JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
Recently I signed up for an Introduction to Poetry class. Several things motivated me. We had begun a writer’s group where I live, and I thought I would like to share poems. I have loved poetry since I was a teenager, and I have choreographed many pieces to poems.
In our very first class the teacher introduced us to the form of elegy and used Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! as an example. After going over the format and purpose of the elegy, he asked us to write one. As I reread O Captain! My Captain! I began reflecting on the experience of being in Helen Tamiris’s Dance for Walt Whitman at Perry-Mansfield during the summer of 1958. That was a defining experience in helping me realize that I wanted a career in dance, and it had provided an excellent example of how poetry can inspire a piece of choreography.
When I look back over my career as a choreographer, I realize how often I turned to poetry as the stimulus for movement. That idea had been introduced to me by Helen Tamiris, so it was no surprise that I decided to do my elegy for her and to use the structure and rhyming pattern of O Captain! My Captain! as my model.
Elegy for Helen Tamiris
By JoAnne Tucker
A frayed program, carefully saved, recalls long ago days
There is still time to remember and sing your praise
You stood, arms outstretched, framed by aspen gently swaying
Directions given, challenges accepted, our energy outpouring,
Alas, a google search
Your name barely marked
Too many years have passed
Still a desire remains in my heart.
Those of us, hold tightly onto each other,
Make a chain, rock endlessly, calling the primal mother
We cannot forget, your teaching remains within us living
We have gone forth, as a curious child goes exploring.
Tamiris, O Tamiris
Fifty years since you departed
Your legacy begins to fade
Memories linger in my heart.
A legacy of movement and poetry continues still,
New writers and dancers passionate with strong will.
So this old crone will continue to sing your praise
Encourage, mentor and celebrate all my days
To dance to the spoken verse
To follow your pioneer art
Words carefully written
Danced from the heart
Helen Tamiris at Perry-Mansfield, July 1958. Photo taken by JoAnne Tucker.
The first set of poems I choreographed was for a school program in Pittsburgh shortly after leaving Juilliard. The dancers were six high school students, and the program toured several elementary schools and won a Carnegie Award. Later I would continue to turn to poetry with the Avodah Dance Ensemble, and during my thirty years as Artist Director of that company, I created dances to a variety of different poems. The ones that stand out the most in my memory are:
I Never Saw Another Butterfly, using poems written by children in the Terezin Concentration Camp
Shema, incorporating poetry of Italian Holocaust survivor Primo Levi
Let My People Go, based on James Weldon Johnson’s poem of the same title
In the Garden, drawn from several poems in the collection Wine, Women and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life, translated by Raymond Scheindlin
Selichot Suite, a section of which uses Denise Levertov’s poem The Thread
I end by welcoming dancers and choreographers to share what poems they have enjoyed dancing to or creating movement for. If you haven’t used poetry and movement together, I strongly encourage you to try it!
On October 26th, I Zoomed an interesting dance history presentation by Wendy Perron at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, part of the New York City Library System. This was the third part of Perron ‘s series “The Dance Historian Is In,” and it focused on Pina Bausch’s years at Juilliard, 1959-60 and 1960-61, when she worked with Paul Sanasardo and Paul Taylor. Perron included pictures and focused a lot on Pina’s work with Anthony Tudor when she was at Juilliard. Perron pointed out that these two years had a strong influence on Pina’s work, more than most critics mention.
It was during this time that Pina got to know Alfredo Corvino, and when he retired from Juilliard, Pina asked him to be the ballet master for her company. He held that position until his death, and then his daughters continued working with the company.
One of the most interesting things I learned during the hour-and-a-half Zoom program was that Juilliard has photos and scrapbooks online that are available for anyone to look at or use for research. I went to the site, and the opening page clearly states the purpose of the website:
Welcome to the Juilliard Archives
Discover Juilliard’s rich history, from the school’s opening in 1905 to present, by exploring a selection of materials from our digital collections. Please see our Featured Collections at the link above.
I had fun looking at the Dance Scrapbooks which go from 1951/52 to 1990/91. Of course I was most curious about the years that I was there. What a delight and surprise to see all the different pieces that I performed in workshops from Louis Horst’s Modern Form Composition Class. A few I remember but some I had totally forgotten about. It was also a trip down memory lane to see what other classmates had done and performed in the same workshops.
Screenshots from the Juilliard Scrapbook 1961-62, (Klineman is my maiden name.)
Finding the Juilliard archives online made me wonder what other resources there are for dance history enthusiasts! Here are a few that I found:
Wendy Perron’s website is filled with lots of things she has written about dance, with an archive that is worth exploring. She also lists her upcoming events and some that have already happened and are still viewable online.
I was surprised to see what was available at The Library of Congress website. Their digital collections have “dance materials which represent genres including worldwide traditional dances, European and American social dance practices, ballet and modern dance, and more! Digitized items include choreographic notes, photographs, musical scores, moving images, sound recordings, rare books, and artwork.” Among the collections online are:
Martha Graham’s work between 1918 and 1949. Objects include concert programs, clippings, press announcements reviews, libretti, scripts, and photographs.
