Author: JoAnne Tucker

An Exciting Outcome From Reworking Choreography

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance Midrash

Reading the description of the piece M’Vakshei Or (Seekers of Light) in publicity material for its first performance in Pittsburgh at Rodef Shalom, it is no surprise that it didn’t work.  We tried to do too much in one piece.  As I kept watching M’Vakshei Or in performance I knew that it wasn’t working the way we wanted it to.  Rick and I decided to rework the piece. Avodah’s fall 1982 Newsletter describes what we did. Instead of five parts, the piece was now three parts: Part 1 – Meditation; Part II – an  improvisation based on the weekly Torah portion; and Part III – Blessing. The first performance in the new format was at a lecture demonstration at the Hillel of the University of Texas in Austin and the second as part of a Friday evening service in Houston.

The Newsletter described:

JoAnne discussed how we create choreography on a Jewish theme. Each of the four dancers demonstrated a movement theme in Part 1 based on Jewish ritual.  The audience then participated in a discussion on the weekly Torah portion and gave suggestions to the dancers for a series of improvisations.  One improvisation was chosen and the work was performed.  Comments afterwards indicated that this approach was quite enlightening in understanding not only M’Vakshei Or but other pieces in the repertory.

Our process was also described in a review a few months later on January 24, 1983 following a concert at Temple Beth-Or in Montgomery:

A portion of the account from Exodus of the Israelites being led out of Egypt by Moses and escaping the Egyptians through the Red Sea was told by Jacobs, after which Dr. Tucker asked the audience to select a scene for the ensemble to dance and also to cast the characters.

One of the improvisational pieces became part of M’Vakshei Or, a dance based on the Torah Service.

The new format worked wonderfully with Rick summarizing a part of the Torah portion so that the congregation or audience had background they needed to become part of the process.  Sometimes Rick shared traditional commentaries on the portion as well as helping to come up with new ones.  As we performed the piece in many different settings over the next few years some of our dance midrash improvisations stand out.   One time in a concert at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s Los Angeles campus, one of the professors who knew Rick from his second and third year of rabbinic school at the LA campus insisted that we just be the ROCK that Jacob put his head on when he had the dream of the angels going up and down the ladder (Genesis 28:11).  So we explored in movement the energy that the rock might have had.

Another memorable moment was at a congregation in San Antonio, TX when the week’s Torah portion related to crossing the Red Sea and Rick drew upon a traditional commentary and became Naashon, the person who initiated crossing the Red Sea.  Rick boldly jumped off the bema and into the congregation! 

Rabbi Edwin N. Soslow, (of blessed memory) wrote in his Rabbi’s Message, December 1983 (Temple Emanuel, Cherry Hill, NJ):

The improvisation which members in the congregation suggested on the Torah portion will never be forgotten. Whenever I study or speak about the meaning of the story of Abraham welcoming the three angels with their message about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the birth of Isaac, I will always remember how that message was portrayed in dance.

In addition to the middle section of the piece providing an educational opportunity to introduce the Torah portion of the week, the choreography based on ritual movement in the opening and closing sections gave us another teaching moment.  As I mentioned earlier, each of the four dancers in the piece demonstrated a short phrase based on ritual movement prior to performing the piece. One dancer shared a phrase based on putting on the prayer shawl.  Another dancer demonstrated in movement how the Torah is lifted following the weekly reading and turned so all may see the writing inside.  A third dancer shared how the Torah is carried through the congregation and the fourth dancer shared a phrase of movement based on the letters in God’s name: yod, hay, vav, hay.    

As I reread the comments I’ve shared here and having just watched a very old tape done in rehearsal for reconstruction purposes, I am reminded that editing and revising a piece and paring it down to the basics ended up creating a successful piece that continued in the company for years.  It inspired a book (Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash with Rabbi Susan Freeman).  We were invited to teach in summer institutes. We were guests in Rabbi Norman Cohen’s modern midrash classes at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion.  We led dance midrash classes in religious schools.  We led workshops teaching others how to lead dance midrash based on Torah portions.  

We even adapted the piece for a special event at a congregation.   M’Vakshei Or was done at Westchester Reform Congregation honoring Rick on his 10thanniversary of service in June of 2001. I joined adult congregation members and danced in the opening and closing sections.  Children from the religious school interested in dance did improvisations based on the Torah portion.  The entire confirmation class (16-year olds) enthusiastically engaged in honoring their Rabbi. The following three photos are from the final rehearsal for the Friday night service.

JoAnne with Members of Westchester Reform Temple in M’Vakshei Or.
Young dancers from the Religious School of Westchester Reform Temple.
Part of the Confirmation Class of
Westchester Reform Congregation.

As I am writing this week’s blog I am deeply grateful for the contribution Rick made in collaborating on the creation of M’Vakshei Or.  As I watched the rehearsal video of the piece and then found myself looking at videos of other related repertory I am reminded of the incredibly talented dancers that have shared their gifts with Avodah.  I am so grateful for their contributions both in helping to create the work they performed in and their outstanding performances.  I extend a very deep bow of gratitude to these wonderfully talented individuals!  

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Avodah Posts Audition Notice for a Tall Male Dancer

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, Dance Midrash, New York Company

Performances – whether in services or as concerts – were growing for both the New York and Florida companies now that bookings were arranged by the Jewish Welfare Board’s Lecture Bureau.  In Tallahassee, Michael Bush consistently danced with the company but in New York it seemed like every few months we were auditioning for a new male dancer.  In the fall of 1980 the company’s female dancers (Lynn Elliott, Beatrice Bogorad, Barbara Finder, and Nanette Josyln) were all tall.  So when I posted an audition notice I indicated that I was looking for a tall male dancer.

Continuing our relationship with Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) we were now rehearsing and working out of their new campus on West 4thStreet. The recently constructed five-story building took up the entire block from Mercer to Broadway. The chapel offered a lot of flexibility in how it could be set up and would prove to be an excellent performing space. In the lower level were several large rooms that worked for rehearsals (although as the repertory grew with more leaps and falls, we later rented rehearsal space in Chinatown that had beautiful, safer floors for dancers).  

