Month: July 2019

Canon Lloyd Casson: Exploring Spirituality

JoAnne Tucker / / dance liturgy

As I mentioned in the previous blog, Canon Lloyd Casson played a very important role in the development of The Forgiveness Project.  Even before planting the seeds for this project, he was an inspiring resource for Avodah and for me personally, and I thank him.  In December 1997 Kezia Gleckman Hayman wrote this beautiful article about him and his approach.  His message and Kezia’s writing seem even more important today. Thank you, Kezia, for sharing this again.

The entire article below is from the December 1997 Avodah Newsletter.

(Kezia notes that it was in the service described below that she first heard the spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead,” beautifully sung by the choir.  She found it particularly fitting, therefore, that in the opening of the Forgiveness Project piece, it was that same spiritual that Newman Taylor Baker chose to sing, so movingly.)

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When Avodah Makes You Cry or Burst into Applause, Say Hello to Your Soul 

Since its founding, Avodah has been honored to perform in both Jewish communities and arts settings throughout the country, and in 1997 we continued our joyful tradition of appearing in temples, community centers, schools, museums and theaters.  In November, we enjoyed an extra-special interfaith experience, which we share here with you.

In ancient Hebrew, “Avodah” meant “worship”; in modern Hebrew, it means “work.”  (I seem to remember hearing the violinist Yehudi Menuhin define “Avodah” as work for which one feels a calling – an avocation – or “service of the heart.”)  Similarly, “liturgy,” which we currently understand to mean “worship” or “ritual,” is derived from the Greek word meaning “public service.” Such were the connections shared recently in a forum entitled Dancing Together as People of Faith, following Avodah’s participation in the Sunday morning service at the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington, Delaware.  In a service given the theme One Earth, One God: A Holy Dance (and filled with the mighty dance of music of the choir and organist), Avodah danced three pieces:  the Hanshamah Lakh (The Soul is Yours) section of our Selichot Suite; May the Words (“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto Thee, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer”); and Kaddish.  Our journey to Wilmington began with our participation last year in an AIDS memorial service at St. Mark’s Church in New York City, where the spiritual leader was Canon Lloyd Casson and the musical director was Jeannine Otis.  Canon Casson is now in Wilmington.  Jeannine has been visiting there as guest vocal soloist, and she accompanied our dancing.  Avodah seeks in several of its pieces to explore the history of liturgy and to capture the essential feeling of such ritual.  We believe that the history of much ritual overlaps religions, and certainly the goal of such experience is recognizably common.  When we met Canon Casson at St. Mark’s, we knew we had stumbled upon a remarkable spiritual leader.  The AIDS memorial service was accessible, meaningful, moving, respectful and soothing for attendees of all faiths, without attempting to hide its Episcopalian setting.  In Canon Casson’s leadership it was simply clear that the message delivered did not depend upon details of the particular terms chosen for its communication.

Canon Casson is an unassuming, gentle man with a heart-filled smile.  In normal conversation, he speaks in a muted voice and draws into himself both vertically and horizontally as if trying to disappear.  When leading a service he maintains the unpretentiousness of his delivery but takes on a conviction and posture which convey powerful grace.  He is vocal about his aim to help establish an “alternate” liturgy, and he and Jeannine have become an inspirational leadership team on this path.  The journey is for ritual which reflects the searching and learning of current worshipers.  Tradition is respected but it is not adopted merely for its own sake; worshipers explore the roots of their traditions and re-adopt rituals with renewed strength.  The Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew represents a combining of two parishes, one predominantly white, the other mainly African American.  The coming together of these parishes, similar yet different in their traditions, is consistent with Casson’s larger commitment to a broad spiritual community.  He himself is a member of a group based in India serving the poor and sick.