Selections from the Katherine Dunham Collection
Digitalized items from Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev
200 collection items from Bronislava Nijinska
And of course, the best place for on-site research is the New York City Library for the Performing Arts, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. I have spent some time at the library researching and learning about various dance figures. I have also enjoyed watching various videotapes. I highly recommend a trip there for fun or if you are seriously researching something in dance. There is both a phone number and email address online so that one can inquire what the library might have in the area of one’s research before making a trip.
There are also lots of specialized collections at various universities or local libraries where individuals have donated their scrapbooks, photographs etc. For example, when I moved to Costa Rica, I decided to donate all the material of the Avodah Dance Ensemble (up to when I retired as founding director) to the American Jewish Archives, located in Cincinnati and connected to Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. Avodah regularly performed at HUC-JIR in New York City,
Hanya Holm’s papers are at Stanford University, and there is information about them at the Online Archive of California. It doesn’t look like any actual material is available online, rather a list of the different boxes.
Most other dancers I Googled left their collections to the NY Performing Arts Library.
If you know of a collection that might interest Mostly Dance blog readers, please leave a comment sharing the name of the collection and any contact details to find out more information. I will review and maybe do another blog sharing the information I receive.
Let me close by thanking Wendy Perron for her excellent presentation, letting me know about the Juilliard online Archives and piquing my interest to see what else might be available.
After earning her B.F.A. in dance at The Juilliard School in New York, Dina performed in the downtown and Off-Broadway scene. During over four decades in the dance world, she has been a contemporary dancer, choreographer, teacher, artistic director (LEAVING GROUND/DANCE) and writer. Her books include A Dancer’s Diary: Around the World in Thirteen Dances (see excerpt below) and Birds of a Feather, a Memoir. Additionally, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Dance International and on criticaldance.org. She has served on the faculty of Pacific Northwest Ballet School since 2001.
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After I graduated from The Juilliard School Dance Division in 1981, I auditioned and was accepted into the Avodah Dance Ensemble, directed by JoAnne Tucker, Ph.D. Tucker’s movement vocabulary showed a distinct influence of Graham technique, so I felt right at home, having studied at both the Martha Graham School and Juilliard. I dove right into learning the repertory – “Kaddish,” “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” and “Noshing,” among others. The company toured throughout the U.S, performing in reform temples and Jewish Community Centers. Although I was raised Roman Catholic, I was fascinated with JoAnne’s weaving of movement from Jewish liturgy and ritual; it was definitely a learning experience at the intersection of dance, religion and culture.
I danced with Avodah for two years, and then took an offer to join the Easy Moving Dance Company based in North Carolina for a short tour, then returned to New York City to dance with the Douglas Hamby Dance Company, Chen and Dancers, and Dance Circle, directed by Ernesta Corvino. Fast forward to forty years later – JoAnne and I reconnected on social media, and upon my visiting here at her hacienda in Costa Rica, she has kindly asked me to be a guest blogger for mostlydance.com. I am happy and honored to both renew our friendship and to oblige her as a guest blogger on mostlydance.com.
Whereas most of my fellow dancers at Juilliard and later at graduate school at Arizona State University loathed any writing assignments, I relished them. I have always been a voracious reader and in recent years, I came to identify as a dancer who writes. In the early 2000’s, I became a moderator on the website criticaldance.org (it’s still going strong – check it out!) during its formative years, a site featuring reviews and feature articles, curated from around the world. After returning from a cultural tour of Cuba in 2014, I wrote a review of the National Ballet of Cuba’s transcendent “Swan Lake” production for criticaldance.org. I later contributed reviews of the works of Akram Khan, Crystal Pite, Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet and classical Balinese dance. A friend, mentor and set designer, Bou Frankel, suggested I collate these reviews and articles from criticaldance.org into a book, and so my first book, A Dancer’s Diary: Around the World in Thirteen Dances, was born.
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In today’s blog post, I share the Introduction of my book. I want to invite you on a journey with me through the mesmerizing and memorable world of dance, with stops along the way in thirteen different countries/choreographers.
Dina McDermott and Marty Ponte in Mandala. Photo: Shaun Parkhurst
Dancer’s Diary
Introduction
Like trying to capture a delicate butterfly, the art of dance enthralls yet eludes us. Like sand running through our fingers, it slips through our grasp when we attempt to quantify it. A dance performance can shock, bore or perturb us, but when the final curtain descends, it is gone forever, never to be repeated precisely the same way again. Dance embodies the elusiveness of time and memory, the impermanence of life.