I made several attempts to see how I might blend the two companies together.  For one tour in upstate New York, two Tallahassee dancers, Judith Blumberg and Michael Bush, joined Bea Bogorad, Barbara Finder, and Lynn Elliot for several performances.  At another time Lynn Elliott came to Tallahassee to rehearse and then perform in Savannah. Blending the companies didn’t really achieve the ensemble feeling that each group had independently and which I valued, so I chose to have the two companies operate separately but with similar repertory.

The New York company had a booking on a Friday night in the fall of 1980 as part of the Shabbat service, at a reform congregation on Long Island.  I had arrived in New York a week before and posted audition notices for a tall male dancer. Several men showed up but Rick Jacobs was the obvious choice. Rick is 6’4” and was then a fourth-year rabbinic student at the New York Campus.  In an article in The Chronicle  (a publication of HUC-JIR) two years later, Rick told the writer about this time in his life:

Rick was living what he described as a “very schizophrenic” life without much hope that he could integrate his commitment to the rabbinate and his love of dance.  It had been a constant struggle to continue the dance training he had begun as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  He managed to find sympathetic dance instructors in Jerusalem and Los Angeles, and had taught dance in the Reform movement’s summer camps……

Rick auditioned on Tuesday and danced with the company on Friday.  He quickly learned the two pieces for Friday’s service, Sabbath Woman and In Praise.  

Three photos of Rick Jacobs and
Nanette Joslyn in the “Barechu” duet
from  In Praise
Lynn Elliott in the “May the Words” solo from  In Praise

While Rick only had to learn those two pieces for the Friday night service, Avodah’s repertory had grown to five regularly performed pieces and Rick soon learned two more pieces of the repertory, I Never Saw Another Butterfly and the part of Abraham in Sarah.  

With Rick joining the company, new ideas began to fly and it wasn’t long before Rick and I were collaborating on a new piece based on rituals of the Torah service.  Earlier that year I had met David Finko, a composer and recent immigrant from the Soviet Union. David had written symphonies and other major works that were performed in the Soviet Union and Europe.  I suggested to Rick that David might be a good choice to compose music for our new piece.  So one day we drove down to Philadelphia to meet with David and talk to him about our idea for the new piece.  I remember it as an inspiring day with very warm hospitality provided by David’s lovely wife who cooked a special meal for us.  We shared our ideas about a piece in five parts opening with a meditation section based on ritual movement.  I don’t remember much about three of the sections as they ended up being cut about a year later.

My scrapbook provides some useful information. The Temple Bulletin from Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, where the piece would receive its premiere having been commissioned by the 125thAnniversary Fund of the congregation, describes the new work, M’Vakshei Or (“Seekers of Light”) as blending words, dance and music “together to encourage modern Jews to search Torah for its wisdom.”  It continues describing the piece: “Establishing a prayerful mood, the dance cantata presents the ‘sacred weaving of tales’ and ‘laws that guide our lives.’”  

Helping to create M’Vakshei Or and dancing in the first performances of the piece were other company members.  Lynn Elliott, who was in the first New York City performances, continued working with the company, bringing her background from Interlocken Arts Academy, college training at SUNY at Purchase, studies with Alfredo Corvino and performing experience with the Dance Circle Company.  Joining her was Nanette Joslyn from Los Angeles where she performed at Disneyland and with the Santa Barbara Ballet.  Barbara Finder had an MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and also studied dance at the Martha Graham Studio, and with both the Jose Limon Company and Anna Sokolow.  Dina McDermott grew up in New Jersey and had recently completed her BFA from Juilliard.  

Beatrice Bogorad was no longer working with the company, having begun work with Charlie Moulton, and then later with Susan Marshall. Luckily a few years later her schedule made it possible for her to again work with Avodah. 

Barbara Finder moved on and by the time the piece was performed in New York City  at the Emanu-El Midtown Y on 14thStreet, Roberta Behrendt had joined the company.  Roberta had attended the Alabama School of the Arts and had a BA in dance from Florida State University and I was of course aware of Florida State’s fine dance department.  I was thrilled to have so many excellent dancers to work with.

M’Vakshei Or,  performed at the 14thSt. Y. Dancers from L to R: Rick Jacobs, Lynn Elliott, Roberta Behrendt, and Nanette Joslyn. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

Repertory performed on May 1 – 2, 1982 at the 14thStreet Y was Sabbath Woman, Sarah, Mother of the Bride, Noshing,and Kaddish.  I’ll have more to say about the two comic pieces Mother of the Bride and Noshing in later blogs, and Kaddish when I talk about more repertory created for Holocaust Programs.  But my thread for the next several blogs will relate to what we learned from M’Vakshei Or.

From L to R: Nanette Joslyn, Dina McDermott, and Lynn Elliott in Sabbath Woman. A favorite picture of mine from the 14thSt. concert.  Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

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A Three-Week Season in NYC

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, New York Company

I think Stanley Brechner, the Artistic Director of the American Jewish Theatre, came to our performance at Hebrew Union College in April of 1979 and that is where the discussion first began for us to become part of the American Jewish Theatre’s 1979 – 1980 season.  I found in my file two letters between myself and Stanley Brechner. Avodah would receive 70% of the box-office receipts with ticket prices in the range of $2.50 to $3.50 in a house that seated 90.   While that wasn’t great compensation I do remember knowing this was a great opportunity for us to have exposure in the New York area.  An article in Show Business (September 27, 1979) was among the publicity we got for the three-week run:

            “The American Jewish Theatre produces, mostly comedies and dramas, although occasionally we do musicals and dance,” says artistic director Stanley Brechner. “Quality is the first criterion,” he stresses, “although the play should deal with the Jewish experience in some way.”