While rituals may always vary from religion to religion and within related denominations, while Jews and Christians do not agree on the Trinity, the critical question for each of us must be to what extent we allow these differences to shape our highest sense of spirituality and acts of humanity.  In his sermon, Casson lamented that throughout history persecuted groups have overwhelmingly failed to grasp the lesson of refraining from persecuting others.  In the lively and engaging forum following the service, it became clear that intra-denominational differences as to observance can become as hurtful as those between faiths.  The Jewish community has been suffering critically from such divisiveness. It was most encouraging to hear the voices in Wilmington affirming the need to focus on the spiritual and to strive to respect all expressions of faith.  Avodah joins in the belief that re-examining the source and intent of liturgy, and celebrating its ability to touch our souls, is one road toward a community that challenges itself to act with honor and compassion.  Avodah looks forward to continued involvement in the interfaith community wherever common ground – “holy ground” – is being sought and nurtured.

KGH 

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The Forgiveness Project – Its Beginning

JoAnne Tucker / / dance liturgy, New York Company

In 1997 or 1998, sitting with Canon Lloyd Casson in the study at SAMS (The Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, in Wilmington, DE) when the Avodah Dance Ensemble was performing there, I asked if he had any ideas for a new project for the company.  Canon Casson suggested I read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness.  I don’t remember much else from our conversation but I do know I went out and bought the book and indeed, it did lead to a new piece of choreography and teaching opportunities for Avodah that ended up changing the direction of the dance company for me.

Before I get into how just a paragraph in No Future Without Forgiveness set me in motion, this week’s blog and next week’s blog share what I would say were the preliminary seeds that enabled this project to develop so powerfully.  This week’s blog is about an earlier piece on forgiveness, Selichot Suite, and next week’s blog, featuring a piece that Kezia Gleckman Hayman wrote for the Avodah Newsletter in 1997, will focus on Canon Casson and the depth of thought he brought to us.

Selichot Suite was commissioned by Temple Beth El in Jersey City to be included in the Selichot Service that year, 1987, ten years before my conversation with Canon Casson.  At the time, Murray and I were living in Jersey City and were members of the congregation.  In Jewish Reform congregations, a Selichot service is held the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, usually late in the evening.  The word “selichot” means forgiveness and the prayers are the same as those recited on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Rabbi Bruce Block and Cantor Peter Halpern collaborated with us and we danced to Cantor Halpern’s chanting of the prayers.

We set four parts of the service to dance, integrating them at the time each prayer was recited in the service.  The first one, Hanshamah Lakh (“The Soul is Yours”), used very slow, meditative, rocking and lilting walks entering into the sacred space.  The piece was beautifully sung by Cantor Halpern.  The choreography of the next piece, Hashivenu,didn’t work very well in the first performance except for an ending circle.  The ending circle reminded me of a a piece I had choreographed before.  It was the last section in a piece called Shevit Ahim Gam Yahad (“Behold how good it is when brothers dwell together”).  This was a piece that I had choreographed in the late 70’s to music of Lucas Foss.  It didn’t stay in the repertory long but I loved the ending section and realized it would fit beautifully to Hashivenu.  I substituted it for the original choreography for Hashivenu in the next performance and loved seeing  it as part of Selicot Suite.

The third piece was actually danced to a poem that I must have originally found in the Gates of Forgiveness prayer book.  I was so pleased to have found it online as I was beginning to write this blog.  It is by Denise Levertov.  The dancers recited it as they danced:

Something is very gently, 
invisibly, silently, 
pulling at me-a thread 
or net of threads ….

Here’s a link to read the entire poem.

https://allpoetry.com/The-Thread

I found this poem so lovely and so representative of feelings related to the search for finding one’s spiritual center or home. Rereading it now I still find it very meaningful. 

The last section of the piece was danced to the prayer V’al kulam.  There is a traditional gesture of striking one’s chest softly with one’s fist, which accompanies the related Al Chet prayer, and we used variations of this movement in the piece.  We also used movements of falling to the floor, and a dancer falling into the arms of others, for this deeply strong forgiveness prayer.