As we tumble through the twenty-first century, globalization and the ever-widening influence of technology and social media render the art of dance ever more precious and necessary. Dance connects us to our humanity and helps us to locate our unique identity within humanity. In this book, I highlight some lesser known and distinct forms, choreographers and dancers, both theatrical and indigenous. Whether it be a specific Hindu view of the cosmos (Bali), an exquisite ballet tradition in an isolated, socialist country (Cuba), exploration of identity/sexuality (David Rousseve/REALITY), hybridization of Easter/Western forms (H.T. Chen/Remy Charlip) the Jewish/Arab conflict presented in We Love Arabs (Hillel Kogan), the tragedy of Betroffenheit (Crystal Pite/Jonathan Young), or the ancient spirit of duende in flamenco, (Spain), dance is rooted in the corporeal, but aspires to the divine. Join me on this terpsichorean journey, and together we will explore the sublime panoply of human movement-dance!”
A Dancer’s Diary: Around the World in Thirteen Dances, is available on Amazon. For further info-dinamcdermott.com. Questions or to purchase an autographed copy, contact Dina directly at mcdermott910@gmail.com.
For as long as I can remember, Nutcracker performances and the holiday season have gone together. Many dancers have early memories of being in a Nutcracker. From major ballet companies to small regional companies, energies have gone into creating Nutcracker performances to delight local audiences and to help support the company financially, as shows are usually well attended. Even some modern companies have ventured into their own interpretations. Donald Byrd created the Harlem Nutcracker back in 1996 but unfortunately by 2001 it had financially bankrupted his company. He is now recreating the work in Seattle, with more financial care, and this year he has offered the Harlem Nutcracker Teaser to be followed by a full production next year. Mark Morris created The Hard Nut which is set to Tchaikovsky’s 1982 score. It takes inspiration from the “comic artist Charles Burns, whose art is personal and deeply instilled with archetypal concepts of guilt, childhood, adolescent sexuality, and poignant nostalgic portrayals of post-war America” (Wikipedia). The Hard Nut was performed this year at the Detroit Opera House.
For this blog I am going to share three different Nutcrackers which you can stream online. New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker created by George Balanchine is available to watch on Hulu. Disney Plus has a brand-new Hip-Hop Nutcracker which has some surprise cameo performances. Netflix has Debbie Allen’s Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker which is a documentary about her school and shows the process from audition to performance of her Nutcracker which involves many students and even some teachers.
On Hulu, The New York City Ballet production is the classical Nutcracker we usually think about. It had its original premiere in 1954 created by George Balanchine to the music of Peter Tchaikovsky. Like the original Nutcracker ballet created in 1892 by Marius Petipa, it is in two acts. The libretto was adapted from Hoffmann’s 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The version on Hulu was filmed in 1993 adapted by Peter Martins with narration by Kelvin Klein.
The New York City Ballet website informs us that the production involves all “90 dancers in the company, 62 musicians, 40 stagehands and more than 125 children in two alternating casts from the School of American Ballet.”
The stage elements are amazing with a Christmas tree that grows from 12 feet to 41 feet and a bed that floats through the sky. While it is filmed beautifully, I sometimes was frustrated by the close-ups when I really wanted to have a full view of the stage. The dancing is outstanding with Darci Kistler as the Sugar Plum Fairy and her partner Damian Woetzel as Cavalier. Kyra Nichols is beautiful as Dewdrop. The children from the school are well trained and fun to watch as party guests, soldiers, angels, and mice. I was surprised that the young boy playing Drosselmeier’s nephew was Macaulay Culkin, best known for Home Alone. And sure, enough Culkin did indeed study at the School of American Ballet.
On Netflix is an original documentary produced by Shondraland titled Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker. It focuses on Debbie Allen, who had an outstanding award-winning career on television, in theaters and the movies as a dancer, singer and actress. In 2001 she formed the Debbie Allen Dance Academy (DADA). In 2008 she created Hot Chocolate Nutcracker. The documentary was created in 2020. While the documentary opens with Debbie Allen coaching young children to the music of Tchaikovsky, the ballet also incorporates a variety of other music and styles. 200 children from the ages of 4 and older participate in the ballet. We never see The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker from beginning to end; instead we are given a backstage look at how it is put together from the children’s auditions to rehearsals to backstage before the performance. Excerpts from the performance are included.
Woven into the documentary is Debbie Allen’s biography. Teachers at the DADA are interviewed, as well as several students. A few students are followed in more detail sharing their dreams and frustrations of having a career in dance. Debbie Allen’s coaching of the dancers is very interesting as she treats them as professionals and expects them to behavior appropriately. At one point she insists they stop talking or get fired!!
Savion Glover is guest choreographer, and we see several excerpts where tap dancing is featured. This production is filled with high energy and lots of imagination. The young dancers are well rehearsed and many of the dancers have participated in the ballet over several years (as do dancers from the School of American Ballet in the NYC Ballet’s Nutcracker). They give 8 performances each year with a total of 11,520 seats and ticket sales of $450,000. This is a major fundraiser for DADA, which provides classes for students whether they can pay or not.
Hip Hop Nutcracker is a new video on Disney Plus and it is lots of fun to watch. It is described as a newly imagined and reinvented Nutcracker. Basically the plot is that Maria Clara’s parents are not getting along and she takes them on various adventures to get them back together.
