JoAnne Tucker

Guest Post By Deborah Hanna: A Response to Remembering Louis Johnson

JoAnne Tucker / May 15, 2020May 16, 2020 / "Let My People Go", Guest Posts

Last month, eleven of us gathered together on a Zoom call to remember choreographer Louis Johnson who had passed away on March 31. (April 10th obituary in NYTimes) We all had some kind of connection to Louis, and most of us had worked with him on “Let My People Go.” We covered a number of time zones and different countries from Italy to Costa Rica to the US (from NYC to CA). The next morning we received this beautiful email from Deborah Hanna. I asked her if I could share it as a guest blog.

Bio of our Guest Blogger:

Deborah Lynn Hanna grew up in Charleston, West Virginia as a sports lover – playing basketball, swimming and riding horses competitively. This love of movement transformed into modern dance, and she graduated with a BA in Humanities from Stetson University in Deland, Florida, earning “The Most Outstanding Humanities Student” Award in 1981 and 1982. Next step: New York City and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance where she worked and studied for 5 years, achieving her 3^rd year Trainee Program Diploma at the Advanced Level, while acting as Coordinator for the Martha Graham Ensemble and dancing with the Ensemble for 3 years in the annual revival pieces of “Primitive Mysteries,” “Steps in the Street” and “Celebration.” Primarily, Deborah grew as a performer with The Avodah Dance Ensemble from 1987-1992 in its 15-piece repertoire, dancing and giving workshops in all parts of the US. She then moved to Italy with her Italian husband and began teaching the Martha Graham Technique and choreographing, as well as teaching English as a Second Language. In 2013, the latter work took Deborah and her husband to Myanmar for 7 years, where she taught English and dance, and also performed in interesting, but unlikely venues. In July 2019 Deborah and her husband returned to their family property in Tarquinia, Italy and are in the midst of creating a holistic center for Cultural and the Healing Arts.

Guest Blog by Deborah Hanna

I woke up this morning (a few hours later actually, with our time difference here), remembering pieces of our conversations, your faces, my thoughts and reflections, and most importantly, a profound sense of love… love for the beauty and uniqueness of what was shared, along with such awe and respect for the amazing talent and achievements represented on that tiny screen – everyone in their homes, sort of a humbling and very human factor, that gives us an equal voice at the table as human beings, as we all walk through this unique period of history together…. with a glance backwards towards another era.

My first consideration, as we all expressed last night, was the unifying force of JoAnne, her creative vision for Avodah and the ever-changing landscape of her choreography (of which we all played integral roles in the creation of movement), the beauty of so many diverse collaborations, performance arenas, teaching workshops, cities, towns and even countries, and the continual unexpected, which made every performance and new work exciting. This is an amazing accomplishment, JoAnne – one that gave so much to so many of us as artists, not to mention the audiences and workshop participants. The other beautiful quality of Avodah was the bond of friendship and healthy spirit of collaboration that existed amongst us… a very rare quality in the NYC dance scene – at least coming from the Martha Graham Dance Company perspective. Last night, after we listened to Candice’s memory of getting lost in a piece of Avodah choreography and JoAnne being amused as to how she and the rest of us would figure our ways out of these tight spots, Kezia brought up a similar moment for me, with the Graham work Celebration.

Deborah Hanna in the studio in a Graham movement.

During one City Center performance of the first reconstruction of Celebration (464 jumps in 6 minutes), as I was beating out a 64-count phrase, I became lost in imagery that Martha herself had given to us during one of the last rehearsals. I simply departed on my next jump series 8 counts too soon – alone, instead of with another 5 dancers. I remember being out in the middle of that big City Center stage, feeling all of the responsibility that comes with representing Graham in that arena, and thinking to myself, “Okay, Deb, you’re here…. just keep jumping until the others arrive and keep the image of light pouring down, so no one can see in your eyes that you screwed up royally.” I was the only one moving on the stage at that moment in an intricately choreographed Graham piece, where every single second was carved to perfection. Just in that moment, a quite accomplished dance reviewer snapped my photo, which only made matters worse! Eight counts later, the other dancers arrived and we finished the piece successfully. The next day, the dance review and photo were sitting on my dressing room table, with all of the other Ensemble members gathered round. To my mind, I had successfully come out of an error and actually done really well. Naturally, Yuriko (the director of the Ensemble) didn’t agree! She stomped into the dressing room – her tiny but powerful stature steaming, venom flowing from her eyes. I felt this ancient Samurai power about to unfurl …. she was furious and said that if I ever did anything like that again, I was out of the Ensemble! There was no chance to explain, no excuses!