The dance company had just gone through a major change in dancers and I see in the Newsletter of September 1987 that there were seven dancers listed as performing that season.  I think several of them were only with the company a short time. The original choreography was for seven dancers but by the next time that we performed the piece, it was revised for four dancers, the usual number of dancers in the company.

Selichot Suite was performed fairly regularly in Selichot services over the next 10 years.  While several of the performances were in the NY area (Tenafly and Scarsdale) several bookings were out of town, with one in Bloomfield Hills, MI and another in Houston, TX.  Often a concert with some of our other repertory preceded the service.

I have only one video of the piece and it is a wonderful one danced beautifully by Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Elizabeth McPherson, Beth Millstein, and Carla Norwood. They are so elegantly ensembled that it was a true example of what I hoped would happen when I named the company Avodah Dance ENSEMBLE.  The video is from a program we did at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion on dance as part of liturgy.  Rabbi Rick Jacobs spoke and Cantor Benji Ellen Schiller beautifully accompanied the dancers.  Here’s a link to watch it.

These three pictures were snapshots taken from the video, and in a photo editing program I chose to do them in black and white.

From the opening of Hashivenu
Dancer standing – Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Dancer sitting – Elizabeth McPherson
Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller is standing in back in black
From the closing of Hashivenu
Dancers from l to r, Kezia, Elizabeth, Carla Norwood and Beth Millstein (with her back to us) and Cantor Schiller.
From V’al kulam                                           
Dancers from l to r: Elizabeth, Kezia, Carla, Beth
Cantor Schiller is in the back.

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Dr. Edith Eva Eger’s The Choice: Embrace the Possible

JoAnne Tucker / / Book Review, Holocaust Repertory

While Facebook gets lots of criticism and has its drawbacks, one of its very positive things for me is connecting to the many dancers I’ve worked with from the time Avodah began in the early 70’s to the women who were part of the recent Healing Voices – Personal Stories  film Through the Door.  Lisa Watson, a member of Avodah in the 90’s, is a friend on Facebook and this past May 19th she posted about Dr. Edith Eva Eger (now 92) who wrote a book at age 90 about surviving the Holocaust.  The book is called The Choice: Embrace the Possible, and I thank you, Lisa, for bringing the book to my attention.

Recently I have tended to stay away from reading accounts of Holocaust survivors but this book held special interest for me because prior to her deportation to Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 16, Eger had been training as a dancer and gymnast.  The post that Lisa shared on Facebook related to the fact that Dr. Eger was in the Netherlands to meet with the director, the actor and the ballerina who would be portraying her in a performance about the time that Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz asked her to dance for him.  There is a wonderful interview of her trip to the Netherlands which includes her watching a rehearsal and hugging the dancer who is portraying her.  The interview is a good account of her life and philosophy and I highly recommend it whether or not you plan on reading the book. https://dreditheger.com/2019/05/04/interview-with-eenvandaag-dutch-national-television/

I wonder, if I were still running Avodah, if I would choose to build a piece about Eger and the moment that she danced for Mengele, who had come into the barracks looking for a ballerina.  She found that the way she was able to dance for him was to close her eyes and pretend that she was at the Budapest opera house dancing Romeo and Juliet.  But it is not only that moment that I find gripping and would want to convey.  It is her overall philosophy and spirit, even in her 90’s, that I would want to capture (demonstrated by the fact that she ends her lectures with a high kick).

Among the many gems in the book is her recalling and giving examples over and over again of the inspirational words from her mother, spoken in the cattle car as they were being transported to Auschwitz. Her mother said to her that no one can take away from you what you think and feel inside.  The day they arrived her mother and father died but she and her sister survived.  Toward the end of the war, prisoners were marched to Austria.  She and her sister were found by a soldier on May 4, 1945. She was barely alive, sick and with a broken back.

We learn how she recovered, married and moved to the United States where she eventually studied Psychology, earning her Ph.D. and becoming an expert particularly with war trauma victims. 