The first fun thing I noticed was how cleverly they use the Tchaikovsky music. We hear a theme and soon it blends into a hip hop sound or music. At one point Maria Clara does a playful hip hopish solo to some of the actual score and amazingly it fits very well. The program opens with a narrator rapping and he comes back in a few other places. The group choreography is lively, well executed and just plain fun to watch.
There are two unique cameo appearances. The first is Tiler Peck coming to life as a Toy Doll. It has traditional ballet steps with some added twists. In a November 29, 2022 interview Tiler speaks about when she first saw The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center and decided she wanted to perform on that stage, to her joy in dancing various roles in The Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet and finally how she enjoyed being a part of the Hip Hop Nutcracker. She is hoping that it will bring a different audience to The Nutcracker. https://news.yahoo.com/ballet-dancer-tiler-peck-dishes-212929808.html
The second cameo, somewhat briefer so it is easy to miss, is Mikhail Baryshnikov. He joins the character Drosselmeyer as both come down brownstone steps. A scene title calls him the Spirit of Snow. Alas it is much too short. The first time I watched it…. I did a double take saying, “Wow that looks like Baryshnikov” and of course when I looked at the cast credits, sure enough it was!
I hope you take some time to watch at least one of these Nutcrackers. All three are different and each is special in its own way. And maybe some of you have memories of being in The Nutcracker. Elizabeth McPherson,(a regular reader, Avodah Dance Ensemble member for 7 years, and now Dr. McPherson, Director of Dance at Montclair State University, and author of several dance history books) shared this picture of her getting ready backstage for Atlanta’s Nutcracker when she was about ten years old. Her teacher, Janet Clough, is fixing her hair. Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing a Nutcracker memory with us. Do any other readers have pictures or memories they would like to share of being in or seeing a Nutcracker performance?
Elizabeth McPherson getting ready for the Atlanta Nutcracker with her teacher, Janet Clough, fixing her hair.Print This Post
Some memories stay vividly with you even after 67 years. The memory of my first visit to Jacob’s Pillow in 1956 is such a memory.
I was attending Belgian Village Camp located in Cummington, MA. While I was only thirteen, a close friend of my Mom’s knew of my strong interest in teaching dance. She had a good friend who ran the camp and contacted her, sharing my interest. I was given a scholarship with the understanding that I would teach the younger kids dance. I was thrilled.
It was a wonderful summer and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching the young girls creative movement, much as I had learned from my teacher Genevieve Jones. And the highlight was when a group of us was taken to Jacob’s Pillow for an afternoon performance.
In a rustic theatre, the performance began with Ted Shawn introducing himself to us and telling us about Jacob’s Pillow. I don’t remember his exact words, but my thirteen-year-old self knew he was a very important person and spoke to us in a very dignified manner.
Later I would learn just how important a figure he was in the creation of American modern dance. A New York Times article written by Clive Barnes shortly after his death gives good insight into his role:
THE death of Ted Shawn shortly after his 80th birthday brings to an end a whole era in American dance. Shawn, together with his wife, the late Ruth St. Denis, was largely responsible for the creation of American modern‐dance.
It was in 1915 that Shawn and his wife started the original Denishawn School in Los Angeles, and from this school emerged the first generation of American modern dancers, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. These were the new pioneers of American modern‐dance, and Shawn was their spiritual father. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/16/archives/ted-shawn-18911972.html
The current Jacob’s Pillow website points out that in 1930 Shawn purchased a “rundown farm in the Berkshires known as Jacob’s Pillow … and that laid the groundwork for both his revolutionary company of men dancers and America’s oldest dance festival.”
When our camp visited the Pillow, Shawn said the performance that day would let us see three different kinds of dance: modern, ethnic and ballet. I do not remember the modern or ethnic dance performances at all, but having the opportunity to see Alicia Markova dance “The Dying Swan” was breathtaking.
Markova was 46 when I saw her perform, and the emotion and delicacy that she exhibited, especially in her arms, stood out. She had begun performing when she was just 14, discovered by Diaghilev. After her time with the Ballet Russes she moved to London and danced with the Sadler Wells Ballet Company and was noted for her partnership with Anton Dolin. On YouTube you can find excerpts of her dancing The Dying Swan and also Giselle with Anton Dolin as her partner.
The summer at Belgian Village opened my eyes to new possibilities ahead and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to begin exploring my teaching abilities and to visit Jacob’s Pillow.
Age 13 at Belgian Village Camp
Now living in Costa Rica, I don’t get many opportunities to see dance, so I am very glad that Jacob’s Pillow is now making so much available online. Some videos and films are free and that includes the short films that are a part of Inside the Pillow Lab and some longer films that are part of Pillow Talk. It is a great resource both for gaining a historical perspective and for knowing what is happening now. For example, one film of historical note in Pillow Talk is “Ann Hutchinson Guest: A Century +”:
Celebrating the life of dance notation pioneer Ann Hutchinson Guest (1918-2022), her legacy and deep Pillow roots are explored by friends, family, and fans including Norton Owen, Michael Richter, Tina Curran, and Melanie Dana, with many video clips of Guest herself. (1:00:37)
The Pillow Lab videos are short interviews with choreographers, about the work they created while at Jacob’s Pillow. While they are talking, we see dancers moving with phrases from the developing piece. The videos are short and informative with a diverse group of choreographers.