As I began to work on this blog, I was curious to learn more about the American Jewish Theatre. Did it still exist? And if not what was Stanley Brechner doing?  I got some answers but not all.  The American Jewish Theatre was founded in 1974 by Stanley Brechner.  Henry St. Settlement gave them space for three to four productions a year, office space, use of telephones but no money. By the end of the 1979 season they had moved to the 92nd Street Y and remained there until 1987. Shortly after that they occupied the Susan Block Theatre in Chelsea as a subtenant of the Roundabout Theatre. In 1993 an article in The New York Times (July 17, 1993) reported a disagreement between the Roundabout Theater and its tenant, the American Jewish Theater, over the occupancy of the Susan Block Theater because the Roundabout said it wanted to use the space itself.  Locks were changed and all the property of the American Jewish Theater was moved to a locker.  Stanley Brechner is quoted as saying, “The American Jewish Theater is now homeless.”  The article went on to point out that the American Jewish Theater had 2,500 subscribers and an annual budget of $375,000.  

It appears that they continued producing plays through 1998. After that I can’t find any professional information on either the American Jewish Theater or what Stanley Brechner is currently doing.

Back to 1979 and our performances in the very simple and intimate recital hall of Henry Street. We presented the five pieces in our repertory at that time: In Praise, Sabbath Woman, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Sarah, and Shevet Ahim Gam Yahad.  I have written about the first four of those pieces in earlier blogs. Shevet Ahim Gam Yahad (“behold, how good it is to dwell together”) was set to music of Lucas Foss and explored how we can relate to each other as community.  I did not feel most of the piece was successful but did love a trio section that later I included, to different music, in a piece that we created for the Selichot Service.

Beatrice Bogorad and Randy Allen rehearse the section I like from Shevet Ahim Gam Yahad in the Creative Dance Center in Tallahassee where I created the piece.

Among the dancers in the Fall of 1979 in New York City was Beatrice Bogorad whom I met when she was a dance major at Florida State University in Tallahassee.  Bea came to dance late in her college career and I remember seeing her in class when she first came and wondering if she would make it in the dance world.  Well…. she sure did and I was so glad that she worked with us first in Tallahassee and then continued to perform with the New York company when she was available.

Our Poster for the Performances at Henry Street Settlement as part of the
American Jewish Theater.

As a relatively unknown modern dance company in New York City and with so many performances it was a challenge to fill the house.  Luckily Henry St. and the American Jewish Theater had a following. Sometimes we were totally full and at other times we had small audiences.  One particular night stands out very clearly in my mind. There were only six people in the audience.  However, one of those attending was Jennifer Dunning, one of three dance critics of The New York Times.  Hum… do I share this with the dancers?  I pondered and then thought I had best mention it because I certainly did not want them to be discouraged with such a small audience.  They, of course, danced beautifully.  We eagerly waited for the review to appear in the paper.  Alas, it didn’t. I learned that many reviews are cut based on space and the editor of the section.  I did call the Times  and ask if we could see the review and a week or so later I received it in the mail. It was quite respectable and while I couldn’t quote from it, it was very reaffirming.  The review was positive to all the dancers and ended with, “Miss Bogorad, in particular, is a young dancer to keep an eye on.”  Indeed she was right on, for over the next several years, Bea danced with Charles Moulton and Susan Marshall, consistently receiving outstanding reviews.  We were thrilled when she was free and could continue to perform with Avodah.

Having a three-week season so early in Avodah’s history taught me many things.  Among them were never judge an audience by size for one never knows who is there and how they might impact you, and repeated performances help to build a quality level in a company.  

Richard Osborne, Bea Bogorad and Lynn Elliott in I Never Saw Another Butterfly in the Recital Hallat Henry St. Settlement, October 1979.

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Exploring Biblical Sarah

JoAnne Tucker / / Dances on Biblical Women, New York Company, Tallahassee

The third piece that Irving Fleet and I collaborated on was called Sarah. I mentioned it in the blog about the beginning of the New York company and want to go into more detail about the piece in this blog. Irving is quoted in an article in the Tallahassee Democrat as saying, “JoAnne was always intrigued with the character of Sarah” (March 2, 1979).  And I hunch that was probably what motivated us to begin exploring her story.  We honed in on that part of her life centered on first being unable to bear a child for her husband, then offering her handmaiden, Hagar, to bear a child for her and finally, when she becomes pregnant, Abraham celebrating the news.  For me this was the beginning of my own journey creating “dance midrash.” Midrash refers to both the early interpretations and commentaries on Torah as well as modern ones.  At the time I didn’t know this word. Later I would create a number of dance pieces that I considered midrash, co-author a book on dance midrash (Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash, with Rabbi Susan Freeman), and teach many workshops involving dance midrash. 

While telling the story was somewhat important, it was exploring Sarah’s emotions that we focused on the most: Sarah’s anguish at not becoming pregnant; her jealousy and anger at Hagar when Hagar does bear a child for Abraham, which results in Sarah banishing Hagar; and then her joy when she becomes pregnant in her old age.  

Ritual movement again played an important choreographic role in the piece.  When Abraham renews his covenant with God following news of Sarah’s pregnancy, Sarah, in our midrash, takes off the rope from her gown and gives it to Abraham.  He then uses it for tefillin (ritual leather boxes with straps, which contain Torah text). Tefillin are traditionally only worn by men during the weekday morning service. They wrap one set around the arm, hand and fingers, and wrap the other set above the forehead. As Abraham is often referred to as the father of the morning prayer this ritual seemed an appropriate one to draw on.  In the same article in the Tallahassee Democrat that I referred to earlier I am quoted as saying, “Dance composition should go back to everyday gestures, take them, enlarge and manipulate them.”  And that is exactly what I did with the ritual of wrapping tefillin. I thought it worked very well.  However, not everyone agreed with me.  In fact, we had received some funding that year from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and when the piece was later performed in New York City, the Executive Director from the NFJC made a very strong point of letting me know that I clearly didn’t understand what wrapping tefillin was, as it was entirely inappropriate for Sarah to hand Abraham the rope from her gown to use.  Indeed I did very much understand and part of my feminist statement was purposefully to have Sarah hand it to him.