Only recently, after having lived in South East Asia for 7 years and having worked with many Japanese, getting to know them and their culture, I can now understand her reaction, but at the time, it was very foreign – especially for a West Virginia hillbilly like myself. Yuriko was deeply dedicated to the integrity and accuracy of Martha’s work, above all else…. and that was the atmosphere of the Graham World. Our rehearsals with Yuriko were very much akin to being in the military, I imagined… for all the greatness and perils that those worlds offer.

So, from there to Avodah…..After I’d finished my first season at City Center with the Martha Graham Ensemble in the reconstructions of Celebration and Primitive Mysteries, Yuriko was interested in having me come to rehearsals and integrate into the permanent Martha Graham Ensemble ( which I had helped cultivate into a full-time second company, having been the booking coordinator – a role I developed as a work-study student, in order to pay for my own classes). It was one of those monumental life crossroads for me. I had just gotten into Avodah simultaneously, during the Graham NY City Center season in 1987, and had to make a decision of which road to travel. I looked at the long line of extraordinary dancers fighting tooth and nail to get into Graham, and fortunately I had the good sense to choose Avodah, where I could be a “little star” in a very healthy, satisfying dance company. And that decision has made all of the difference!

At the end of my intense years both training with Graham and working on her reconstruction works, then the immensely diverse experiences performing in so many roles with Avodah, I felt deeply satisfied as a dance performer and was ready for the next step…. which just happened to be Italy via India…. dance being a constant companion throughout…but in extraordinarily unique settings, far from my NYC days.

I know that Louis would be very pleased to know that he was responsible for helping unite all of us in a little gem of a work that he and JoAnne created…. “Let My People Go!” It was one of my very favorite pieces in the Avodah repertoire because it gave us the chance to do so much – act, sing, dance different styles and change up pace so quickly that you were always on your toes. I learnt this great lesson on the art of choreographing from Louis…the grave importance of changing pace, dynamics, styles, directions, rhythms and energy. That lesson is monumental!

I’ll finish off this rather indulgent email (only in these times is this kind of epistle really possible – to write and perhaps even to be read) with how “Let My People Go” started on its first debut, to its final performance of the first season run. Our “virgin” performance was on a notably long, and rather narrow bema in Ohio, where we left notes on stage right and left as we exited, in order to remember where and when we entered and what we had to do….. to the last performance for that season, at Henry Street Settlement – 15 performances later – all done in less than a 2-month period.

That final Sunday afternoon matinee performance at Henry Street was a humble, but magical one! It was raining, I believe, and a rather gloomy Sunday afternoon, so there was hardly any audience and I don’t think Louis was present. But we were there, a now seasoned first cast, having worked together so hard and intensively, travelling for almost 6 weeks – planes, cars, hotels, restaurants, snow storms, missing cast members, dead deer, interesting hosts…. and so, we were seasoned in many ways…. enough so, that the final performance was truly a spiritual experience. We now knew the piece — and each other — very well, and on that stage at Henry Street Settlement, where the project had begun, something extraordinary happened. Every one of us began spontaneously to expand a little on our roles, sing an extra note, give an added expression, leap a little higher, or add an arm for emphasis. I remember watching Kezia, Newman, Loretta, Mark and Rob in between my own entrances, and so enjoying and appreciating their spontaneity and creativity. But above all, there was this amazing, tangible feeling between us – a sort of deep flow and understanding beyond words, of being united by vibrations – those invisible threads that bind us to the core. For me, that last run of “Let My People Go” was the essence and highest level of performance…….collective, joyful, fun and pure creativity in the moment.

