Month: August 2019

The Forgiveness Project Begins: A Movement Presentation on Lines from Biblical Psalms

JoAnne Tucker / / dance liturgy, Forgiveness Project, Holocaust Repertory

Fortunately, I don’t have to rack my memory to figure out the beginning steps for The Forgiveness Project, as they are well documented in the February 2001 Avodah Dance Ensemble Newsletter.  Much of what I am sharing in this blog comes from the Newsletter’s opening article.

I did indeed read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness which Canon Lloyd Casson had suggested. Towards the end of the book Tutu has a paragraph related to the need for Israel to wrestle with forgiveness for Germany.  He is not the only one to point this out.  In January 2000, Elie Wiesel spoke of forgiveness in a speech he made on the German Day of Remembrance when he addressed the Bundestag. Simon Wiesenthal addressed this important question in his book The Sunflower. Certainly the question of forgiveness related to post-Holocaust German/Jewish relationships is one of the most challenging.  My plan was for the dance company to wrestle with this difficult question in a new way through movement. There was no goal to come up with any one definitive answer, just to wrestle with the question.

We would also look at forgiveness from a variety of perspectives – forgiveness of oneself, forgiveness within a relationship, forgiveness as it relates to God and forgiveness between communities.  We officially began our work on forgiveness for the project in the fall of 2000 when we presented a lecture demonstration on Yom Kippur afternoon at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s High Holiday Services for College and Graduate Students.  For this presentation I decided to focus on forgiveness between self and God. To prepare I read the Book of Psalms and jotted down any lines that related to forgiveness.  After much pondering I came up with four stages in the process of asking forgiveness of God: being aware of needing to ask for forgiveness; accepting the responsibility to do so; asking for forgiveness; and feeling certain expectations upon being forgiven by God.  Three dancers, including Beth Millstein who had worked with Avodah for over seven years, joined me, and we explored the four stages with related lines of text from Psalms.

Much to my delight I have notes from this demonstration and I share them now.  Readers who are interested in leading workshops on forgiveness are very welcome to use the text and ideas presented here.

Here are the stages of Forgiveness with supporting Psalm references

1.             Reflect or ponder our actions

“So tremble, and sin no more;
  Ponder it on your bed, and be silent  (Psalm 4:5)

2.            Take Responsibility

“For my iniquities have overwhelmed me:
  They are like a heavy burden, more that I can bear.”  (Psalm 38:4)
 
   “I recognize my transgressions
    And am ever conscious of my sins.” (Psalm 51:3)
 
   “I have considered my ways,
    And have turned back to your decrees.” (Psalm 119:59)

3.            Take Action

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you;
  I did not cover up my guilt;” (Psalm 32)

4.            Express how we feel/or anticipate how we will feel after taking action

“Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven,
  Whose sin is covered over.” (Psalm 32:1)
 
  “You are my shelter:
   You preserve me from distress:
   You surround me with the joyous shouts of deliverance.” (Psalm 32:7)
 
    “God redeems your life from the Pit,
    Surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy.” (Psalm 103:4)
 
    “Yours is the power to forgive
     So that You may be held in awe.” (Psalm 130:3-4)
 

We used some of these lines of text in our demonstration as part of the Yom Kippur afternoon service at HUC-JIR and I am most grateful for Rabbi Larry Raphael (of blessed memory) for inviting us to present.  In the formal presentation at HUC-JIR the dancers improvised to the lines of text while members of the congregation watched. 

As the Forgiveness Project continued we wove these lines from The Book of Psalms  into future workshops guiding groups of various ages to explore them.  Usually I started with the first stage, read the line of text and then asked each person to respond in movement to the imagery being expressed – for example, to imagine he/she is pondering on “his/her sins” and express what that would be like in movement. 

We added other texts into the Forgiveness Project, including biblical texts, writings of Moses Maimonides, lines from the New Testament, a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh and a passage from Wally Lamb’s novel I Know this Much is True.  I will be sharing more about these texts and how they fit into the Forgiveness Project in the next few blogs.