There is also a pay-for-events section where one can select films of past performances at Jacob’s Pillow. Currently streaming now and available for a fee of $15 is the Limon Dance Company which is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary. It was added on January 9th and will be available until February 19th. Once you pay you may watch the performance as many times as you like. Also available are pre- and post-show talks related to the performance, and these are free.
So even if you can’t make an in-person trip to the Pillow, you have lots of options to watch, many for free and some costing $15.
If you have studied at Jacob’s Pillow, performed there or attended a memorable performance, I invite you to add a comment — or better yet, to contact me to do a guest post about your experience.
I am pleased to welcome Tara Stepenberg as a guest blogger. Tara responded enthusiastically to my last blog about Jacob’s Pillow, when I invited anyone who had a memorable experience at the Pillow to contact me about doing a guest blog. Thank you, Tara, for sharing your experience. JoAnne
One evening in August of 1953, my mother and I went to Jacob’s Pillow for a performance. It was before dusk when we arrived. What first struck me were the rustic wooden cabins where students were staying. As we walked on the path by the cabins, the open windows allowed one to see inside. The rooms had lights on, and I could peer in, seeing pointe shoes hanging in the rooms (perhaps hanging down from rafters). I loved the look of that; it has stayed with me all these years and was experienced like some kind of “touchstone” for the future.
As was mentioned in a previous post, the place where the performances occurred was the “barn” and the program had different dance styles: classical ballet, modern and “ethnic” dance. (Each style was given equal weight. This was an important vision of Ted Shawn’s and was not lost on me). The performances were by the best representatives of these styles. I believe I saw Alicia Markova and perhaps one other ballet performer. For the “ethnic” portion, I saw the dynamic Jean Leon Destine (1918-2013) and his Afro-Haitian company. (For more information, google danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org to see photographs of this company.) He performed with Katherine Dunham and established his own company emphasizing dances/rituals from Haiti.
What I remember most about the performance is Giselle’s Revenge by Myra Kinch. I had seen the ballet Giselle in Rochester, but this Giselle was hilarious, dressed in all black, looking like the Addams Family, and there was a coffin and a hammer! (Giselle seduces her Albrecht into the coffin and nails it shut.) For photographs, google “Myra Kinch Giselle’s Revenge,” and photographs from Getty Images appear. (I could not find videos). Myra Kinch (1904-1981) was a modern dancer born in LA who trained with La Meri. She was known for her humor and satire – the focus of her choreographic output. She was head of the Modern Dance program at Jacob’s Pillow for 25 years beginning in l948.
The trip to Jacob’s Pillow was particularly memorable because it solidified for me what I wanted to do with my life. The affirmation occurred at dinnertime a day after the Jacob’s Pillow performance during our summer’s visit to a “farm” in Great Barrington. For several years, my family went to the Berkshires to spend a week on the “farm” of a family who were friends of my parents’ from their days with the American Labor Party. This lovely “farm” in Great Barrington, MA, was a beautiful place with many blackberry bushes, a nearby brook, and a run-down one-room schoolhouse filled with “old” books. The primary family also housed refugees from time to time and during this summer I noticed a person, a woman who had numbers on her forearm, and I learned that this woman had been in Auschwitz. (This was my first encounter with a survivor from the camps.)
I can see myself standing at the dinner table with many people around it. Someone asked me what I wanted to do or be when I grew up (I don’t remember the exact question). My response was, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a dancer, graduate high school early and go to New York.” And in fact I graduated high school just after turning 16, went to the Boston Conservatory of Music for a year, then Juilliard, and after graduating, performed with Anna Sokolow for a year.
Tara, age 11, the year after she visited Jacob’s Pillow.
Bio. Tara Stepenberg (ne. Francia Roxin) Tara (M.Ed., CMA, RMT) a former Education Director of LIMS, has been deeply engaged with movement for over 50 years, as a performing, creative artist, university professor, reconstructor from Labanotation, movement coach, somatic and authentic movement practitioner. She founded & directed the Dance Department at Hampshire College, taught at SUNY Brockport, The Naropa Institute, Antioch New England, Wesleyan Summer Program and Southwestern College. She currently is on the conditioning staff of Pacific Northwest Ballet, has a private practice Somatic Resonance, and in January (2022) completed the Ways of Seeing program with Suzi Tortora. Tara loves the places and spaces that engagement with the bodymind reveals.
My attention was caught by the title of a talk presented by HUC (Hebrew Union College) Connect in collaboration with the journal Prooftext: “Dance as a Tool of Pleasure and Humiliation in I.J. Singer’s Book The Brothers Ashkenazi. It was a webinar on Zoom, so I registered to attend and am glad I did. The presentation by Sonia Gollance triggered my intellectual side to learn more about how dance was used in this family epic novel that takes place mainly in the city of Lodz, Poland between 1870 and 1920.