On Saturday March 3, 1979, the first performance of Sarah was held as part of a concert at Temple Israel in Tallahassee along with Sabbath Woman, In Praise and I Never Saw Another Butterfly.   The piece was created on the Tallahassee company with Ellen Ashdown as Sarah, Michael Bush as Abraham, Judith Lyons as Hagar and  two handmaidens, Donna Campbell and Trish Whidden. 

From my scrapbook. Photograph that was part of the Tallahassee Democrat article,
March 2, 1979.

Six weeks later I recreated the piece for the New York company with Lynn Elliott dancing the role of Sarah in a performance at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s West 68thStreet Campus.  

In the fall of 1979, we did a three-week season at Henry St. Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York City as part of the American Jewish Theater.  This was an excellent experience for us and I will write a full blog about it.  For right now I want to share part of a review from Dance Magazine (by Marilyn Hunt) of  the performance of Sarah  at Henry St. 

             Sarah, a Grahamesque drama of a woman of large-scale passions is portrayed concisely and lucidly. Sarah vents her despair at being childless by lashing one leg around, pacing, and whipping her hair in a circle.  In contrast, her handmaiden, young Hagar, whom Sarah gives to her husband, Abraham, to bear him a child, carries her imaginary water jar with chest thrust proudly forward and has a formal ritual-like mating with Abraham.  Only the ending, God’s promise that Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s belatedly-born son, would father the tribes of Israel, failed to come across in dance terms.  The two women’s roles were especially well filled by Lynn Elliott and Peggy Evans.  Dance Magazine, February 1980.   

A year later when Rick Jacobs, who was then a rabbinic student at HUC-JIR, joined the company and learned the part of Abraham, the ending blessing took on a whole new dimension, as the prayer and actual movement were already deeply meaningful to him, and he performed the section in a uniquely heartfelt way. 

Rick Jacobs as Abraham, 1981.  Photo by Amanda Kreglow
Rick Jacobs and Lynn Elliott in Sarah. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

Sarah continued to be beautifully performed regularly by the New York company during the next several years with Rick dancing the part of Abraham, and Lynn Elliott dancing the part of Sarah.  For me Sarah was the first of a series of pieces focusing on Biblical women.  And I would revisit Sarah, more than once. 

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Poetry and Art Inspire I Never Saw Another Butterfly

JoAnne Tucker / / New York Company

In the last post I mentioned the piece I Never Saw Another Butterfly.  It was actually created in 1977 in Tallahassee, Florida receiving its first New York performance at Temple Israel in 1978.  This was the first of four pieces that I created between 1977 and 2002 to remember the Holocaust or as memorial pieces for the Holocaust.  The book I Never Saw Another Butterfly  first came out in the early 60’s.  By 1977 there was a lot of interest in the poems both in music and in dance.  In fact, I was not the only choreographer that year to set some of the poems.  Pearl Lang created her I Never Saw Another Butterfly in 1977, as did Wendy Osserman collaborating with composer Peter Schlosser.

Pearl Lang was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1942 to 1952.  When she left the company to form her own company in 1952, one of the first pieces she did was Song of Deborah, and she continued to often create works related to her Jewish background. In a radio interview in 1977 she referred to the piece I Never Saw Another Butterfly as a memorial to the Holocaust. I did not get to see Lang’s Butterfly but I did see an earlier piece she created in 1960 called Shirah, which I found hauntingly beautiful.  I also had the opportunity to study with Pearl in 1960 at the Connecticut College Summer Dance Program.  For six weeks in an hour-long composition class a small group of students, maybe four or five of us, worked on studies. I was assigned to do a laughter study and an anger study.  Another older member of the class created a piece inspired by the fragile character Laura in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I don’t remember the dancer’s name but the delicate way she wove movement together left a lasting impression.

 In dance classes with Louis Horst at Juilliard, particularly his second year class called Modern Forms, he often encouraged us to visit museums and to even develop pieces inspired by the art that we saw.  The Museum of Modern Art was one of my favorite places to go and there was one picture that I was strongly drawn to.  Titled Hide and Seek, it was painted by Pavel Tchelitchew in 1942.  The picture is a tree made up of children.  There are arms reaching for each other, faces calling out, hands and toes as roots of the tree. Standing in front of the painting I felt life and death captured in the same moment.  The painting seemed to cry out to me just as the poems in I Never Saw Another Butterfly did.  In studying the painting I saw five particular parts that stood out and so I decided to limit the piece and only set five of the poems.  Each dancer would recite a poem as they moved based on the five images that stood out. 

In my file on I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a postcard of the painting, sent to me by Nanette Joslyn, a dancer in the NY Company in the early 80’s who also shared that she was dancing at the time with Pearl Lang in a spoof on the Esther–Modecai story.

Postcard of Pavel Tchelitchew’s painting Hide and Seek sent to me by Nanette Joslyn.

A description of the book tells us that 15,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the concentration camp of Terezin.  Fewer than 100 survived. The poems and also pictures that they drew shared both the daily misery as well as their hopes and fears, their courage and optimism. 

There are only a few pieces of my choreography that I could get up and do now or at least set with only limited help of a video, and I Never Saw Another Butterfly is one of them. I also think it had the longest history of performances in the company, being performed through the early 2000’s. It opens with the group of dancers close together doing a random number of steps and stops as if they were bundled in a train car that stopped and started in no particular pattern.  1 hold 2 walk 3, 4, 5, hold 6 walk 7 and so the piece starts.  Later they peel off and take shapes related to the poem and it is from these shapes that each dancer emerges to begin his or her poem.  

 Bea Bogorad and Randy Allen rehearsing I Never Saw Another Butterfly at the Creative Dance Center Studio in Tallahassee, Florida.  Can you see the arms reaching for each other in Pavel’s painting that inspired this moment?

I was still performing with the company and my poem began:

I'ld like to go away
Where there are other nicer people,
Somewhere in the far unknown
Where no one kills one another.

After the first performance in Tallahassee, a member of the audience that I only knew casually came up to me and said he was very moved by the piece and that he was about to close out a bank account and wanted Avodah to have the balance left of $600.  That was a large contribution for our little company back in 1977 and we were most grateful.