Deborah in the performance at Henry St. of *Let My People Go.*
Behind her is Loretta Abbott and drummer Leopoldo Fleming. Photo by Tom Brazil.

An Intercultural Harmony Grant Funds a 2004 Summer Workshop

JoAnne Tucker / May 8, 2020 / Movement Workshops, Multicultural Programs, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life

Avodah began to do week-long summer dance training programs in 1997, but I want to share memories of our final one, at Perry-Mansfield in August 2004. We were very fortunate to have a grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund. This fund, which began in 1989 upon the death of Laura Jane Musser, is devoted to her interests, which included the arts and helping children. One of the areas funded is Intercultural Harmony and we applied for a grant to provide a five-day workshop teaching how to use movement, music and storytelling to create multicultural programs in schools. The grant enabled me to put together a stellar faculty and to help provide scholarships to participants.

This was not the first Avodah workshop at Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Spring, CO. The first one was in 2001 when Amichai Lau Lavie and Libbie Mathes joined me as the faculty with our week focused on Yoga, Dance and Sacred Text. Libbie was my next-door neighbor in Steamboat Springs and we quickly discovered our common interest in dance and sacred text from both a Jewish and a Buddhist perspective. This was a great opportunity for us to work together. Libbie is a highly trained and gifted teacher of Yoga, having studied in India in both Asana (posture) and Pranayama (breath work). Amichai is now a rabbi, but at the time of the workshop he was a student, extremely knowledgeable about Jewish text. Libbie remembers “loving his analysis and insights into the Moses sagas.” The workshop was part of Avodah’s training program for leaders of dance midrash, and at least one person who had done workshops with me in NYC made the trip to Perry-Mansfield in Colorado.

Libbie and I did another workshop the following year focusing on Meditation, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg joining us. And then in 2004 we had a faculty of five, all people that I had a long history of working with. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we focused on training teachers to use multicultural programs in the schools. Libbie continued providing the Yoga section and insights from her explorations of India and Yoga’s traditions. Regina Ress, an international storyteller, had a huge number of relevant stories to share and had taught in schools at all levels. Kezia had both an education degree and a dance degree, and had danced and taught with Avodah for 13 years. She and I had led many workshops related to dance midrash and multicultural work that grew out of our piece Let My People Go. Newman Taylor Baker is a percussionist I had worked with since 1989 as part of Let My People Go and then in other teaching situations along with our prison programs. He had years of experience presenting school programs and had the most amazing collection of percussion instruments from all over the world. In addition we invited Julie Gayer to join us, as she was taking on the role of director of The Avodah Dance Ensemble in the fall of 2004, since I was no longer living in New York City and was retiring from heading the dance company.

Our 2004 faculty from l. to r. Libbie, Kezia, Julie, JoAnne, Newman and Regina sitting on the edge of the Louis Horst Dance Studio at Perry-Mansfield.

We not only had participants from throughout the United States, but two members of the Steamboat Springs community, as well. Libbie remembers a chemistry teacher and also an administrator. We were thrilled that we could offer scholarships to participants. Having all worked together before, this was a sheer teaching joy where we could just easily flow from one leader to another. As Libbie and I were next-door neighbors and luckily the townhouse on the other side of mine was vacant, we rented it for the week, and everyone had fun hanging out together after teaching. I remember that Newman introduced me to quinoa and showed me how to rinse it first before cooking it. And then the weekend following the workshop, we had a wonderful time hiking two of my favorite trails.