She shares stories of some of her patients and how they help her work through her own challenges.  While physically free she shares the struggle to mentally free herself.  She relates this to her patients that are living in their own prisons, and so much of what she shares has relevancy to all of us about how we can live in a prison of our own making, choosing to be our own jailers.  A comment by her I noted, most likely when she was recently interviewed by Oprah, is to choose expression rather than depression.  It is what we keep secret and do not work through that causes our depression.  Here’s the link where you can watch the interview.

http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/dr-edith-eva-eger-the-choice

One of her mentors is Victor Frankel, another Holocaust survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning.  She describes their friendship.

To conclude I want to share quotes from two sources. First, a review in The New York Times written in October 2017 ends with the reviewer’s comment, “I can’t imagine a more important message for modern times.  Eger’s book is a triumph and should be read by all who care about their inner freedom and the future of humanity.”  Second, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu said:  “The Choice is a gift to humanity. One of those rare and eternal stories that you don’t want to end and that leave you forever changed. Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness and shows us how we can as well.”

I am so glad to have read Dr. Eger’s book, which then led me to watch her various interviews. What a wonderful role model she is for those of us looking for people in their 80’s and 90’s leading rich meaningful lives.


Dr Eger holding her book. Photo from her website

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Heroic Deeds – Honoring Righteous Gentiles

JoAnne Tucker / / Holocaust Repertory, New York Company

In 1993 when I first visited Israel, I remember a very emotional day spent at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.  Among its many remembrances, Yad Vashem honors over 11,000 Righteous Gentiles.  These are individuals who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. I knew that someday I would choreograph a dance to honor them and that happened during the 2001-2002 season.  That was a particularly creative season since I choreographed three pieces on four talented dancers: Andrea Eisenstein, Danielle A. Smith, Jessica Sehested, and Kerri Thoma.  The Avodah Dance Ensemble had moved from a part-time dance company operating throughout the year to a full-time company operating for 16 weeks of the year.  The opportunity to work so intensively for about six hours each day was very stimulating.

As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I began to realize that something else was motivating me as well.  Living in Jersey City, right across from the World Trade Center, I had witnessed, only a few months before, the collapse of the second tower as I stood about three blocks from our home and looked across the river with our neighbors. And I remembered that our youngest daughter had been working in the World Trade Center in 1993 when a truck bomb detonated inside the parking garage.  Her company was located on the 97thfloor and she had walked down.  She talked about how people were helping each other.  There were no lights and so people were counting stairs and eventually as she got lower the NYC Firemen were coming up and providing additional guidance. As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I found I was not only thinking of the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives but how people can help each other in emergency situations, such as what my daughter experienced, and of course of the many first responders on 9/11 who risked their lives.

Part of both the fun and the challenge of choreographing is finding just the right music.  I did, in a piece by the American composer Charles Ives.  In a review by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (April 10, 2002) of a concert we did at the 92ndStreet Y on the previous Sunday afternoon she pointed out, “Heroic Deeds distilled community need in a quartet as stark as its score by Ives.” 

Once I had the music and had begun choreographing with the collaboration of the dancers my attention turned to costumes. Finding gray tops and ¾ length pants in gray I decided to paint silver, black and lighter gray spots on them to symbolize ashes and destruction of property in an abstract way.

Tom Brazil, a dance photographer who had previously photographed Avodah, beautifully captured the energy of the piece. Here are some of my favorite photos, with the four dancers who helped to create the work. All of the following photos are by Tom Brazil and copyrighted by him.

From l. to r. Jessica Sehested, Kerri Thoma, and Danielle Smith
From l. to r. Danielle, Jessica, Andrea Eisenstein, Kerri
From l. to r. Jessica, Andrea, Kerri, and Danielle
From l. to r. Danielle, Kerri, Jessica and Andrea
From l. to r. Andrea, Jessica, Danielle

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