JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
Several of the recent blogs explored the unique changes in the dance company that occurred with The Forgiveness Project and a new creative burst of energy I felt. The three new pieces that I created with the four dancers in the company were challenging and very satisfying. We had an excellent photo shoot with dance photographer Tom Brazil in our rehearsal space (which also serves as a theatre) at Chen and Dancers. In this blog I share several photos that I have not shared in previous blogs, from each of the pieces.
From l. to r. Andrea, Kerrie, Jessica, and Danielle
From l. to r. Danielle, Jessica, Andrea, and Kerrie
Kerrie holding Jessica
I am deeply grateful for the collaboration with Avodah
dancers through the years in creating pieces that I was proud to have in our
repertory. The Forgiveness Project (with music by, and with the creative
collaboration of Newman Taylor Baker); Tent,
Tallit and Torah; and Heroic Deeds are examples of creative energies coming together in
a wonderful collaborative way.
Just a few weeks ago we opened A Day of Action Against Domestic Violence in Santa Fe, with a Native American acknowledgement and blessing. It was a ritual to acknowledge that we, here in Santa Fe, are living on Tewa Ground. Tewa refers to the language spoken by the six pueblos located adjacent to the Rio Grande River in Central and North Central New Mexico. All attending were invited outdoors, and Teresa Candelario, a member of the Yaqui Tribe from California, blew the conch in all six directions as we gathered into a circle. She acknowledged each direction, traditionally done by facing east first, then south, continuing west, north, above and below. It was a powerful way to start our day, and that evening when I got home I found myself reflecting on the ceremony and remembering a project with The Avodah Dance Ensemble that goes back some twenty-three years.
In the fall of 1996 I explored with two outstanding Native American actresses/dancers/directors a project exploring Native American rituals, particularly related to direction and the shaking of the lulav and etrog as part of Sukkot. The two women, Muriel Miguel and Murielle Borst-Tarrant are mother and daughter and members of the Kuna and Rappannock nations. Muriel Miguel is the founder and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theatre, the longest running Native American women’s theater company in North America. She also has a strong modern dance background having studied with Alvin Nickolai, Erick Hawkins and Jean Erdman. Her daughter Murielle Borst-Tarrant is a playwright, performer and director.
Working with the two women and Avodah company members Elizabeth McPherson and Beth Millstein we began exploring the use of directions in Native American tradition and in the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. While we did several informal performances and workshops it remained a “work in progress” and was never fully realized as a dance/theatre piece.
What stands out most in my mind from the experience was how we began each rehearsal. Muriel Miguel shared with us that they always began rehearsals or performances by calling their ancestors into the space with them. It was a way of protecting the working space. They welcomed us to face each of the four directions and invite whoever came to mind to protect and join us on this creative journey. I found this most interesting and actually very potent. I was a bit surprised who came to mind. Sometimes I welcomed a grandparent, a childhood rabbi that had died, an outstanding creative artist from our dance tradition or a biblical character into the rehearsal room with me. We did this each time we had rehearsal and sometimes it was the same ancestors who joined me and sometimes it was someone new and different. At the end of the rehearsal it was important to thank them for helping us, and let them go.
Several years later I was leading a workshop at Hebrew Union College and invited the participants to face each direction and welcome their ancestors into the session. I did the exercise too and when I finished and came back to my place in the circle I had the most surprising feeling that the room was suddenly very crowded with lots of people I had never met. The next day I happened to run into one of the rabbis on the HUC faculty who commented that he had looked in the chapel where we were dancing the previous day and the room felt so full and crowded. Humm… I thought about the exercise we had done the day before but felt it was wise just to agree with him without saying anything else!!!
At another workshop when we were dancing Exodus 15:20 “and all the women went out after [Miriam] in dance with timbrels,” I asked the participants to become the women going out after Miriam, but to replace Miriam in their imaginations with whomever they were following in their own lives. This proved to be insightful and another variation of acknowledging our ancestors as we had done with Muriel and Murielle!
It is interesting to note that on each night of Sukkot it is a custom to invite “invisible guests” into the Sukkah along with “visible ones.” Usually this meant biblical characters.
Another Sukkot custom that seems to have a parallel with Native American tradition is to include a prayer for rain as part of the last day ritual of carrying the lulav and etrog.
Part of the beauty of Sukkot in many places is to be out among the changing leaves. So I have selected as the visual for this blog a fall leaf pastel painting that I did.
Sometimes we get surprised and we realize that an experience has profoundly changed us when we least expected it. That is what happened to me following the residency at York. It wasn’t just one thing but a series of changes that I felt inside myself. A shift.
First of all, things were no longer black and white/good or bad — rather, many shades of gray. Someone could have done something bad at one time in their life and yet have many good qualities. And how many of us have done things and gotten away with them while someone else didn’t? That was my first take away – an opportunity to see people differently and to know that we all have a tremendous range of capabilities within us.
Second, I had truly loved the teaching experience. The women were very open to learning and enthusiastic in their participation. They were willing to try new things in a much more open way then I had experienced when leading workshops at synagogues, community centers and schools. And they were so appreciative. They listened and responded in a very attentive way especially by the third day. It was clear we had connected with them. They were creative.
Third… there seemed to be some characteristics that artists and inmates have in common. Both like to think outside the box, so the level of creative responses is excellent. Both like to get high. The majority of the women had gotten high either via alcohol or with drugs. Now they were discovering the high that they could get from performing and were very enthusiastic about it. Artists and inmates are risk takers. I think sharing these kinds of traits enables a deeper connection to be made than happens in teaching in a typical urban or suburban adult class.