Storytelling, movement, and music are all ways to connect to others and learn about different cultures, finding common threads and celebrating differences. For me on a personal note it was a wonderful way to complete my work with the Avodah Dance Ensemble as its founding director. Avodah had begun with my exploration of my own Jewish roots and my relationship to Jewish text. Now over thirty years later, I had changed and my focus was on building bridges between people and seeing intercultural harmony (the beautiful phrase used by the Laura Jane Musser Fund). And how wonderful to be able to hold this workshop at Perry-Mansfield in the Louis Horst Studio. It was like so many pieces of my life coming together…nature, spirituality, dance history, personal history, deep friendships and artistic collaborations.

Regina hugging a tree on one of our hikes.

Resting on a hike and totally enjoying being together.

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Linda Kent Brings a New Level of Excellence to Perry-Mansfield

JoAnne Tucker / May 2, 2020May 8, 2020 / Perry-Mansfield

It’s the final day of the 2001 six-week summer program for high school and college-age dancers at Perry-Mansfield. Linda Kent has headed the program and I am watching the repertory class in the large studio of Steinberg Pavilion. Tears of joy are streaming down my face as I watch a very enthusiastic, energetic group of talented young dancers perform repertory they have learned from works of Alvin Ailey and Jose Limon and even some phrases of Twyla Tharpe. My eye catches a few of the people who helped make possible Linda’s role as new director of the dance program, and we smile broadly. In just one summer the level of the performing arts program at P-M has skyrocketed, exposing the students to outstanding teachers, classics of modern dance repertory and new up-and-coming choreographers.

Steinberg Pavillon – taken from the Perry-Mansfield website. I love the way that all the studios at Perry-Mansfield are open to the outside.

Following my lunch with T Ray at the end of the previous summer, I had confirmed that Linda would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield. T Ray and I met with both the Executive Director (June Lindenmayer) and President of the Board (Jim Steinberg) and they liked the idea and then reached out to Linda. I had done my job making the suggestion and now it was up to them to make it happen. There was a deep feeling of satisfaction in knowing that in some way I was contributing to making the dance program as extraordinary as it had once been.

Linda drew on her many contacts in the dance world and put together an outstanding faculty for that first summer and the following 12 that she headed the program. It included both young rising choreographers, and seasoned teachers from Juilliard and other established programs. The Evening of Dance concerts were excellent each summer and one of my favorites ended with a section from Paul Taylor’s Esplanade that Linda set beautifully on the dancers. It was a shared delight for me to watch classes and rehearsals and to get to hang out with the dance faculty. A few weeks into the first summer I hosted a party for the faculty at our home and that became a tradition that we continued until 2009 when we relocated from Steamboat Springs to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

When dance became a part of the New Works program that preceded the official camp session, Linda selected gifted choreographers to come and develop work. They have gone on to have exceptional careers. Two noteworthy examples are Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Camille A. Brown, who not only has her own company, but has been choreographing for Broadway, Off-Broadway and the recent Jesus Christ Superstar production on television.

Linda continued directing the program through the 100^th anniversary of Perry-Mansfield. By that time I was well settled in Santa Fe and did not make it up to see the wonderful program she put together featuring a setting of the second half of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo. Supposedly de Mille got the idea for Rodeo when she was on the faculty of Perry-Mansfield.

As happens, the new Executive Director (Joan Lazarus Dobkowski) decided to make a change and the following summer Linda did not return to Perry-Mansfield to head the dance program. I am very pleased that in the course of 13 amazing summers Linda was able to have an impact on many young dancers. Linda is an outstanding coach and is able to guide dancers to find the very best way to execute a movement phrase. A December 2016 article by Kristin Schwab in Dance Magazine, titled “These Five Details Can Make or Break Your Performance,” pointed out that “for Linda Kent, even the slightest shift in focus can change the meaning.” I love the picture of Linda that accompanied the article. I am so glad that I had a role in recommending that Linda head the dance department at Perry-Mansfield and that so many young dancers benefited from the staff she engaged and from her direction and instruction.

Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy of Juilliard, taken from the December 2016 *Dance Magazine* article.

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Some Reflections on Perry-Mansfield 1959-1999

JoAnne Tucker / April 25, 2020May 8, 2020 / Perry-Mansfield, Personal 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 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.