The title poem captures both the optimism and the despair:

The last, the very last
So richly, brightly, dazzling yellow
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
Against a white stone.

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly way up high.
It went away I'm sure
Because it wished to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court
Only I never saw another butterfly.

As I write this, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach, aware of the current news where we in this country are separating immigrant children from their parents and putting them in large detention camps behind barbed wire and bars. Maybe this piece needs to be revived and seen again with the backdrop of current day pictures reminding us that we cannot be silent and allow this to continue.

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Beginning of the New York Company

JoAnne Tucker / / New York Company

While I am fuzzy on dates and exactly how I started a second company of Avodah in New York City I am clear on what motivated me.  A modern dance company based on Jewish liturgy, rituals, text and history needed to be located in a place where there would be lots of opportunities for bookings and performances.  Tallahassee was not that place.  Yes, we had done a bit of touring in Savannah, Pittsburgh, Tampa and even one performance in Closter, NJ but somehow that wasn’t enough for me.  While I found Tallahassee a wonderful place to experiment, to develop repertory, I longed for more opportunities to tour and share the repertory.  The idea of having a second company based in New York City and making regular trips to New York really appealed to me.

By this time, I had stopped performing myself, stepping into the role of choreographing, directing and managing the business side of the company and non-profit.  Around the same time, my father was spending a lot of time in the New York office of the sportswear company he worked for, and my sister, Peggy, had decided to make a transition to working in New York. My father and Peggy found a lovely apartment on the East side near the UN and so I had a place to stay. Peggy and I recently brainstormed exactly when that was and we think it was in May 1978.  As best as I can tell from programs in my scrapbook, it was the summer of 1978 when I formed a company of 5 dancers and did an evening performance at Temple Israel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

How did I find the dancers?  Well what is coming to mind is that I returned to take some classes from a favorite teacher of mine from Juilliard, Alfredo Corvino, who had a studio called Dance Circle on 8thAvenue between 46thand 47thStreet.  That is where I found Lynn Elliott who would dance with the company for quite a few years.  A dancer from Tallahassee that I had worked with, Peggy Evans, had moved to New York City and so I reached out to her to join the company. Three other dancers, Kathy McDonald, Yael, and Benjamin Greenberg, I may have found through an audition notice or perhaps I also found them at Alfredo Corvino’s studio. 

Rabbi Walter Jacob, by then an Avodah Board member, reached out to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, located at that time on West 68thStreet, and arranged for us to have rehearsal space at the school.  That was the beginning of a long-term relationship with HUC-JIR.  I hoped to invite people to the concert at Temple Israel who could help with bookings for the New York company.  I have pictures that clearly show the repertory we did and that Irving Fleet joined us for the performance working with a choir for In Praise.  Other pieces performed in the afternoon concert were Sabbath Woman and a newly created piece, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.  The bema of the Temple provided a beautiful setting for the concert and one major contact was made for the company that had a profound impact on our development both in increased bookings for the New York company and in Florida for the Tallahassee company.

Kathy McDonald as the bride in Sabbath Woman.
Yael in front, Kathy behind in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

Stephan Bayer, head of the Lecture Bureau for the Jewish Welfare Board (now called the Association of Jewish Community Centers), attended the concert and asked if he could add us to the roster of people they represented.  Furthermore, Stephan also agreed to welcome me into the Lecture Bureau office and teach me how to book performances and put a tour together.  I am forever grateful to Stephan for the role he played in helping us develop as a company.  Later Stephan joined our board and served as an outstanding President for a number of years. Our next New York performance was in the spring of 1979 as part of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion’s Sunday Afternoon at the College Series.  Lynne Elliott, Peggy Evans and Kathy McDonald continued to dance with the company and two new dancers, Holly Kaplan and a male dancer whose name I can’t recall, joined us.  The three pieces done in the summer were included along with a new piece Sarah which I had created in Tallahassee with the help of a grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.  The piece received its first performance in Tallahassee at Temple Israel on March 3 and six weeks later I restaged it with the New York company.  

Lynn Elliott in Sarah at HUC-JIR.

While the area the dancers had to work on was small, I remember being so proud of the performance they gave and I love this picture which was taken of us outside of HUC-JIR after the performance.

From Left to Right: JoAnne Tucker, Irving Fleet, unknown male dancer, Kathy McDonald, Peggy Evans, Lynn Elliott and Holly Kaplan.

I feel so very grateful to have had long-term relationships with dancers in the company.  Each relationship has taken on its own special character.  Lynn Elliott worked with the company for a number of years and many years later her daughter Justine performed with us.  I will be writing more about Lynn in later blogs.  While Kathy McDonald only danced with us in New York for that first year, she has kept in touch with the company and myself through the years. Each year she has sent a contribution first during Avodah’s fundraising campaign and now Healing Voices – Personal Stories. I always feel a wonderful glow as I open the envelope and remember her beautiful lyrical quality portraying the bride in Sabbath Woman.  Many years later, Kezia, looking for a place to take adult ballet classes in Poughkeepsie,  found a wonderful class taught by Kathy, who had opened a studio there specifically for adult dancers.  Besides realizing they had both been in Avodah, they discovered they had performed the same solo in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.   

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Reflection on the “Jews and Jewishness in the Dance World” Conference

JoAnne Tucker / / Current Dance Events, Movement Workshops

Let me begin by sharing the history of how and why I decided to go to this conference.  I saw a notice about it posted by Naomi Jackson on the National Dance Education Association bulletin board about a year and a half ago.  Shortly after seeing it, I received a copy of the notice from Elizabeth McPherson, who danced in Avodah for seven years and with whom I have kept in regular touch, often meeting on my occasional trips to NYC.  She wanted to make sure I saw it and wanted to encourage me to apply. What followed was a series of emails with Naomi, as I wondered what kind of presentations she had in mind, and then later emails with Elizabeth.  The conference seemed to be very broad, looking at “Jewishness” and dance from many different angles.  Since I have moved on from The Avodah Dance Ensemble and using Jewish themes as motivation for creating choreography or doing workshops, I wanted to share something that felt current to me now.  In discussions with Elizabeth the idea of presenting on Helen Tamaris came up.  She was a pioneer modern dancer, and Jewish, and most important to me, her work is the thread that influenced both the work that I did with Avodah and the work that I do now.  Perfect.

