Month: June 2020

Improvising, Thinking Outside the Box, and Finding the Pulse of Life in Costa Rica

JoAnne Tucker / / Costa Rica, Personal Life

It has been four months since Murray and I arrived in Costa Rica and closed on our new home.  The world has changed a lot during these four months as has our own personal life.  I have written before about how the skills I learned directing a dance company have contributed to problem solving day-to-day challenges in life.  That certainly has been the case as unexpected events have colored the four months of adjusting to living here.  Some have been very mundane and others life threatening.  Let’s begin with the mundane.

If you have been following our journey here you know that we came with all of our life belongings in 8 suitcases.  While we made some purchases of major furniture such as beds, sofa and a few folding tables and chairs, it is in the kitchen that I have learned to improvise the most.  And even more so as COVID 19 limited shopping trips out.  It seems I never have enough containers to store leftovers so I am constantly recycling food containers from take-out and jars that contained other food.  That’s something I have never done before.  Just this week I had made a concoction of chicken, zucchini, tomatoes and onions and had some left over but alas no formal container to put it in.  Looking in the cabinet I noticed an empty glass jar from Rego Spaghetti Sauce with Mushrooms and that became a storage container for the chicken dish.  Yes I had to carefully spoon it in, but now it is safely in the refrigerator to make a nice lunch in a few days.  I have one glass bowl that is great for stirring things in but it was filled with some fresh pineapple so a medium-size pot worked just as well when I needed a bowl to make pancakes.  I could go on and on with examples but you get the idea.

About six weeks after our arrival during the summer dry season here, there were a lot of fires around our area.  Over a long weekend they kept getting closer and closer.  Luckily our community has an emergency WhatsApp where we keep in touch with each other and share where fire is and what houses might be threatened.  Quite a few homes very nearby were fighting the fire sometimes with the help of the local fire department and sometimes with a neighbor that had a fire truck that could take the water out of swimming pools to use for the fire.  (I’ll call that thinking outside the box… as that was totally new for me and sure makes a lot of sense.)  When fire began getting close to our house, coming down the hill, I put that on WhatsApp and asked what to do.  Someone responded and said take our hose and start using it.  Well I indeed did have a hose nearby but upon looking at it and at Murray and myself and contemplating becoming firefighters at age 75-plus, we shook our heads, packed a few essential things, called our driver (as we do not have a car), and asked him to please pick us up.  He was at our house in just few minutes and we left, hoping for the best.

A neighbor sent us this picture of a stranger who did grab a hose and helped to prevent the fire from damaging our property. We are very grateful for his help.

Once we got to the central area of our town of Atenas,  Manrique asked where we wanted to go.  Murray and I looked at each other and said, “We don’t know, do you have any suggestions?”

Manrique  made a few calls.  Most nearby places were full with other people fleeing the fire but he did find us a place about 30 minutes away.  Off we went, grateful to be safe and with a place to sleep for the night.  Manrique checked on our house along with our realtor and we were lucky that the fire never came on our property.  This was back in early March. Now the hillside that had burned is filled again with lush grass and scrubs.

When I say finding the pulse, I literally mean finding the pulse.  Murray arrived with a new pacemaker. Three months in, the pacemaker began to fail.  We didn’t know this at first but knew something was wrong.  Following a trip to visit his cardiologist, Murray was in the hospital with a procedure called an ablation and now his pacemaker is back working perfectly with an exact pulse rate that we check regularly back at home.  We are very pleased with the health care here. The doctors even make house calls.  At this point we are experiencing the private health care, as we don’t have residency yet in which case an Expat can qualify for the public health care. We are lucky to have very good health insurance from Murray’s work in the U.S. government which covers most everything. The doctors we have met are very knowledgeable and up-to-date on latest procedures.  Nursing care is very good. And the hospital Murray was in had all private rooms with a sofa that turned into a bed so I was able to stay overnight.  There are some things we could complain about but overall we are impressed with the medical experiences Murray has had here.  And we will keep checking his pulse.  

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Pelo de Gato and “The Golden Crucible”

JoAnne Tucker / / Personal Life

It is now the rainy season in Costa Rica and I am learning that the Ticos have lots of different names for rain.  My favorite is pelo de gato (Spanish for “cat’s hair”) and it is a very fine misty rain.  The first time I heard the phrase was one afternoon when a Tico friend/helper was here and asked me if I could see the very fine rain that was coming down. I couldn’t at first, but I could feel the gentle mist on my arms.  He playfully began “dancing” in the rain.  Smiling, I enjoyed the moment and then I began to remember a “rain dance” that I had been a part of years ago.