Sonia Gollance, a Lecturer in Yiddish in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, is a scholar of Yiddish Studies and German-Jewish literature whose work focuses on dance, theatre and gender. In her article in Prooftext she explores how dance is a main motif in The Brothers Ashkenazi, advancing the plot, character development and social commentary. In the very well researched article, she uses the term “literary dance scenes,” pointing out that the term mainly has developed in the context of British literature and the novels of Jane Austen. Her scholarly look at I. B. Singer’s book shows how literary dance scenes clearly depict the complexities of life in Lodz and the differences between the two brothers.
When I heard the talk via HUC Connect, I thought I would be focusing this blog on how dance was used for humiliation in Singer’s book and other related books or movies. While I will include some of that here, after reading the article in Prooftexts, I am equally fascinated with Gollance’s analysis of the dance motif and how it impacts the whole book’s development.
Dance is used masterfully to show the differences between the main character Max and his twin brother Yakub. Gollance points out that not only are the characters being developed by use of dance scenes, but we are being given insights into the different social groups and their assimilation into the main culture. Gollance looks at how each character functions in dance situations.
Early in the book we learn that there are differences between each twin’s relationship with his body. Max, the older twin, is thin and quiet. He doesn’t like to go outside and play with the other children. Yakub is the opposite; he is robust and thoroughly enjoys play. Singer then uses dance to tell us more about the characters. Max only dances when he is forced to. This happens only twice. The first time is at his arranged wedding, when his father tells him to join the Hasidic dancers at his celebration. His father has arranged for them to come, even though that is not what the bride’s family wanted. One hundred Hasidic men basically take over the dancing at the wedding, and Max does join them. The second time Max dances is toward the end of the book. Max has been rescued from a Russian prison by his brother Yakub, and at the border the antisemitic Polish soldiers command him to dance. This kind of dance is referred to as a Mayufes. He does so to prevent himself from being physically attacked by them. He dances and moves as fast as he can until he collapses on the ground. His life is saved.
In contrast we learn that Yakub dances for his own enjoyment and pleasure with his dancing partners. He enjoys moving and engages in the more modern pair dancing. However, he will not be forced to dance. When the Polish soldiers tell him to dance, he refuses and instead strikes the lieutenant, who then empties his pistol into Yakub’s body, killing him.
Singer has used dance to tell us more about each of his characters and also about the social order of that time. In particular, the wedding dance scenes illustrate this. The bride’s family wants the dance that is taking place in the women’s section where men and women are dancing together. In contrast, the groom’s father stops that interaction, with his 100 Hasidic men taking over the dancing. This tells us a lot about cultural differences and challenges of the time for the Jewish community.
The Mayufes scene in The Brothers Ashkenazi is very poignant because it ends with a death. In the movie The Piano there is also a scene where Jews are made to dance, showing a similar form of humiliation and mockery of Jews.
Although not dancing a Mayufes, Edith Eger in her book The Choice: Embrace the Possible,and in various interviews, talks about how she danced for Dr. Mengel. The following is from an interview in 2015 for CNN. (https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/25/world/auschwitz-dancing-mengele/index.html)
“Dr. Mengele came to the barracks and wanted to be entertained,” Eger says.
Fellow inmates “volunteered” Eger to perform for the man who had ordered her parents’ death.
She asked her captors to play the Blue Danube Waltz as she danced for one of the worst war criminals of the Holocaust.
“I was so scared,” Eger says.
“I closed my eyes, and I pretended that the music was Tchaikovsky, and I was dancing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the Budapest opera house.”
The German doctor rewarded the Jewish girl with an extra ration of bread, which she later shared with the girls in her prison quarters.
Eger says months later, those same girls rescued her when she nearly collapsed from disease and starvation during a forced death march through Austria.
To learn more about Edith Eva Eger, please check out my blog on July 12, 2019, where I write about her, her book and my reaction to it.
To conclude, I am very grateful to have heard the webinar presented by Sonia Gollance, as she made me aware of how dance can be used in literature to further character development and convey social order of the time. Her article in Prooftexts is available online; here is a link to it. The link works for me and I was able to read the full article. https://www.proquest.com/openview/e19eac68f651b3a1595b5e5584ad3bf9/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=47712
Our writers’ group in Atenas is just 7 months old, yet a special intimacy has developed in coming together and sharing what we have prepared for the week or in responding to a prompt. I have experienced a similar rich friendship and closeness built when creating choreography for a new piece with a dance company, or going on tour with a small group of participants who only a few weeks before were strangers. That kind of warmth and fellowship developed quickly in our small writers’ group.
The writers’ group grew out of a workshop presented by Jennifer Paquette when she was my guest spending several weeks working on a historical fiction novel. A day before she was due to leave, she shared some of her writing and then prompted us to do some writing. Immediately afterwards several participants enthusiastically suggested, “Let’s start a regular writers’ group here.” And so we did. Jim Shaw was one of the people who was at the workshop and immediately wanted to be part of the new group.