In the next blog I share what happened next!

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1958 Summer at Perry-Mansfield

JoAnne Tucker / April 10, 2020 / Childhood, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life

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

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.

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.

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Remembering Louis Johnson

JoAnne Tucker / April 3, 2020April 10, 2020 / "Let My People Go", Dance History, New York Company, Personal Life

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 7^th 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 21^st, 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.

JoAnne and Louis
Picture taken by Tommy Scott

An Ad in Dance Magazine Leads to an Amazing Summer

JoAnne Tucker / March 27, 2020 / Childhood, Costa Rica, Personal Life

It was late fall and I was 14 ½, nearly 15 years old and browsing through Dance Magazine. I had continued to be very focused on dance, having progressed from the creative dance classes of Genevieve Jones to more structured modern dance classes with Jeanne Beaman. Jeanne’s classes were a nice blend of a variety of modern dance techniques, definitely including some Graham technique sprinkled in.

Hungry for lots more technique and intensive training, I was determined to find a program to attend in the summer. Dance Magazine was an excellent source and I came across an ad for Perry-Mansfield’s Camp/Performing Arts Program which said Helen Tamiris would be teaching there for the first three weeks. I looked up Tamiris and found that she was not only a pioneering modern dancer but was also the choreographer of several Broadway shows. Wow, that would be a perfect person to study with! The challenge was that the camp was located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and that was pretty far from Pittsburgh. When I approached my parents they said they would pay for the tuition but I had to pay for my transportation. I found that one could take the train from Pittsburgh, change in Chicago to Denver and then take a trainfrom Denver to Steamboat Springs. I seem to remember that the round trip fare was around $75 (this was 1958). Another friend, JoAnn Fried, was also interested in going. She would focus on drama while I would be a dance major.

Now how to raise the necessary money. Definitely babysitting would be one way. Then in brainstorming with JoAnn Fried we came up with the idea of teaching classes in my basement. We could charge 25 cents per class, and have a culminating creative type recital like Genevieve Jones did. My Mom was very enthusiastic and said we could use the finished room in our basement, which even had its own bathroom. Luckily there wasn’t too much furniture and we could easily move it to the side, giving us plenty of room to dance. Finding students wasn’t hard either, between younger kids in the neighborhood, my sisters’ friends,and daughters of my Mom’s friends. The word quickly got around and we had a nice group of kids to work with.

Picture of JoAnn Fried and myself working with two of our students. I’m holding the arm of my sister Suzanne (of blessed memory). This picture is from a Pittsburgh newspaper, May 1958, which I recently found in a saved file.

Once my parents realized that I would indeed be able to make the transportation costs, they agreed that I could attend camp and allowed me to apply. They made the deposit for the summer and agreed they would pay the rest of the tuition. JoAnn Fried and I called ourselves Jo-Jo Inc. and had fun putting together a production we called Westward Ho as a culminating event. We needed a place to perform and Mom helped us to rent the local grade school auditorium for an evening.

Looking back I realize that my parents’ asking me to raise the transportation costs was an excellent experience that ended up providing me with tools that have helped me through my life. Maybe it is best summed up by saying I learned that I could envision an idea and carry it through. That kind of skill set enabled me to found the Avodah Dance Ensemble and run the company for 30 years and then later in life develop the film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories.

It has also served me in my personal life. Recently it was put into practice as Murray and I moved to our new home in Costa Rica. Having learned from the time I was a teen that it was OK to attend a summer program halfway across the United States, I didn’t find it so overwhelming to be building a new life in Central America. Knowing that from the age of 14 I was able to collaborate with another person and build a program with a culminating event fueled my confidence that I can envision and make change happen. Early I learned that one needs a certain level of determination and problem-solving ability to make one’s vision happen. I am grateful that I was encouraged from a young age to do this.