JoAnne, on tour in Florida in the fall of 2000, sharing text from the Book of Psalms
with a group of religious school students. 
Dancers improvising for the students, on lines of text from the Book of Psalms.
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Exploring German and Jewish Relationships and Forgiveness

JoAnne Tucker / / Forgiveness Project, Holocaust Repertory, New York Company

In the last blog I indicated that Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal had all mentioned the importance of looking at the question of forgiveness and German and Jewish relations.  It was important for me to wrestle with this difficult question too. I wanted to find a collaborator of my same age from Germany.  I reached out to contacts that I had and was referred to Toby Axelrod, Assistant Director of the Berlin Office of the American Jewish Committee.  She suggested Ursula (Ulla) Schorn, a dance and movement therapist very involved with second generation Holocaust survivors and perpetrators.   Ulla and I began emailing back and forth, sharing our backgrounds and interests.

I discovered that Ulla’s father was a Nazi and she was raised in Hamburg, Germany.  My father was in the United States army, a tank driver who saw heavy combat at the Battle of the Bulge.  Ulla and I were close to the same age.  I was born in 1943 and Ulla in 1942.  Ulla was and still is a dance and Gestalt therapist working in Berlin.  She studied extensively with Anna Halprin and is a Halprin practitioner. In fact in 2014 she, along with two other authors, published a book on Halprin called Anna Halprin: Dance-Process-Form.

I invited Ulla to come to the United States and to spend a week joining the four dance company members and myself in exploring the theme of forgiveness.  She agreed.  Now my thoughts turned to figuring out how to make that a very meaningful week.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs offered to provide a space for us to work in.  As part of the Westchester Reform Temple (WRT) he had created a very flexible space with a good wood floor that on the weekend was used for religious services for youth but during the week was free. The folding chairs could be removed and it was an ideal space for dance.  Separate from the main building, it provided privacy.  I invited composer-percussionist Newman Taylor Baker to join us and accompany our movement.  I also decided it would be helpful to have a guest theologian speak to us each day on forgiveness providing some of their favorite text for us to use as motivation.

For the season of 2000-2001 four dancers were under contract to work for 16 weeks.  Stacy Limon Cohen, Julia Pond, Becka Vargus and Candice Franklin had already been working together for over two months prior to the week in March when we gathered together to work in Scarsdale at WRT.

Two of the company members improvising on the theme of Forgiveness in a workshop.  Stacy Limon Cohen behind and Candice Franklin in front.

Ulla graciously agreed to accept home hospitality with Murray and me in our home in Jersey City. Each day we drove together from my home to and from WRT in Scarsdale giving us plenty of time to get to know each other as well as enjoy meals together.   I learned of the various feelings she had of growing up with a father who was in the military, the guilt connected with her father being a Nazi and the pressure he put on her and her siblings to have a certain level of excellence.   At my house and traveling we were two women simply learning about each other.  However when we were at WRT working with the dancers a different level of symbolism happened.  I felt I was representing a Jewish point of view and Ulla a German point of view.

On Monday, Rabbi Kenneth Chasen, the assistant rabbi at WRT, used the biblical Joseph story, particularly 45:1- 8 to motivate our thinking.  This text is about Joseph revealing himself to his brothers who had sold him to the Egyptians.  Joseph does not hold it against them.  On Monday, while Ulla and I both improvised with the four Avodah dancers we were not on the dance floor at the same time.  Clearly there was a level of discomfort for us to formally interact with each other.

On Tuesday, Nell Gibson, an Episcopal Lay Leader recommended by Canon Lloyd Casson (since Canon Casson was unable to be part of the week, due to other commitments), presented material from the New Testament.  She shared Luke 34 – “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do.’”  Ulla and I both found ourselves on the dance floor at the same time but did not interact together.