I had known Jim since January 2020, when my husband and I moved to Costa Rica. At that time, Jim was President of our homeowners’ association and made a welcoming visit. Nine months later, when my husband passed away and Jim saw my post on Facebook, he immediately drove down to my house to check if there was anything he could do to help. That gesture sealed a special place in my heart for Jim.
When I began to think about inviting artist friends to spend some time at my home, I reached out to several members of the community for suggestions on places to take visitors and ways that we might interact with the community. Jim and his wife Tracey had lots of good suggestions. A year later when the artists’ visits began, Jim and Tracey enthusiastically attended the artists’ presentations.
Jim came to the writers’ workshop when he could. Writing wasn’t easy for him so sometimes he shared a combination of what he wrote and just talked about his poignant memories of growing up and being a pilot during the Vietnam war. Since confidentiality is an important component of the group, we won’t reveal specifics, but we will share how much Jim meant to us. I personally am so grateful for Jim’s friendship, founding role in our writers’ group, and the opportunity to have heard his writing and storytelling.
Members of the Writers’ Group Share Their Thoughts
From Rosalie Olds
Even though I’ve been living in Atenas for about three years, I only met Jim recently when we both joined a local writers’ group. His quick wit and twinkling smile endeared me to him right away. When I shared my writing piece, I found his comments supportive and insightful. I especially enjoyed hearing about his experiences serving in Vietnam. Jim clearly felt compassion for others and delighted in being kind and helpful. I’ll miss the ribbing he gave me when his beloved Astros beat the Mariners. May he rest in peace.
From Trey Mallard
Haiku for Jim Shaw: In Memoriam 01/17/2023
1943-2023
In one’s life, people cross your life’s journey for just a moment but have a lasting impact. For me, one of those people was Jim Shaw. We met at a party, and immediately, Crissy and I knew that Jim and Tracey would become fast friends. We had similar stories in that we were both on second marriages, and some would say we married “eye candy.” But Jim and I knew better. Even though there were age differences with younger wives, we had both met and married our “soul mate.” Jim joined the initial writers’ group organized by JoAnne Tucker, which met in her lovely home in Hacienda Atenas. We were all would-be writers, but Jim was the only one who had not put his stories down on paper–Wisconsin farm boy to Top Gun in the Vietnam war. His stories were difficult to transcribe because his war experiences were still much with him and hard to relive. Jim lived with significant physical disabilities but was always up for a good time. His smile and sparkle in his eyes belied internal pain but were an instant attraction to those he encountered. I was fortunate not to have been drafted into his war, but I understood what it was like to lose friends who never returned. His death was sudden and too soon. Here’s to you, my friend…
Top Gun y Mas
I
Home, country, farm boy
grew, handsome, gentle spirit
pilot, war, hero.
II
Soars on metal wings.
Flight, chase, fell the enemy.
Now, soaring on mist.
III
Second time love found
On love bird wings, two fly high
Soaring one flies home.
IV
Crippled body parts
needs extra feet for walking
now, one straight path, Light.
V
Blue eyes, smile lives on,
His loving memory strong.
New star, so bright, Jim
Jim Shaw Photo taken by Tracey Shaw on the Roue de Paris (Ferris wheel) on the Place de La Concorde in Paris when they visited 6 years ago. They went on a wine cycling tour in Burgundy and visited Paris before and after their wine tour. Tracey described it as a truly wonderful trip.Print This Post
I have always been fascinated with the short poetic form of Haiku and how much meaning can be put into just 17 syllables. During the pandemic I took a weekend Haiku workshop at Upaya Zen Center via Zoom. I had fun exploring the form and enjoyed reading Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines. However, it wasn’t until we began the Atenas Writers’ Group in Costa Rica that I was motivated to write Haiku on a regular basis. At the same time, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review was offering a six-week online Haiku course, “Learn to Write Haiku: Mastering the Ancient Art of Serious Play,” taught by Clark Strand. I quickly signed up. Most sessions were prerecorded but a few were live sessions where we could ask questions. Clark encouraged us to have a daily practice and to write lots each day! What a great opportunity to learn from Clark, as he is totally dedicated to Haiku, with a big commitment to write Haiku himself, translate classical and contemporary Japanese Haiku and to encourage others to write Haiku. Here is the bio that Tricycle has online:
Clark Strand is a former senior editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. His books include Seeds From a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey and The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary, which was co-authored with his wife, Perdita Finn. He teaches the popular group “Weekly Haiku Challenges with Clark Strand” on Facebook and leads Tricycle’s monthly haiku challenge, as well as the Tricycle Haiku Challenge Facebook group. (From Tricyle.org ‘s website)
The medium of watercolor has always both challenged and fascinated me so I decided I would choose the best Haikus that I wrote each week and do small watercolor paintings including the text in the painting. Since mid-August I have completed 35 painted Haiku ranging in size from 6” x 8” to 9” x 12”.