So we came up with the idea that Elizabeth and I would submit together.  She would share the history of Helen Tamiris, teaching one or two sections of Helen Tamiris’s Negro Spirituals, (see Blog Honoring Helen Tamiris on how we added Negro Spirituals to Avodah’s repertory) and I would share some ideas from studying composition with Tamiris. I was thrilled and while still feeling a sense of reluctance to attend, I felt very good about the presentation I would be part of.  And what a surprise I received.

Elizabeth presenting her paper on Tamiris.

Elizabeth teaching “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” from Tamiris’s Negro Spirituals

Naomi set up a Google Drive where we could all share information from books published related to Jewish dance, choreography by Jewish choreographers or pieces on Jewish themes.  Lots of sharing went on as well as discussions on a logo for the conference and individuals’ memories of important influences in their work.  I followed and did post a little.  My husband and good friend Regina commented to me that every time I mentioned the conference I made a strange face that clearly lacked enthusiasm.  I wondered what three days of the conference would mean for me and didn’t have high hopes.  And clearly I was not alone in feeling this way, as once there, this questioning came up in quiet conversations.  But the thank you’s after the conference, again using our connection through Google Drive, were unanimous in sharing how good and meaningful the conference was and hoping there would be more.

In addition to Elizabeth, my good friend and dance/film collaborator Lynne Wimmer decided to go to.  (See Blog on “In Praise” in Pittsburgh and watch the film “Through the Door” which we co-directed in 2016.) Lynne and I would be roommates and we looked forward to catching up on our recent adventures.  So I went knowing that at least I would be hanging out with people I really enjoyed. I also decided to drive so that I would have a car to make it easy to get around and do other things in the area should the conference be “boring.”  It wasn’t at all boring, but the car was helpful in enabling us to select restaurants that weren’t in easy walking distance.

The overall energy of the conference was a genuine sharing of who we are and our role in dance and how it might relate to our “Jewishness.” From presentations on key historical figures (such as ours about Helen Tamiris), to panels on dance therapy or how one’s choreography related to social justice, participants shared enthusiastically and audience members listened carefully and respectfully.  For the majority of the time slots of an hour and fifteen minutes we had to select which one of four presentations we wanted to attend and it was often hard to choose since all looked good.

The opening evening program on Saturday  was a selection of dance films curated by Ellen Bromberg, Professor at the University of Utah who teaches Screendance. I loved seeing an early film of Daniel Nagrin and the fun film techniques used in 1953 when the film was made.

Sunday night was a concert curated by Liz Lerman and Wendy Perron.  Outstanding moments from the concert were: a piece beautifully performed by college-age Maggie Waller; Send Off performed by Jesse Zarrit to a recorded text of Hanoch Levin focused on the Akedah (the binding of Isaac) from Issac’s point of view; and The Return of Lot’s Wife by Sara Pearson in which Lot’s wife finally confronts God in her 1950’s Brooklyn kitchen.  All pieces were beautifully danced and the last two I mentioned had a wonderful sense of humor to them.

A photograph from Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash that I co-authored with Rabbi Susan Freeman in 1990 was included in the Exhibition of “Reimagining Communities Through Dance” curated by Judith Brin Ingber and Naomi Jackson.

From Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash. Rabbi Susan Freeman working with students from Brooklyn Heights Synagogue.  Photo by Tom Brazil

I found the panel on Dance Therapy to have a lot of historical information and loved the presentations by two of the women, Miriam Berger and Joanna Harris. An intense panel “Exploring the Complex Relations Between Jews and non-Jewish Arabs through Dance” followed and stirred some interesting reflections on whether dance events can help build relationships.

Perhaps the most meaningful moments came the last day and were both experiential movement moments. One was leading the experiential part of our presentation on Helen Tamiris. Tamiris’s composition class focused on the use of gesture to build movement.  I chose to share a way I use this idea with non-dancers.  I asked each of the 15 participants to say one or two words of how they felt at the moment and then we went around with each sharing a gesture that fit their word.  It was an intergenerational group all with a strong dance background and as we built a phrase of our 15 gestures a warmth and community developed.

Later that day I attended a workshop by Victoria Marks and Hannah Schwadron called “Dancing Inter-connections.”  Again it was an intergenerational experience with over 30 participants.  One improvisation featured us finding the way to move in the space between us.  The weaving was fun to do and we had to be inventive to find the space between us. The ending improvisation focused on the word “lingering” in movement interactions. That was particularly rich and beautiful.  In the feedback afterwards one of the young college-age dancers mentioned how meaningful it was to dance with the older generation.  How she felt nurtured and empowered.  And how wonderful that felt, to hear it come from a young woman.

As I reflect back on the experience I am of course very glad to have gone. I loved the many new and renewed connections.  And I wonder whether it was the Jewishness or the dance that so resonated for me, or the combination. I am most grateful to Naomi Jackson for her leadership in maintaining an openness and inclusiveness within the intent of the conference.  Once again I am reminded of the important spiritual connection for me in dance, both by moving, myself, and being inspired by watching dance.

    Closing ceremony dance. Photo by Tim Trumble

Gratitude for Early Influences

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood

Whether it is building a dance studio, keeping a dance company running for over 30 years, starting a film company that has now has completed 7 films, or selling our art-work on ETSY, I realize a certain pattern in my life and work.  It is with deep gratitude I acknowledge two qualities that were wonderfully reinforced for me: creativity from my Mom and a sense of (and joy in) business from my father.

