in our household.  The older I get,these occasional memories fade further and further away.  Today I am filled only with deep gratitude for lessons learned from my parents.

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