I also made the decision that the Haiku had to be inspired by what I saw in my own backyard. Living in Costa Rica, that’s not a problem. My husband used to say that we were living in our own National Park. In Clark’s course we were not only to follow the form of 3 lines with 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second and 5 in the last, but also to include a seasonal word. I decided to follow the traditional style as much as I could, including a seasonal word as it related to Costa Rica. I also thoroughly enjoyed the different samples of classical Haiku that we were exposed to.
It has been great fun to do this practice, and I have been quite consistent until recently, when I started writing prose to share with the Writers’ Group. I look forward to getting back to my Haiku/watercolor practice on a regular basis. Meanwhile, here are eight favorites. To see more, visit my Facebook page – JoAnne Tucker Art – where you can see all 35.
Nine months ago, I had never heard of the word “Ekphrastic.” In an Introduction to Poetry class that I took last fall, I learned that the word means “description” in Greek. According to The Poetry Foundation:
An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is Ode on a Grecian Urn, in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis
We were assigned to write an ekphrastic poem, and I had fun writing mine inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s Abstract White Rose, 1927. Here’s a link where you can see the painting: https://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/abstraction-white-rose.jsp
A Single White Rose
Petals curling and blending
Into each other. Unclear
Where one begins
And the other ends.
Grays become white
And white becomes grays
With a touch of yellow
Or maybe lavender or blue.
Circling into the center
And then back out again.
Like breathing in and
Catching one’s breath
And breathing out again.
Curving, circling, catching,
Breathing, weeping, centering,
A single white rose
Awakens a sadness
Deep within.
A second poetry course followed, led by Pam Wax, and later I showed her this poem and appreciated her feedback, which helped me to edit the poem to the version I just shared. Pam also talked about ekphrastic poetry and told us about Rattle, an online website with the mission of promoting the practice of poetry. Each month Rattle has an Ekphrastic Challenge where they share a piece of artwork and invite poets to submit poems inspired by the visual image. The artist whose artwork is featured gets to select a favorite poem, as does the editor, Timothy Green. I was fascinated and enjoyed exploring the website, seeing different artwork and the winning responses. As I continued exploring, I came across a request for artists to submit artwork for the Ekphrastic Challenge. Twelve pieces would be selected for the coming year.
Soon I was browsing through digital images of my artwork and came up with five pieces I thought might inspire poems. What a delight to get an email a few weeks later that The Kitchen Goddess had been selected for the February challenge.
In mid-March I received an email from Tim with an attachment that had 25 poems for me to select from. While 455 poems had been submitted, Tim had chosen just 25 for me to read. I read and reread the twenty-five submissions, and clearly one kept standing out to me. Before making my final decision, I went back and read them all again to see if I would change my mind. Here is what I wrote about my experience and the poem I selected, The Rebirth of Venus by Luisa Giulianetti:
I was delighted and surprised at the range of emotions and different journeys that were expressed in the poems which I reviewed. The pastel painting was part of a show calling for work on the theme of the kitchen goddess. I approached the painting from a whimsical point of view placing a dancer in a frying pan. The poem that I have selected captures the playfulness of the painting. It is called The Rebirth of Venus and the opening lines refer back to the painting Birth of Venus by Botticelli. I have fond memories of seeing that painting when I visited the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I laughed with delight with the phrase ‘found new digs.’ While the Botticelli painting was not on my mind when I created my kitchen goddess, the reference shows how two paintings inspired the poem, and I love that. In the poem, the poet has the dancing goddess opening a scallop and of course the original Venus is standing in a scallop shell. In addition, the poet also captured so well the feeling of the dancer in the kitchen ‘reigning supreme.’
Mostly Dance’s editor, Kezia Gleckman Hayman, was with me when I saw the painting Birth of Venus. We had spent time in Italy setting some of Avodah Dance Ensemble’s repertory on local dancers for a Jewish Film Festival. When our work was done we had a few fun-filled days sightseeing in Florence. Kezia reminded me that we were so fascinated with the painting that we went back to view it a second time. Here’s a link to see the Birth of Venus:https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/birth-of-venus
I was curious which poem the editor would choose, and I had to wait almost a week until it was published also as a poem of the day on March 30, 2023. He chose Joy by Melissa Madenski.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “The best ekphrastic poems expand on their source image, pushing the experience in a new direction. Joy does that by finding all-too real grounding for the rich symbolism of JoAnne Tucker’s painting. Rather than describe the woman dancing in the frying pan, the poem describes the emotion she represents—and through the otherwise unrelated metaphor of the train. As a result, the poem enriches the painting while the painting enriches the poem, as if the two pieces of art were bound in their own dance together, exploring the complex transition from the darkness of grief back to the brightness of joy.”
I was fascinated by his selection and that he focused on the emotion my Kitchen Goddess represented.
I encourage Mostly Dance readers to follow the link to the poems and not only to read them but to hear the poet read them. It adds another dimension. I am most grateful to Timothy Green for selecting The Kitchen Goddess for the February Ekphrastic Challenge, as it was fun, and an excellent learning experience. I look forward to following the Ekphrastic Challenges each month and reading the selected poems. I might even get brave enough to write a poem and submit it.
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