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Maggie – Reconnecting and Supporting The Peaceful Project

JoAnne Tucker / March 20, 2020 / Art, Personal Life

When we were living in Tallahassee back in the 1980’s with young children, Maggie helped to take care of Julie and Rachel after school while I was busy at The Creative Dance Center. Later she would dance in The Avodah Dance Ensemble. We lost touch with each other for a number of years. Then a few years ago she moved to Santa Fe and we reconnected. She and her husband Bill were helping us as we got ready to leave for Costa Rica. Maggie had bought some of my art and was enthusiastic about both my art and Murray’s photography. Over the years Murray and I had created quite a lot, and after making it available for sale in Santa Fe, we weren’t sure what to do with what was left . In some discussions with Maggie and Bill the idea emerged that she and Bill would take the remaining collection with the instructions “to use it to benefit The Peaceful Project,” a non-profit organization whose mission is meaningful to us.

The Peaceful Project’s mission is “to inspire individuals to foster peaceful relationships based on personal responsibility, collaboration, and leadership.” Here’s a link to their website. (https://www.thepeacefulproject.org)

The original plans were to do a special fundraiser where our art would be available for sale. Instead, it is being done virtually! Here what Maggie has sent out:

You may have received an email asking you to save a date in April for a special fundraiser for The Peaceful Project, The Art of Peace. Instead – with our current world of social distancing – we are going to get the ball rolling right now and do a part of it virtually! This will open up the event to an even wider audience than those who could attend a live event in Santa Fe. Instead of distancing, connect with art!

This all began when friends JoAnne and Murray Tucker generously gifted me with a delightful collection of JoAnne’s art and Murray’s photography. Their instructions were “to use it to benefit The Peaceful Project”. So we are!

Today we present a collection of ten of JoAnne’s pastels, all florals. Take a look and choose the ones that speak to you.

If you are not local to Santa Fe, we will tube the pastels of your choice and ship them to your door. If you are local, we will deliver.

Here’s a link to where you can see the 9 pastels still available for sale. If you scroll up you can read all the details about how to own one yourself.https://myemail.constantcontact.com/The-Art-of-Peace–A-Different-Sort-of-Event-.html?soid=1104176519269&aid=irO9_gNXRUA#Pastel

Please share the link with your friends and let’s help The Peaceful Project. Thank you, Maggie, for the super work you are doing.

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Finding my Creative Voice in Costa Rica

JoAnne Tucker / March 15, 2020March 20, 2020 / Art, Costa Rica, Personal Life

We have now been in Costa Rica for just over six weeks. The first four were particularly challenging. We furnished our house with the basics, deciding not to get fancy or spend lots of money. We learned how to pay our bills, estimating colonies to dollars so we could understand the cost of things in a way we were used to. We are still figuring out how to manage our house and the swimming pool with its solar heating and infinity design which still remains a puzzle to us. During these first four weeks I often woke up with, and experienced at other times, a huge knot in my stomach. The last few weeks I have begun to get back to painting and that has made a major difference. Particularly the past week I have made it a point to have at least two hours a day devoted to my quiet creative time, mainly painting but sometimes writing. The knot in my stomach is rarely there now. Yes, regular meditation helps some too. For me something additional happens when I am using my creative voice. Fears, concerns, planning all drop away and I become one with my painting, just as I did with dance.

I am aware that I am experimenting right now, not sure what style, medium, or subject matter will dominate. The views from each room in our house are breathtaking. When I think about what I want to paint I have tons of choices. Where to begin… what to key in on… how to simplify and yet capture the spirit of what I am seeing — these are some of the thoughts that are going through my mind. Of course, at this point all that is important is that I show up and just see what happens — no criticism, just being present and finding the creative voice.

For years I have taught and encouraged teachers to find their creative voice, and guided them on how to help children keep their creative energies, which seem to drop off around 4^th grade. When I lead workshops for teachers I particularly focused on the research of E. Paul Torrance and the wonderful way he defined elements that make up the creative process. He also developed creativity tests. I am thinking that it will be useful to remember some of Torrance’s ideas as I explore my creative voice in this new chapter in my life.