I am a war baby, meaning that shortly after my birth my father was drafted and went off to fight in WWII.  My Mom and I lived at his mother and stepfather’s house, a large three-story house in Pittsburgh that was filled with all kinds of energy. His stepfather was a family physician and his office was in the home with the waiting room at the front of the house.  My grandmother loved people and music. Their youngest child Bill was at that time a student at Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon) and lots of his friends from the music and drama department filled the house.  As a young toddler I got lots of attention from them.  A cousin a year younger would visit and we were a bundle of energy.

I enjoyed pretending I was a Doctor.  When I finally became one, it was of a different kind!

Uncle Billy letting me play his cello.

Mom and I spending a few special moments with Dad when he was on leave.

My mom had lots of time on her hands so she encouraged my creative endeavors.  This continued throughout my childhood.  Although my grandmother took me to see my first touring Broadway show, Peter Pan with Veronica Lake, it was my Mom who took me to see Moira Shearer in Swan Lake when I was five or six and the Saddler Wells (now the Royal Ballet) came to town.  Mom continued to encourage me by enrolling me in dance classes and responding positively, as I got older, to ideas and projects I wanted to pursue.  When I wanted to teach dance classes in our basement to earn money she easily made it happen.  I always felt her support even as an adult. She enthusiastically came to performances, entertained the dance company members when we toured to where she lived and was always a good listener when I wanted to talk and talk about a creative project.

Mom (Dr. Janet Klineman) got her Ph.D. after we were grown up and had a career in Special Education.  She was very devoted to the complex children she worked with, and compassionate to their parents, showing them ways to help their challenging child.  It was only after she retired that she rediscovered her artistic talents. Her father had painted and she had done some painting when she was younger but nothing had come of it. She started taking classes in watercolor painting in Sarasota when she was close to 80 and continued painting until three weeks before she died at age 90.  In fact the last picture she did of her dog, Mickey, hangs in our house in a prominent place where I see it every day.  It is a daily reminder to me that nurturing and expressing my creativity is essential!!

Mom’s painting of Mickey.

My father was a salesman.  When he returned from the war he joined the company that his father (who died in the flu epidemic of 1918 or so) and uncles had founded, Majestic Sportswear.  I grew up hearing his enthusiasm for the line of clothes he was selling.  I remember sample sales at the end of the season.  At times I even helped him organize order forms.  So his business talk, including meeting goals and enthusiasm for what he was selling, was also an influence. While at times he didn’t understand “modern dance” and what I might be trying to express he never put it down and usually agreed to support what I was proposing.

As a teenager I joined Mom on a trip or two to New York City where Dad had quarterly sales meetings and I remember his tolerant and patient presence as he and Mom waited at stage doors while I eagerly got autographs from Julie Andrews after My Fair Lady and Susan Strasberg after Diary of Anne Frank.  Then there was another time in Pittsburgh when Mary Martin came to town in a one-woman show… while I waited to get her autograph Dad had a lively conversation with her chauffeur.  Later, after graduating high school and while I was studying dance in NYC and attending Juilliard, I would join him and several of his fellow salesmen for dinner and a night out in the City, often not getting home until 3 AM.

Both Mom and Dad were persistent, each in their own way, and so that quality coming from both of them has served me well.  In fact, Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (recommending an Avodah concert) said, “There are not too many practicing choreographers of dance based on religious themes in these godless days. In her quiet way, JoAnne Tucker is one of the most persistent and one of the best, creating simple, luminous and heartfelt dances based on Jewish tradition” (January 9, 1998).

Of course both parents presented challenges and there are things I didn’t like about growing up in our household.  The older I get,these occasional memories fade further and further away.  Today I am filled only with deep gratitude for lessons learned from my parents.

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Memories of JoAnne Tucker in Tallahassee, Florida (1972-1976)

JoAnne Tucker / / Guest Posts, Tallahassee

Guest Blog by Carolyn Davis Oates

I am so proud to have had the opportunity to dance with you. You far surpassed the situation you were in when we first met.  Your achievement is stunning but not surprising; you always had the creative spark that drives an artist. But that was not so evident in Tallahassee in 1972.

I do not remember exactly when, but a friend of mine told me that her neighbor was a dancer.  Since you lived not too far from me, a few days later I was ringing your doorbell.  You were clearly not expecting company that morning.  I introduced myself and said, “I understand you are a dancer!”  I distinctly remember you replied, “I used to be a dancer.” You invited me in, and we talked for hours.   You said you were not doing any dancing now.  I was so excited to meet a neighbor with a background in dance from Juilliard, I knew right away that we had to find a way to work together.

Initially, you were reluctant.  You felt tied down with two young children, and of course I was primarily a classical ballet dancer and you did modern dance, so it did not seem we had a lot in common other than love of dance.  But we became good friends.  We both needed to lose some weight so we exercised and dieted together.  Soon you arranged to teach some dance classes at the Temple, and I assisted you.  Dance as a religious expression had never before occurred to me.

During the next year, we enjoyed returning to dance together. That summer (1974) we conducted a dance camp for the Tallahassee Junior Museum.  We were fully engaged in dance once more.  We collaborated on a full length ballet of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream for the Tallahassee Civic Ballet (1975).  You choreographed the fairies with modern technique, and I did the humans in classical form.  It worked perfectly and the production was very successful.

You were especially interested in dance as therapy, which was a fairly novel concept at that time. You won a grant to work with mentally retarded children.  About 10 students, most of whom were both mentally and physically handicapped, were selected for the program.  We devised interactive movements to assist them in expressing their emotions. There were some very difficult sessions when our students refused to participate, but there were also some very rewarding moments when a student who had not said a word suddenly joined in and showed new capability.  Colorful scarves, balls, costumes and other props were used to encourage them. Their progress during the program was eye-opening to me.

Soon you built a lovely modern dance studio on a wooded lot near our neighborhood.  I had to decline your invitation to teach in your new studio due to some personal difficulties at that time.  My husband and I separated and I returned to college for an MBA.  When I completed my degree, I took a job in Virginia, and we lost contact, but our relationship was an unforgettable part of my life for those years in Tallahassee.

