JoAnne Tucker - Mostly Dance

Thoughts after Streaming a Memorial for Dance Critic Jack Anderson

Whenever The Avodah Dance Ensemble held a performance in New York City, we sent out a press release to the dance critics. We were always hopeful that one of the three critics from The New York Times – Anna Kisselgoff, Jennifer Dunning, or Jack Anderson – would cover our event. While we were not always covered, we often were, several times by Jennifer Dunning and once by Jack Anderson.

In early January I received an email inviting me to a memorial service for Jack Anderson. He had died in October at the age of 88. I am not sure what list I was on that resulted in my receiving the invitation, but I was fascinated by some of the information in the notice, particularly that he was a poet besides being a dance historian and critic. On January 27^th at 4 in the afternoon I streamed the memorial held at St. Peter’s Church, Lexington Avenue, New York City. His poetry was read by different people throughout the service. Among the speakers was Anna Kisselgoff, who in a feisty voice shared what he didn’t like and that he had often been asked to go on the staff of The New York Times but preferred to freelance. Three dance pieces were woven into the service: a solo from Antony Tudor’s Dark Elegies performed by a soloist from the New York Dance Theatre; a piece by Baroque Dance; and a lyrical trio of liturgical dances by Dance @ Saint Peter’s.

After the memorial I wanted to learn more about Jack Anderson, so I turned to the obituary in The New York Times which opens with, “He brought an all-embracing enthusiasm to about 4,000 articles for The New York Times on modern dance, tap, ballet and practically every other genre.” His first article was written in 1978, and his last published piece was an obituary of Anna Halprin in 2021. Here’s the link to the New York Times obituary if you want to know more about Jack Anderson. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/arts/dance/jack-anderson-dead.html

Next, I found myself going through my digital files to find the review he had written about the Avodah Dance Ensemble. He reviewed a concert we gave at Hebrew Union College on May 31, 1997, which included pieces inspired by two poets: Primo Levi and Yehuda Amichai. Now that I know Anderson was a poet, I understand why he might have been assigned our concert to review. While it was a short review, it was a solid one, beginning with acknowledging the space we were performing in:

“The sanctuary of the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, a high, wide hall with walls of light wood that help make it look radiant, is used for concerts as well as for religious services. It was a fine setting for Avodah.”

A few other passages I liked and was able to use in publicity:

“Ms. Tucker choreographed clear patterns that could be adapted to performance spaces of many kinds.”

“ ‘Shema’ effectively contrasted relentless pacing, representing concentration camp regimentation with outbursts, symbolizing the prisoners’ turbulent personal feelings.”

I was glad to get the coverage, although I wish he had commented on the dancers, as they gave an excellent performance.

In December of 2023 I had read a reference to the fact that there were no longer any full-time dance critics on the staff of major newspapers. In fact, in 2015 an article appeared in The Atlantic entitled “The Death of the American Dance Critic.” At that time there were two full-time critics: Alastair Macaulay at The New York Times and Sarah Kaufman at The Washington Post. Neither of them is now on staff at either paper; now all reviewing is being done by freelance writers.

As I continued to explore options for reading dance reviews, I came across a Facebook page named “Dance Critics Association.” It has 647 members with regular posts. There used to be an active Dance Critics Association that was founded in 1973, but the last time it showed any life was around 2007-2008. Perhaps the FB page is now their only outlet. The good news is that it is very active, filled with lots of daily posts.

When I was director of The Avodah Dance Ensemble, getting good press and publicity was important for us. To be able to have a good quote to use in a press release or on our website was important to build our audience and to get bookings. I am glad I could honor Jack Anderson by streaming his memorial and by writing this blog. I want to honor and express gratitude for all the dance critics and writers who continue to review performances and write about dance.

