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.
Our “Let My People Go” cast members of The Avodah Dance Ensemble are like a family. There is a special closeness, especially among those of us who worked directly with Louis. So it felt quite natural that the way I would hear about Louis’s passing this past Tuesday, March 31, was to get a message from Christopher Hemmans, who danced in “Let My People Go” while a student at Juilliard. He shared this notice, and a little later I got a text message from Freddie Moore, sharing the same link.
I am filled with so many warm memories of my collaboration and friendship with Louis and feel so blessed that he was an important part of my dance history. I have written many blogs about the collaboration, from the first blog of Mostly Dance (on June 1, 2018) to a most meaningful one on September 7, 2018 describing the last meeting I had with Louis. Kezia so beautifully wrote of Louis in 1999, and that is a part of the September 7th blog too. I encourage you to check it out along with all the other blogs from June 1 to September 7, 2018.
We are living in such a strange time with so many deaths that I fear that Louis’s passing will go without the proper honoring that he deserves. When Loretta Abbott passed we had a small but very special meeting together at St. Mark’s church hosted by Jeannine Otis. Now it looks like the way we can gather together is via a ZOOM meeting. So I am suggesting to our Avodah family that we do a ZOOM meeting to share our favorite memories of Louis. How about if we plan on doing that after Passover and Easter… on Tuesday, April 21st, the time to be determined by who wants to participate. Please leave a comment on the blog, or email me directly at jotuc122@gmail.com if you would like to participate.
Preface: Why am I continuing to paint and write this blog at a time when the world is in crisis? An honest answer is because it allows some structure to this time when Murray and I aren’t leaving our home. For part of each day there is an element of peacefulness and joy in my life as I reflect back or create anew. Doing something creative engages me and I invite you along on the journey. I also welcome guest blogs… won’t you share how you are structuring your time to find some peacefulness and joy!
Even though it is nearly 60 years since I ventured to Steamboat Springs and attended Perry-Mansfield, the memories are crystal clear in my mind. The blend of the arts, the Colorado landscape, the rustic setting with horses – all evoke smells, sounds and visual images swirling me back in time. I was lucky to attend at a time when Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield were still very active as the founding directors. According to Wikipedia, “Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp was founded by Charlotte and Portia in 1913 and is the oldest continuously operating dance and theater school in America.”
Perry-Mansfield’s website describes:
…two ladies came to the frontier mountain town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado with a mule named “Tango.” Although the town was populated with people primarily engaged in mining and ranching, it was Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield’s vision to explore and teach “natural dance forms” and “artistic expression close to creatures and mountains and out-of-doors.”
Quickly regarded by the locals as the “mad ladies of Steamboat,” Charlotte and Portia founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in this spectacular mountain setting – a 76-acre campus 7,000 feet above sea level and 150 miles northwest of Denver.
From their humble beginnings in a few rustic cabins and some lean years when the “scenery was the salary,” Charlotte and Portia nurtured Perry-Mansfield into one of the premier performing arts schools and camps for children and youth of all ages.
JoAnn Fried and I arrived at the Steamboat train station which is now the Arts Depot. I don’t have any pictures of our arrival but I do have one of our departure.
JoAnn Fried and I at the train station at the end of summer.
The first few days were a whirlwind of activity settling into a rustic cabin (no bathroom) up a fairly steep hill. Down the hill was the bath house with toilets, sinks and showers. I quickly got to know three roommates, one from Denver, another from Wyoming, and I don’t remember where the third was from. I also think our counselor may have slept in our bunk, but I am not sure. I do remember her name was Jo and she was from Minnesota. Auditions and class placement were also an important part of the first few days. I excitedly and boldly auditioned for both Helen Tamiris’s piece that she would be setting on a selected group, along with Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theater production to be staged in the first few weeks of camp.
In an earlier blog I mentioned that I hadn’t prepared anything for an audition and quickly put together favorite phrases from Jeanne Beaman’s class, ending with a fun fall of sliding onto an outstretched arm and then rolling to get up. When I completed my phrase of probably two minutes, Tamiris asked me to please repeat the fall. A day later a list was posted outside the office door listing the selected campers. I remember being thrilled to see my name there. Only two of us under college age were selected, myself and Martha Clarke, a year younger than me.
At that time Perry-Mansfield went from young campers (in a section called The Ranch) all the way to College-age students, each age having its own section at the camp. All ages attended at the same time.
I also auditioned for Midsummer Night’s Dream. I don’t remember the initial audition but I do remember the callback. Three of us were called back to read for Titania. I was stunned. I had never taken an acting class and never thought of myself as anything other than a dancer. I had gone to the initial audition because I wanted to apply myself to as many different opportunities as possible. I didn’t get the part and did get cast in a small role in the production, which I declined, feeling that the rehearsals for Tamaris’s ballet were enough for me. It was exciting to have made the callback and to have had the experience of auditioning for the part of Titania.