In 1959, Pittsburgh was celebrating the bicentennial of its incorporation. Among the different activities planned was a musical play, which would run for about 10 weeks during the summer, telling Pittsburgh’s history.  In February I saw an audition notice for dancers and went.  Much to my surprise I was called back for a second round of auditions and was selected to be one of the twelve dancers (6 women and 6 men). Rehearsals began June 1 and since I was just sixteen and would be missing most of the last 3 weeks of school, I needed a work permit and permission from the Pittsburgh Board of Education.  My parents were supportive, so it was no problem to get the permit and permission.  Since I was a fairly good student, teachers were flexible and I managed to attend enough classes to finish the semester.  In my scrapbook are the letter and contract I had to sign.  They asked for my Social Security number and I filled in that I was applying for it!!  I received $30 each week for the 3 rehearsal weeks and $60 each week for the 10 weeks of performances.

The choreographer was Bill Hooks. I remember three major dance sections. The first was a dance representing Native Americans, and this was the dance  we began to nickname our “rain dance.”  The pageant-like performance was done in a large amphitheater built for the summer at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.  Known as The Point, it is the beginning of the Ohio River.  The city had erected 3 floating stages on barges, with our dressing rooms underneath. 

From my scapebook. Picture from one of the main Pittsburgh papers, showing the building of the amphitheater and the barges.

After the performance the 2500-seat amphitheater was taken apart, and now there is a beautiful fountain in its place.  Since “The Golden Crucible” was running all summer long, there simply wasn’t enough interest to fill those 2500 seats regularly. Often we were performing for several hundred people with just the first few rows filled.  If it drizzled the performance continued but if there was a good solid rain the show would be cancelled at whatever point we were at.  So as the summer wore on, we would jokingly call this opening dance the “rain dance,” hoping it would be an early evening.

I think the low audience turnout and the fact we thought of this opening dance as a rain dance gives you an idea that the quality of “The Golden Crucible” left something to be desired.  For me it was a great experience with a few sour moments and I am glad I was a part of a cast of 70.  While there were several young children in the show, I was the youngest actual cast member and found myself socially very young compared with the other dancers who were in their 20’s. While there were a few college-aged members of the cast and crew, most of the chorus and actors were adults with many theatre credits to their name.  Several actors were also recruited from New York. Everyone played multiple roles in the piece.  

Following our Native American opening dance, our next big scene was a Polish polka.  I don’t remember the context of the dance – it might have been a wedding scene – but it was to honor the large Polish population of Pittsburgh.  Our final dance was in a party scene and had a kind of Charleston feel. It required partnering, something I had never done. I was glad that my partner was Walter Raines, a very kind and caring person who went on to become an important part of Dance Theatre of Harlem.  Not only was Walter a charter member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, he went on to be the director of their school.  A native of Pittsburgh, he was most likely a student of Carnegie-Mellon University during the time of “The Golden Crucible.” I felt safe and comfortable with Walter, something I didn’t feel with many of the other dancers and chorus members.  

From my scapebook. In the costume for the polka dance.
What a fun headdress I had to wear.

Often, as we made our way to the dressing room in the lower level of the barge,  we had to walk across a backstage crossing,  where chorus members and actors hung out.  We women dancers were targets for not-so-nice remarks and pinches and “wandering hands.” Some of the other dancers thought this was fun and flirted.  I didn’t like it and just wanted to get to the dressing room as quickly as I could. That summer was my first taste of dancers being thought of as “easy women.” A publicity shot in the newspaper (showing the dancers hanging onto a train) printed our names, and then I had rather obnoxious phone calls at our house. Some of the comments that were made to me on the phone were sexual references I didn’t understand and my mother had to explain what they meant and how inappropriate they were for a 16-year-old.  Calls soon were screened for me, which I appreciated. 

Another memory I have from that summer is of a high school friend coming to see the performance on his day off from his job as a summer counselor at a nearby sleepaway camp.  He was so sweet and expressed how fond he was of me and how he loved seeing me dance.  Then he wanted me to take his high school ring and be his girlfriend.  I think I was totally surprised and shocked and hopefully told him in as nice a way as I could that while I liked him I was not ready to be anyone’s girlfriend.  I am not sure he understood, and he had a hard time looking at me after that.

I also got cast as an understudy to one of the actresses, which meant I had to do a short love scene with a mature actor.  I learned how to do a theatre kiss where we really didn’t kiss.  We would rehearse understudy scenes one night a week.  I never got to perform it but it was another experience to add to the summer of seeing dance and theatre in a new professional light.  This wasn’t exactly summer stock but it did give me the experience of performing six nights a week and working with seasoned professionals.  I liked it and continued to feel very devoted to developing my dance career.  And what a surprise to have these memories come flooding back to me after acknowledging a gentle rain, “pelo de gato,” here in Costa Rica.  

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