Wednesday was the breakthrough day for me.  Rick Jacobs presented two different texts and since Rick had danced in the company from 1980-86, I requested, on the spur of the movement, that he come up with a movement idea for the text he was presenting.  He agreed.  He introduced text from Moses Maimonides – “Even if a person spent his entire life sinning, yet repents on the day of his death, and dies as one who has turned to God, all of his transgressions will be forgiven.”

The improvisation for the Maimonides text had one person at a time imagining that it was the last day of her life and that the rest of the group were people from whom she needed to ask forgiveness.  

The second text that Rick shared with us was even more powerful. It was from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. “Known as ‘Rabbi Shlomo’ to his followers, Carlebach (14 January 1925 – 20 October 1994) was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as ‘The Singing Rabbi’ during his lifetime” (Wikipedia).

Carlebach was born in Europe before WWII and came to America from Vienna as a teenager because of the Nazis.  In the 1990’s he returned to Vienna and to several other cities in Austria and Germany to give concerts.  While there, he met with non-Jews as well as with Jews.  Someone asked him why he did it.  “Don’t you hate them?” he was asked.  His answer was, “If I had two souls, I would devote one to hating them. But since I only have one, I don’t want to waste it hating.  We have just one life, one soul – we shouldn’t waste it on hating: not the Nazis, most of whom are gone by now, not their children who are not guilty of the sins of their fathers and mothers, and surely not the people around us.”

The improvisation task for this quote was to respond in movement, interacting with each other, revealing the soul that does not hate!

Ulla and I were now interacting together in movement.  My notes from the day indicate the Ulla and I found ourselves dancing together with simple mirroring movement, naturally flowing back and forth in terms of who was leading. The empathy we felt for each other in this experience was powerful and very emotional for both of us.  

The rest of the week went well with more interacting with Ulla.  I don’t have any notes related to what happened on Thursday and Friday but I know that I began to understand more of the emotions she carried from being the daughter of a Nazi.  

After she left I found myself wrestling with new emotions related to forgiveness that I had not experienced before.  Things were no longer black and white and I was definitely on a new journey in both my own personal life and in what I wanted to express as a choreographer.

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Invitation to Take The Forgiveness Project to a Women’s Prison

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance Programs in Prison, Forgiveness Project, New York Company

I don’t remember how we got the booking at Hartford Seminary or the exact date that we were there. I hunch it was in April of 2001. Hartford Seminary was doing an all-day program on forgiveness and asked us to do a lecture-demonstration as part of the day.  The Seminary is a non-denominational graduate school for religious and theological studies. We were honored to be a part of the program which also included someone from South Africa who had firsthand experience  with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which Desmond Tutu had written about in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. The four company members – Stacy, Becca, Julia and Candice – joined me and we put together a lecture-demonstration which might have also had some audience participation.  I remember being in a large room with about 50 to 75 people sitting around the edge on all four sides of the room.  

The Seminary did excellent publicity all around town with flyers listing the participants, including The Avodah Dance Ensemble.  As a result of the publicity, the week after we were in Hartford I got an email from Joe Lea, then a teacher at York Correctional Institution, the only women’s facility in the state of Connecticut.  He asked if I would be interested in bringing the program we did at the Seminary to York.  Well I was a bit taken aback and surprised by the email, and I had never thought of taking the dance company to a prison. Then I began to think, “Why not?!”

So I emailed Joe back and said that I would consider it but that I had never been in a jail or a prison and wondered if it was the right environment to bring the company into and how it would work.  Where would we perform?  I had lots of questions.  Joe suggested I come up, tour the prison and discuss it in person.  I agreed.  Of course the next thing I had to do was to fill out forms and get clearance to go into the prison.  I did that and then we agreed on a date.  I took the train to New Haven and Joe picked me up and we drove 45 more minutes to the prison.  

The whole experience was very new to me.  Leaving my purse in the car, I took nothing in with me.  It was easy being with Joe since he guided me through all the steps and of course everyone knew him.  Signing in, going through the metal detectors and then being in a small room with no windows where one door locks first before the door on the other side opens is a very sobering experience.