When I first became familiar with Torrance, he drew on J.P. Guilford’s thinking and defined creativity as having 4 components – fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration:

Fluency. The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus. 2. Flexibility. The number of different categories or shifts in responses. 3. Originality. The number of unusual yet relevant ideas and the statistical rarity of the responses. 4. Elaboration. The amount of detail used to extend a response. (From Ellis Paul Torrance – The Father of Creativity by Sergey Markov, June 2017) https://geniusrevive.com/en/ellis-paul-torrance-father-of-modern-creativity/

Sergey Markov’s article is excellent and I learned lots of new things about Torrance. I recommend reading it if you have a strong interest in creativity theory and testing. For the purposes of this blog I just want to say I will be exploring and guiding some of my painting by keeping these ways of thinking in mind. Of course… it will be important for me to not get caught up in an intellectual way but rather to simply explore and not judge.

I’ve completed one 9” x 12” oil focusing on one of the plants in a realistic way.

Now I’m working on another painting and am approaching it by doing a larger scene but with less detail and looking at it as large blocks of colors. It’s also a 9” x 12” board.

In an earlier blog I wrote about the encouragement I got from my Mom in being creative, and the model she provided by completing a lovely watercolor of her dog just three weeks before she died at the age of 90. Certainly Genevieve Jones’s creative dance classes were a wonderful guide, as was my work in creative dramatics with both Dr. Barbara McIntyre and Dr. Joe Karioth.

For now the creative time is helping me settle in Costa Rica and truly see and appreciate the beautiful landscape we are surrounded by. Indeed, the beauty of our location was one of the guiding forces that brought us here and it could be so easy to get caught up in the overwhelming process of adjusting to a new country and forget that. The two hours of my own quiet time, sometimes in writing and mostly in painting (as non-verbal creativity is more target to me), is so important right now.

End Note (written Thursday night, March 12) This blog was written last weekend. Since then, our community of Atenas has been experiencing major fires due to the heat and high winds. On Tuesday, Murray and I had to leave the house in the late afternoon because the smoke was so intense and large flames were very visible and close to our house. Luckily so far we have been spared any damage. We returned last evening and most of today was spent cleaning. Creative endeavors sometimes have to be put on hold and I am reminded of Rollo May’s hierarchy of needs. Life is certainly a balancing act. After posting this blog this morning on Sunday, March 15th I am going to spend several hours painting. It is not just an option… it is a necessity to keep my balance!!!

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Tuesday Night Dance Classes: Thank You, Jeanne Beaman

JoAnne Tucker / March 6, 2020March 20, 2020 / Dance History, Personal Life

To get ready to write this blog I googled Jeanne Beaman hoping to find some pictures and a good bio online. Instead I found an obituary. I knew Jeanne was getting up in years but somehow I didn’t expect to find that she had died just this month, having lived to be a hundred. And an even bigger surprise was that she died in Bernallilo, New Mexico. My heart sank. Up until the end of January I had lived within a 40-minute drive of where she had lived. I could have visited her if I had known. I hunched that one of her children must have moved to New Mexico and that she had been living with them. Googling some more I discovered it was her son, Peter, and that he lived in Placido having moved from Pittsburgh. So… this blog takes on a special meaning for me. Not only do I want to share the strong impact she had on my development as a dancer and person but I deeply want to honor her.

Jeanne Beaman https://obituaries.gloucestertimes.com/obituary/jeanne-beaman-1078445337

I was probably about 14 when I began taking an adult modern dance class that met on Tuesday evenings in Genevieve Jones’s Oakland studio. Luckily a friend of my Mom’s regularly took the class and offered to drive me to and from the class until I was 16 and could drive myself. I was the only young person in the class and it was quite a wonderful group of adults, many of whom still stand out in my mind as if it were only yesterday. Fran Balter, the friend of my Mom’s, had children close to my age and had studied dance at Bennington and the Martha Graham Studio. She was a tall, stately, elegant woman. And then there was Cecil Kitcat. She taught dance at Carnegie Mellon (then called Carnegie Tech). She had a strong British accent and was probably in her 60’s. She seemed very old to me and quite a character as she enthusiastically attacked the movement. Several other women were regulars, and I don’t remember if we had any men in the class.