Since I was cast in the ballet I was also permitted to take Tamiris’s advanced technique class and Tamiris’s composition class. The composition class was a real eye opener. I don’t have much memory of the technique class other than doing relevés into falls and catching ourselves, in each direction. The composition class left me with two main approaches that in ways are still part of my life. First, that one can start with an ordinary gesture and from that build a whole dance, and second, that one must totally commit to what one is doing!!
The piece Tamiris developed that summer was Dance for Walt Whitman. It was in three sections, each featuring a poem that was read. The middle section was my favorite, inspired by the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” All the women linked arms and moved as one body. My mom surprised me and came out for the performance. As I was packing for the move to Costa Rica I found a letter that she had written my dad. Reading it was very moving to me and I share just a few sentences from it.
JoAnne was an important part of the group. Tamiris added a fall for her… she slid half way down a 3 ft ramp and got up gracefully 10 beats later. The ballet lasted 20 minutes and the effect was magnificent.
I’m getting more convinced that she really has something to express in dance.
Program from Perry-Mansfield’s Evening of Dance
Picture of Tamiris that I took!
Working with Tamiris was a turning point for me in dance. The confirmation of being selected and then the experience of the actual classes, rehearsals and performance cemented my determination to have a career in dance. But the experience at Perry-Mansfield had another major influence on my life. It introduced me to the western Rocky Mountains and confirmed my love of being in nature. During the summer I would hike up from the cabin to the top of the hill, and in a level area do a short dance of thanksgiving for being in such an amazing environment.
Picture taken by one of my friends, of me dancing at the top the hill at Perry-Mansfield.
After the Tamiris ballet experience I had several more weeks of camp and wasn’t particularly impressed with Harriet Anne Gray, who took over for Tamiris. Instead there were two other experiences that stand out in my mind.
On her day off, Ray Faulkner, the head counselor of our Hill unit, invited me to join her on a hike up Fish Creek Falls to a lake at the top. It was breathtaking and awesome and the wildflowers were amazing. Hiking, wildflowers and being in nature have been important parts of life since then.
Perry-Mansfield also offered special western trips. I had signed up for a three-day trip to the Grand Canyon. It actually wasn’t to the Grand Canyon but rather to Dead Horse Point which is in Utah where the Colorado River cuts through it much like it does at the Grand Canyon. That was another awesome nature experience. We camped out and that night was during the August meteor shower and I remember an amazing night counting shooting stars.
Picture of me at Dead Horse Point!
As the 6-week experience ended and we boarded the train to head for home, I found myself filled with a new energy and a clear direction for my life.
I thought I would be going back to Perry-Mansfield in 1959 but instead I ended up auditioning for and getting into a bicentennial summer stock production that ran most of the summer in Pittsburgh. That will be another later blog. Right now I just want to focus on my history with Perry-Mansfield. Even though I didn’t return, I highly recommended the camp to other dancers and in fact my sister attended in 1965 and Murray and I, along with my mother, visited her while she was at camp. At that point Perry-Mansfield was in transition. The founders, Portia Mansfield and Charlotte Perry, had donated the camp to Stephens College, a women’s school in Columbia, Missouri. Harriet Ann Gray, head of the Stephens Dance Department, had been a regular teacher at Perry-Mansfield. The camp had a four-year transition period and would not be under full control of Stephens until 1967.
The camp became a summer campus for Stephens so that when our two daughters were ready for a summer program I was disappointed that it wouldn’t work for them. I pretty much hadn’t thought about Perry-Mansfield again until I saw a very small notice in Dance Magazine in the fall of 1991 that a group of townspeople had formed Friends of Perry-Mansfield, a non-profit organization to save the camp, as Stephens College was planning to sell it to be developed for condos or such. I think I sent in a $25 donation.
In the summer of 1992, Murray and I took a trip to Rocky Mountain Park and were staying in the western part of the park, about a 2-hour drive from Steamboat Springs where Perry-Mansfield is located. I suggested that we take a drive over to Steamboat and see what the town was like, as I had been pretty impressed that a group of townspeople were making an effort to save the camp. We did drive over and liked the energy in the town. It had grown from when I was there, particularly the ski area, but it still had the feel of a small Western town and none of the pretensions of Aspen or Vail. As we were wandering around town we picked up some brochures of condos that were doing summer rentals and even drove by a few of them. And in fact the next summer we rented a condo for a month and had a great time hiking, swimming and being in Steamboat. Strangely, though we drove by the entrance to the camp quite a few times I never wanted to go in to visit. Somehow I didn’t want to ruin the wonderful memories I had.