As we walked through the prison hallway Joe explained that York housed both a minimum and a maximum security side and that the school was located in the maximum side.  Women in the minimum side were permitted to attend.  While the prison housed up to 1400 women there were only 400 slots in the school.  I seem to remember that women under 18 who hadn’t graduated from high school were required to work on a GED. Women over 18 who hadn’t graduated were also welcome to attend. And in fact Joe was going to teach a GED class that afternoon and I was welcome to join him and speak with the women.

Joe showed me around and introduced me to some of the other teachers.  He showed me where they usually did programs in the school section.  It was in a long hallway which, in the center, had hallways leading off to each side.  While this was  not ideal I could see how it would work.  

When it came time for Joe to meet his class, I joined him and did kind of a Q and A with the students, sharing information about the dance company and the kind of programs that we did.  I realized that this was no different than any other teaching situation and in fact found the students more attentive than many other groups that I had worked with. I told Joe that I would indeed be willing to bring the company to York.

Shortly after my visit to York I decided to apply for a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and called Joe to discuss the idea.  I suggested that instead of the dance company just coming up for one day, I was thinking of writing the grant for 4 different 5-day residencies where the company worked with each site giving participants an opportunity to dance with the company and even perform with them.  What did he think of Avodah coming to York for five days, working with a group of the women for four of the days and on the fifth day the women joining the company in performance?  He loved the idea.

So I wrote a grant that involved bringing The Forgiveness Project to four different sites including the prison and mailed it off!

The entrance to York Correctional Institution 
(from the Connecticut Correctional  website)
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Impact of 9/11 on My Role as Artistic Director of Avodah

JoAnne Tucker / / Forgiveness Project, Personal Life

Having met the application deadline for the Nathan Cummings grant in the early part of the summer, I didn’t give a lot of thought to the Forgiveness Project specifically but found myself still wrestling with questions that had come up from the week of dancing with Ulla (see blog Exploring German and Jewish Relationships and Forgiveness).  Since I had created several pieces on the Holocaust, and the dance company had been part of so many Holocaust memorial programs, I did not yet know how to integrate my new feelings both into my personal life and into my role as Artistic Director of Avodah.  So I was wrestling with this when 9/11 happened.

At the time, I lived in Jersey City directly across from the World Trade Center.  Each day we took the PATH train into Manhattan, usually via the World Trade Center, to then catch subways to where we were going in the City or sometimes to walk if we were going somewhere in lower Manhattan.  While we didn’t live on the river we were only several blocks away from a full view of lower Manhattan.  Murray, my husband, had left early that morning and was going to a meeting in midtown.  Shortly after the first plane hit the tower I got a very anxious call from our daughter Rachel asking where Dad was.  I mentioned he had gone into the city for a meeting. Rachel, who is usually quite calm and matter of fact, told me what had happened and told me to turn on the news.  I said I would call and let her know as soon as I heard from Dad.  Luckily he called just a few minutes later to say he was safe uptown far from the WTC.  I told him to please call Rachel… she needed to hear his voice. 

9/11 was particularly intense for Rachel as she had been in the WTC when it had been bombed in 1993.  She had been pregnant at the time and had walked down from the 98th floor.  I spoke to Rachel again, too.  She was not working in the City this time.  Then I walked down to the river and watched as the second tower fell.  I was glad that I was able to be standing with a neighbor.  Soon I went home and just like everyone else watched television and waited to hear again from Murray who had gone to our daughter Julie’s apartment located in Manhattan.  Eventually he made it home, that evening.

I think each of us tries to find some kind of comfort in whatever way we can and attempts to figure out how to make sense of such an event, particularly when it is so close to home.  In our case, it was directly across the river, and where we got off the PATH train nearly every day. For many days we saw and smelled the smoke.  I was quite surprised to get a call one week later from an optical shop just three blocks from where the WTC had been, saying that my glasses were ready to be picked up.  And so I found myself taking the 33rd St. PATH into Manhattan and then a subway down to the Fulton Street stop to pick up my glasses.  What surprised me the most was how much, so close to the site, was functioning again – subways running, restaurants and businesses open.