For the first time in a long time I felt like I was teaching with the flow rather than against the current. So often in teaching situations over a number of the previous years I had felt like it was a struggle to get the point across. Here was a situation where the participants were like sponges, eager to learn and to take in every word. Indeed a very satisfying teaching experience.
I wondered if this had been just a unique week or if it would be true if we returned to York again or went to another women’s facility. The next season we found ourselves both back at York and in residence for a week-long program at Dolores J. Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in New Castle, Delaware. Again the connection to the women was strong and our teaching resonated with them. I found myself wanting to do more of these type of residencies and less of the type of bookings we had done before.
The work in women’s prisons continued to grow with less and less other bookings. In the winter of 2004 Murray and I decided that we would retire from the New York area and I would find a new leader for Avodah. I did and remained on the Board for a few years. I was haunted by the women’s stories that I had heard and the intensity of the teaching experience. Five years after I had retired, the stories still resonated, particularly those of several women we met who had murdered their abusers out of fear for their lives or having been pushed to the point where they snapped. This would lead me to form a non-profit film company with the mission of creating and distributing media of women striving to overcome abuse, and I’ll share more of this in a later blog. I would also return to teaching movement in a women’s jail in Santa Fe as well as working in movement with women at Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. I also helped to facilitate an art project at York, done by a friend. There will be later blogs about these various experiences. That first week at York planted the seeds for creative work I have continued, to today. Thank you, Joe Lea, for the invitation to bring the Forgiveness Project to York.
JoAnne, looking ahead. Photo taken by Murray around May 2004 at Liberty State Park near our home in Jersey City.
The performing space was anything but ideal, basically the intersection of two hallways. The longer one provided an area for the audience while the shorter two hallways to the right and left served as places to enter and exit. The women gathered before, all showing up and expressing a typical nervousness that individuals new to performing often have. The fact that all 24 women had shown up and were participating in the culminating event was itself very positive as we had been told that not completing things and dropping out was often a pattern of women in prison.
The lovely program that was made at York indicates that the performance began with an introduction by me, followed by a reading by Wally Lamb. Wally had been leading writing workshops at York for a number years before our residency. He edited and helped to get published two volumes of the women’s writing. The second book he wrote, I Know This Much is True, has an excellent passage on forgiveness that we were using in our workshops and so he read that section before the piece began.
Both performances went extremely well and I am pleased to share some of the following feedback:
From Alice Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Southeastern CT:
[A]s the music began, a transformation occurred and the hours of practice, discipline and determination paid off. They were a precision team, they were proud of themselves and they were beautiful to watch. The audience exploded with appreciation and encouragement… It was a triumph.”
From Steven Slosberg in The Day, a paper serving the New London, CT area, June 2, 2002:
Forgiveness danced its way through the York Correctional Institution in Niantic a few weeks ago, spellbinding those who beheld it and moving those who delivered it to seek a return.
Joe Lea, who had arranged the residency, wrote about an article in Liberation in December of 2003 about various “Art Programs in Prison.” Here is how the Avodah residency was described:
One of our most profound experiences resulting from the incorporation of the arts into the school curriculum was with an artistic residency program offered in 2002 by Avodah Dance Ensemble, a New York City dance company. Avodah’s residency was the first of its kind for York CI and only one of a few in the history of the Connecticut Department of Correction.
The incarcerated population was focused, dedicated and willing to explore the workshops and programs offered by Avodah, our staff and volunteers. One member of the custody staff noted that the week was free of disciplinary incidents at the school. Additionally, the impact of the program was full of life-long lessons in cooperation, commitment, collaboration and accomplishment. (A 65-year-old inmate suffering from lung cancer who participated in the dance program pulled me aside and said “Mr. Lea, I will remember this for the rest of my life, Thank you.”)
A Supervising Psychologist at York sent a Memorandum to Joe Lea in which he shared:
It was a moving experience and a marvelous realization of the theme of the project – forgiveness. The reviews I got from the women who participated and from those I spoke to who had been part of the audience were uniformly glowing. If I may offer a personal observation, it seemed to me as I watched the performance that both audience and performers were transported; it seemed for the time that we were all free and not in a prison.
A handwritten, two-page letter written by an inmate who participated in the program gave us more insight into the impact our residency had:
Being able to work with and later perform with Avodah was truly an honor. It was a privilege and an opportunity that I never dreamed would be available to me, prior to my incarceration, let alone imprisoned in a facility where encouragement of reconciliation, forgiveness and respect for others is not fostered.
You and the ensemble accepted each one of us as we were, never questioning our past, approaching us selflessly, gently guiding us to a deeper place inside of us. It was as if, each one of us were being held and uplifted to whatever place we needed to be at, at that particularly moment in time. I sometimes felt as though we were all blocks of clay, hard and packaged with labeling put on us by members of society that have never taken the time to get to know us. Avodah took each block of clay and nurtured it with warmth, enthusiasm, love and equality.
I know that I found it extremely liberating to be able to “express” myself in an artistic medium that spoke for itself. I wasn’t questioned about the movements I chose to do, none of the women were. We were free to forgive whatever, whomever we wanted to, without any scrutiny from anyone.
The impact the residency had on me was also beyond all expectations. I think it touched all four of the dancers and Newman as well. I wondered if the week had been a unique experience. Would we find a similar reaction if we returned or if we did a residency at another women’s correctional facility? Over the next two years I discovered that we had similar kinds of very positive experiences in two return visits to York and residencies at the Delores J. Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in New Castle, Delaware. In the next blog I will describe more deeply the impact of the week at York.
Cover of a thank you note we received from York. Photo was taken by one of the women at York who was learning how to do graphics.