Today, at 82, I am dancing again after a long hiatus.  I teach tap dancing and assist with a jazz class twice a week at my senior retirement community’s facility.  Dance is still therapeutic for me as I know it has been for you.  I tell my students, aged 60 to 85, that dance improves mental and physical health at all ages.  I know it really does.

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Feminism Meets the Bank: Building a Dance Studio

JoAnne Tucker / / Tallahassee

Tallahassee is a wonderful “lab” for me.  By this I mean, since there are no available academic positions — which is what I thought I was preparing for in earning my doctorate — I have to forge my own way.  This means finding opportunities and places to use my talent and add some  income to our household.  In the past blogs I’ve shared how Avodah developed, but I was also involved in other dance activities.  In this blog I’ll share some of my other dance endeavors culminating with designing, financing and building a dance studio.

I found work with the Tallahassee Arts Council particularly satisfying, presenting dance programs at local schools using local adult dancers or students from the dance program at Florida State University.  Among my favorite schools were the very small rural schools.  In the Tallahassee Democrat I’m quoted as saying, “When we went to places like Chaires or Concord (small rural schools), the children would laugh at us at first.  But after we started dancing, they were swept away.”   I also received grants from the Florida Fine Arts Council to take a dance and poetry program to counties surrounding Leon County where Tallahassee was located.  These school tours provided a good education for me that served me well later on.  Among the more humorous learning moments was when the male dancer, a new dance student at FSU, in his first performance on a school tour was not wearing a dance belt.  I’m not sure that many of the young children noticed but the faces of many of the teachers made it clear to me that I needed to speak to him as well as to some of the women about properly covering their anatomy.

One of my favorite collaborations was with a ballet dancer/teacher Carolyn Davis.  We did three projects together.  In the summer of 1974 we ran a three-week dance program for 6 to 16 year olds at the Jr. Museum.  It was a beautiful setting and may have influenced what I would soon look for as a setting for the studio I wanted to build so I could have my very own place to teach, choreograph and rehearse in.

Carolyn and I undertook a major collaboration in creating a ballet for the Tallahassee Civic Ballet. As Board members of the TCB we wanted to see it offer more challenging opportunities to the dancers and more stimulating programs to the audience.  We decided to work together setting our version of Midsummer Night’s Dream to Mendelssohn’s music. On another occasion we did a dance program for mentally retarded adults.

By the summer of 1974, I felt very much rooted in the community and decided that I indeed did want to build my own studio. By the end of the summer I had found and purchased an acre of land across from one of the elementary schools.  Next I found a builder and together we sketched what the studio would look like.  While this was my project, my husband Murray couldn’t have been more supportive and offered excellent advice such as building on only ½ the acre fronting the road so the other half could be sold at a later time if we wanted.  At the time we bought the acre there was little that had been developed in the area.   I also elected to buy at the end of the area zoned for office/residential and where the land went sharply downhill so that the windows of the studio would open to trees.  We also planned a lovely walk from the parking lot to the studio door so that one walked along a natural setting and up to a deck before entering the reception/office area.  The studio would be large, 40 by 50 so that informal showings could be held there.  The wall away from the windows would be the only mirrored wall and of course there would be a sprung dance floor with a good quality wood surface.   Those were the fun things to think about.  There were other things like septic tanks, surface for the parking lot, building permits, etc. that were not.

As I negotiated the project, the first thing I was asked by the men in charge of permits, or at meetings where I wanted information on building materials, was, “What does your husband do?”  At first, I was puzzled by this but when it kept happening over and over again I was annoyed and disappointed.  So one day, I came home, took my wedding ring off and never wore it again.  Murray understood!  From then on I was never asked what my husband did. However when it came to financing at the bank and filling out all the forms, they insisted that the only way I could get financing was with my husband’s signature.   Disappointing, indeed.  I did not want to abandon the project, so reluctantly I agreed.  Today I think this would have been very different although I wonder?? Ultimately we ended up forming a sub-chapter S corporation with the studio as the key asset.  We couldn’t own shares 50/50 in the corporation so one of us owned 51% and the other 49%.  I’m not sure which one of us had the extra shares.

The builder was easy to work with, that is, until the studio was nearly done, and he began making advances which I had to navigate around and strongly discourage.

Meanwhile all during the fall of 1974, I continued teaching dance classes at the Temple. Enrollment had greatly increased from the September article in the Tallahassee Democrat.  And so that winter with the studio complete, we held a grand opening party for The Creative Dance Center filled with dancing, laughter and joy.  My Mom, on seeing the studio and walking down the path and entering quietly said, “Oh I see, you have created a Perry-Mansfield here.” Perry-Mansfield is a wonderful performing arts camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, that I attended when I was 15 and will be writing more about at a later time.  The blend of nature and dance was so much a part of me, that I don’t think I was totally conscious of what I had done until my Mom noticed.

On the deck showing our setting in the woods.

Getting ready for the opening…

Enrollment continued to increase and soon I was adding other instructors to the faculty.  I also had my own clear philosophy about traditional dance recitals and end-of-the-year programs.  An informal culminating event where the older students danced a story such as The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan creating their own movement was what I planned, with the younger children spontaneously dancing their favorite short stories as an open class.

The studio was very special to me.  As a family we were all involved.  The math talent of Rachel, my youngest daughter, became apparent when I would find her — a 2nd-grader — behind the desk figuring out people’s monthly bills faster than I could.  Both my daughters took dance classes, Rachel especially liking ballet and my older daughter Julie totally excelling in dramatic portrayals in dance as part of culminating events.  Murray joined me in disco dancing in open studio dance nights. Today Rachel, trained as an actuary, is currently a total rewards director and Julie a casting director. Neither of their professions, at which they excel, is a surprise to me.

Rachel (at left) in a culminating performance

Julie as the Witch inWizard of Oz

Ten years later, after we had moved to the New York City area, Murray negotiated and sold both the studio and the ½ acre lot next door. I was glad that I did not have to return for the closing, because as happy as I was to be in New York, I still would have been quite emotional.

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