Over the next several weeks I observed several things.  People were much more open and friendly to each other and in fact people who were only acquaintances hugged each other when seeing they were OK.  When I went to teaching jobs in the Jewish community I noticed increased security which was certainly appropriate but also a retreating or closing in that I didn’t quite understand.  I was puzzled and trying to figure out things for myself when my good friend Regina suggested I join her and hear Thich Nhat Hanh at Riverside Church the evening of September 25.  The evening was presented as a response and call for healing following September 11th.   It was my first exposure to him or to any Buddhist/Zen presentation.  I found the chanting, ritual, and philosophy very healing.  His talk was very powerful.  You can read the talk online at https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Essence_of_compassion.html

In rereading the talk as I am writing this blog I can see why it had a strong impact on me.  The talk opened with:

My Dear friends, I would like to tell you how I practice when I get angry. During the war in Vietnam, there was a lot of injustice, and many thousands, including friends of mine, many disciples of mine, were killed. I got very angry. One time I learned that the city of Ben Tre, a city of three hundred thousand people, was bombarded by American aviation just because some guerillas came to the city and tried to shoot down American aircrafts. The guerillas did not succeed, and after that they went away. And the city was destroyed. And the military man who was responsible for that declared later that he had to destroy the city of Ben Tre to save it. I was very angry. 

But at that time, I was already a practitioner, a solid practitioner. I did not say anything, I did not act, because I knew that acting or saying things while you are angry is not wise. It may create a lot of destruction. I went back to myself, recognizing my anger, embracing it, and looked deeply into the nature of my suffering. 

Later in the speech he shared:

This summer, a group of Palestinians came to Plum Village and practiced together with a group of Israelis, a few dozen of them. We sponsored their coming and practicing together. In two weeks, they learned to sit together, walk mindfully together, enjoy silent meals together, and sit quietly in order to listen to each other. The practice taken up was very successful. At the end of the two weeks practice, they gave us a wonderful, wonderful report. One lady said, “Thay, this is the first time in my life that I see that peace in the Middle East is possible.” 

He also shared a poem of his and I added it to The Forgiveness Project workshop materials.

Here’s the opening verse to the poem.

I hold my face in my two hands
I hold my face in my two hands
My hands
Hollowed to catch what might fall from within me
Deeper than crying
I am not crying.

About a month after 9/11, much to my surprise, I learned that we had received the grant we had applied for in the amount of $25,000 from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to create a dance piece on forgiveness and to take the piece, along with accompanying workshops on forgiveness, to week-long residencies in the four proposed sites. 

Over the next several months quite a few prominent Buddhist leaders came to NYC offering free workshops or programs to community members who wanted to attend.  I went often and began a meditation practice at home that I found (and still find) very helpful.  I also found the idea of keeping one’s heart open and praying for the well being of all people, not just oneself or one’s own community, resonated strongly with me.  Later in the winter I would find ways to incorporate these ideas into The Forgiveness Project. 

Thich Nhat Hanh
Photo from the Internet
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Notes from February 2002 Newsletter –A Major Grant and a Major New Direction

JoAnne Tucker / / Forgiveness Project, New York Company

The grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation enabled us to fully realize our plans for The Forgiveness Project.  We would have three full weeks of rehearsal time to create the new piece on forgiveness. That would be followed by four five-day residencies in four different places. I will be writing several blogs about these residencies.  For right now I want to look at the rehearsal period which began in mid-January, 2002.

My thinking after September 11th was first that it was hard to feel that dance, or the arts, had any significance at all.  As time passed I began to realize that the arts are extremely important to our healing as individuals and as a community.   

The repertory that I once felt was relevant and appropriate no longer felt congruent. As of a result of those feelings I found it exciting and affirming to be doing new and creative work. Not only would I be choreographing the Forgiveness Project piece, but I planned to do two other pieces.