Murray and I in Rocky Mountain Park in the summer of 1992.
We continued to rent for a month each summer and then in 1996 we bought a condo and began to increase our time to five weeks. Since we were beginning to feel a bigger commitment to Steamboat and what the community had to offer, I decided I would go to Perry-Mansfield’s “Evening of Dance” concert. It was pretty bad and I didn’t go back for a few years until the summer of 1999.
Once again, I was very disappointed in the evening. There were a few lovely dancers but the choreography of the pieces didn’t appeal to me, seeming weak attempts at being avant-garde and not particularly challenging for the dancers. At intermission I was quietly talking to one of the townspeople that I recognized, sharing my disappointment, when someone interrupted the conversation and asked who I was. I shared that I directed a small modern dance company in NYC and that I had been at P-M the summer of 1958 and had loved studying with Tamiris and being in the piece “Dance for Walt Whitman.” At which point this lovely woman began doing one of the movements from the piece. So I immediately asked who she was. “T Ray Faulkner,” came her answer, and I just hugged her, telling her that I remembered her well from the summer I had been there. We laughed and she said we needed to talk and asked if I would be willing to go out to lunch with her.
I agreed of course, we exchanged contact information and set up a time to meet!
Before I go any further, this seems a fitting time to share more about T Ray and her role with Perry-Mansfield, and honor this beautiful woman who contributed so much to so many lives and to the well being of Perry-Mansfield. I think all of us who attended P-M from 1957 to 2015 have wonderful memories of T Ray. T Ray started as a counselor at P-M but soon was asked to assist the two directors, Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield, doing a wide variety of things that the ladies didn’t have time for. She was also a major help in making the transition to ownership by Stephens College.
T Ray [on the right] with another counselor in the summer of 1958. Photo that I took!
T Ray was drawn to modern dance even though she grew up in a religious household where dance was “for whores.” I found this wonderful write up about T Ray on the website of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, honoring alumni, and I share it here as it lets us know about T Ray’s professional life.
In the early 1950s, Thelma Ray Faulkner was told that a college degree could take her anywhere she wanted to go, provided she used it. Forty-five years, four continents and hundreds of souvenirs later, Faulkner proved those words to be true. The 1956 OCW graduate has made her mark in the world of education, earning both her Masters and Ph.D. in dance and related arts from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, in 1965 and 1969, respectively, and has taught on every educational level from kindergarten to post graduate. She taught dance at Indiana University in Bloomington, Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, the University of Oregon in Eugene and Arizona State University in Tempe. During her career in higher education, she did post doctoral work at the Laban Art Movement Center at Goldsmith College, part of the University of London. She was a visiting professor at the University of the Americas in Chalua, Mexico, a guest teacher/artist at two colleges in Brazil and was a judge at Brazil’s major international dance competition. She retired from college teaching in 1982, only to reenter the field of education as an elementary school teacher. For the last six years of her teaching career, she worked with third-fifth grade Native American students on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz. As a Language Arts Specialist, she taught creative writing to children with reading and writing limitations. Still not content to retire at the age of 65, Faulkner elected to work part-time at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her travels have taken her to countries in Europe and South America, the island of Malta, China, Antarctica, Egypt, and around the world.
T Ray, picture found on the Internet, as I remember her around 2010. T-Ray died June 9, 2016.
T Ray and I indeed had lunch together and we talked about how the dance program could be improved and might return to the outstanding status that it once held, of key people in the field of dance having a role at the camp. As we were talking I thought about my good friend Linda Kent, who had danced in Alvin Ailey’s company for seven years upon her graduation from Juilliard and then gone on to perform with Paul Taylor for 14 more years. She was now on the faculty of Juilliard and I knew how diverse and deep her contacts in the dance world were. I also knew that she didn’t have a summer program that she regularly participated in and I thought that maybe she would be interested in heading up the dance program at P-M.
Linda and I had worked together on several projects, she had set two pieces for The Avodah Dance Ensemble, had helped me with casting, been a guest teacher in week-long Avodah summer programs, and on one or two occasions had even danced with the company when a dancer was out sick. I had watched her coach dancers and I thought she was one of the best coaches of dance!! I’ll share more about how Linda Kent and I met and the various projects we did together, in a later blog.
T Ray loved the idea and thought the next steps were to meet with June Lindenmayer, the current director of P-M and Jim Steinberg, the President of the Board of Friends of Perry-Mansfield. She would set up those meetings and in the meantime I was to ask Linda if she would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield.