Jeanne led the class with focused intent. Small, with her hair in a tight bun, she guided us through a serious modern dance class, drawing from several different modern dance pioneers and putting together wonderful combinations of her own. The class was well thought out, beginning with standing stretches, progressing to sitting-on-the-floor work that included Graham contractions and turns around the back. When we stood up again, with pliés and tendus we were ready to go across the floor. And that was what I loved most. I remember one combination that had a super fun fall in it where we ran and lunged with an outstretched arm taking us to the ground followed by a roll and getting back up. I later used that fall in an audition at Perry-Mansfield Dance and Theatre Camp and it got the attention of Helen Tamiris and earned me a spot in a piece she was setting. Tamiris even asked me to please repeat the fall again at the audition. Many of the campers/students had put together a short dance before they came. I hadn’t, so I put together some of my favorite across-the-floor combinations of Jeanne’s, ending with the fall.

For me, Jeanne wasn’t just my modern dance teacher, but someone who could understand my drive and determination to be a dancer and my desire to have a career in dance. Sometimes when I was being challenged at home and discouraged from a dance career she would speak with my parents, helping them to understand my love of dance and encouraging their support.

When Martha Graham’s film A Dancer’s World was made and first broadcast at WQED in Pittsburgh, Jeanne held a reception at Chatham College where she was teaching at the time. Graham was there and I remember being introduced to her and saying that I so wanted to come to NYC and take her Xmas intensive course. And of course she assured me that was indeed possible even for a person as young as I was at the time. (Probably 14 going on 15 at the time…. it would take me until I was 16 to go.)

Later Jeanne left Chatham College and began teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. By then I was in NYC and Juilliard. When I came back home from Juilliard to attend the University of Pittsburgh, the university wouldn’t accept the ballet or modern dance classes from Juilliard to fulfill the required PE credit. So I took Jeanne’s modern dance class in the PE department and served as her demonstrator for the semester. It was kind of our joke that here I was in this beginning modern class to fulfill a PE requirement.

Among my many memories is the composition assignment based on computer-assigned movement. Unexpected movement sequences challenged us. Jeanne was a pioneer in working on using the computer and dance together.

As my dance career developed and Jeanne and her husband had retired, moving to Rockport, Massachusetts during the year, and in the summers to an island in Maine, we kept in touch. She came to a dance performance by Avodah when we were in Boston, and on another tour when I had a day off I visited her in Rockport. One summer when Murray and I planned a Maine trip we had a delightful time visiting her and Richard on their Maine Island.

Murray and I with Jeanne, summer of 1990
at their Maine Island.

We kept in touch, occasionally talking and writing, through the early 2000’s. At some point I knew that her children were encouraging her to leave Rockport where she was then living alone since her husband had died. She wrote that she wasn’t ready yet.

The dance world is small with lots of overlapping connections. At a conference in October of 2018 (when Elizabeth McPherson and I were presenting a workshop on Helen Tamiris), Elizabeth, Lynne Wimmer (a dancer/choreographer/teacher from Pittsburgh) and I were having dinner together. Somehow Lynne and I began talking about classes with Jeanne Beaman. Elizabeth perked up and shared that she had interviewed Jeanne for a book she had written about the early Bennington College summer program. We had fun sharing our memories of Jeanne and marveling at Jeanne’s dance history from starting in ballet with the San Francisco Opera Ballet, then studying with the early dance pioneers, training at Mills College, teaching for many years, and advocating for dance, particularly in Pittsburgh and New England.

There is a strange empty feeling in me right now knowing that she has passed. I send heartfelt love and condolences to her family and am deeply grateful for the role she played in my life.

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