Newman Taylor Baker was composing the music for the Forgiveness Project piece.  He would be playing it live for the performances as well as joining us for each of the residencies, available to accompany workshops.

The four dancers who had begun the work the previous year were not returning and so I was auditioning a totally new company for a season that would go from mid-January to mid-May.  Here are the bios of the four dancers I selected (as they appeared in the 2002 Newsletter). 

Andrea Eisenstein began her dance training in Houston, Texas at the Jewish Community Center. She graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1996 and then continued her training at Sam Houston State University receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Fall of 1999.  Moving to New York she started her own company, Ironstone Movement Company, and performed with Bridgeman/Packer, Liz Keen and Teri Weksler.  She is also currently studying in the professional program at the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation.

Jessica Sehested was born in New York City and grew up in Atlanta, GA and Memphis, TN.  She studied dance professionally at Ballet Memphis, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina in Greensboro and Dancespace Center in New York City.   After receiving her B.A. in dance from the University of North Carolina she returned to New York City to pursue certification in the Pilates Method. Involved in liturgical dance for over 13 years, Jessica has taught and performed at conferences and gatherings both nationally and internationally, including Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Canada.  (2019 Note:  Kezia remembers that Jessica had been a student at Wake Forest when Avodah performed there. As part of that short residency, the company had set “Kaddish” on a small group of students, one of whom was Jessica.) Kezia also remembers that during the Forgiveness Project residencies, Jessica often opened a session by masterfully engaging the participants and/or audiences – without any verbal introduction – in a call-and-response rhythmic clapping game, which immediately focused, charmed, energized, and unified the group.

Danielle Smith grew up in Harrisburg, PA where she began her study of dance and performed with the Cumberland Dance Company. She also performed and trained with the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and at SUNY-Purchase, Conservatory of Dance. Among the summer programs she received scholarships for and attended were The Juilliard Summer Intensive, The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.  

Kerri Ann Thoma is a native of Chicago.  She has been teaching children and adults for the past 13 years in all levels and styles of dance. She has a BFA in dance performance from Northern Illinois University, and aspires to continue her teaching and choreographic endeavors. She looks forward to founding her own dance company in the future, sharing her enthusiasm and love for dance, and becoming an active part of the dance community in New York.

Putting together the right team has always been important to me, and it continues to be important even today with the non-profit film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories of which I am President and co-Director of Films.  I have learned to trust my instinct when considering a person to join the film company, as I did when I auditioned dancers.  For dancers, having a strong technique was of course very important to me, but equally important was the kind of energy each person brought into the room.  It was a wonderful creative adventure to work with these four dancers and I am very proud of the work we did together and the three pieces that we created.    

And so rehearsal began and it was a very satisfying creative journey.  The dancers enthusiastically risked both their emotional expression and technical skills as we wrestled with the complicated questions related to forgiveness. These four dancers with very different backgrounds quickly became a company.  As we rehearsed in Chinatown at the Mulberry St. studio of Chen and Dancers each day from 10 to 4 with a short break for lunch, the piece slowly began to develop, as did two other pieces we were working on.  Because of 9/11 and attending quite a few Buddhist workshops over the previous several months my approach was changing and I found this impacting the collaborative way I was working with the dancers.  We were designing the Forgiveness Piece so it could be performed either by the four dancers alone, or by the dancers joined by community members who would be incorporated into key parts of the piece.  My favorite part was the ending we planned, where community members joined the company members on stage doing a very simple movement of lifting the sternum as their arms traced down their upper body, representing the idea of opening one’s heart to each other and to community.

Danielle Smith leaping, Jessica Sehesed kneeling and holding onto Andrea Eisenstein.  Newman is in the corner of the photo, accompanying the piece.
Photo by Tom Brazil
From l to r: Jessica, Andrea, Kerri and Danielle in
The Forgiveness Piece close to the end.
Photograph by Tom Brazil
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