Screenshot of scrapbook page. Fun to see our review was directly under another review of the New York City Ballet by Jennifer Dunning. Much easier to read the review by clipping on this link:

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A Visit to a Costa Rican Art Museum Triggers a Fascination with Mascaradas

JoAnne Tucker / March 23, 2024 / Art, Costa Rica, Personal Life

On February 17^th Art House Atenas owners Anna Matteucci and Felipe Keta lead a small group of Expats to San Jose to visit two museums: The Jade Museum and the Museo de Arte Costarricense (MAC). It was a delightful, interesting day. My favorite exhibit was called Valle Oscuro (dark valley) by painter Adrian Arguedas Ruano at the MAC .

As one enters the museum, Arguedas’s bold colorful paintings greet you. A few of his sculptures catch your immediate attention too. The works fill a large gallery room and three smaller adjoining rooms, mostly picturing masked community members along with unmasked figures. While some young children are painted wearing small masks of animals, others are wearing distorted, grotesque, large masks, and still others are depicted wearing large heads mounted on torsos making them look larger than life.

Felipe Keta talking about the artist in front of one of Arguedas’s paintings!

One of my favorite Arguedas paintings. I love the grandma in the center being surrounded by community participants, which captures the intergenerational life that is very important in Costa Rica.

All the paintings of Valle Oscuro were done between 2020 and 2022. On the artist’s website I learned about his fascination with masks:

Arguedas is a native of Barva de Heredia, a small town known for keeping the traditions of making popular mask parades. In his childhood, he found artistic inspiration through the figure of his great-uncle, named Carlos Salas, who worked sculpting the clay to prepare the base that would later serve as a mold to create the original traditional masks, made with paper. Salas had a powerful influence on the artist inspiration and artwork. https://www.adrianarguedas.com/bio.html

Doing more research, I learned that the mask tradition dates to pre-Hispanic time, when the aboriginal people made and used masks for various purposes. They were first used at funerals in two different ways: first, they were used by whoever led the mortuary procession so they appeared to have a higher power to lead the deceased to the other world, and second, they were given to the deceased to identify his role in the tribe. Shamans and chiefs also made special use of the masks as part of their rituals. These special masks are known as Mascaradas.

Today, in Costa Rica they are still part of community celebrations, and much to my delight I had an event in our town of Atenas where mascaradas were a highlight.

A friend on Facebook posted about a fundraising event on the full moon for a local church that included food, music, dance and mascaradas. The evening was called “Lunada Bailable,” and I loved the poster.

I went with some cousins who were visiting from Pittsburgh, and we had a wonderful evening. Music piped through a large sound system contributed to the festive quality of the event. I was surprised to hear a Spanish version of “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. When it got dark and the moon was shining bright, six local dancers began the formal entertainment. While not professional, they put all their energy into their routines. They waved their skirts and used scarfs as props. It was fun to watch one youngster, about age 4, who pretended she had on a long skirt and delighted in following their movement.

This was my favorite dancer to watch. She always had a smile on her face, dancing with lots of enthusiasm.

The closing event was the Mascaradas, with children from ages toddler to maybe 5 or 6 years old, wearing masks and dancing, joined by older boys and teenagers with full body masks! The older kids liked to come over to the tables of the audience that surrounded the performing space, and pretend to scare us.

It was a special evening for my cousins and me to be a part of this community event. I think we were the only ExPats attending.

Three photos showing the Mascaradas in action.

All photos in this blog are by JoAnne!

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The Pioneers of Modern Dance: My Firsthand Experience

JoAnne Tucker / April 26, 2024 / Dance History, Personal Life

Recently I was talking about the different teachers I had studied with as a young dancer between the ages of 15 and 21. I hadn’t thought of it before in quite these terms, but I am old enough to have had firsthand experience with most of the shapers of modern dance. These were amazing pioneers forging new traditions in dance from the 1920’s into the 1960’s and some beyond. Here is a list of these pioneers and a few sentences describing my experience with them, in the order I met them.

Ted Shawn (1891-1972) of Denishawn – He and Ruth St. Denis founded a company where a number of the pioneers got their first experience and opportunity to build long-term collaborations. I heard Ted Shawn speak at Jacob’s Pillow when he introduced the program that I went to see when I was a camper at a nearby camp. Jacob’s Pillow’s history goes back to 1933 when Shawn and his group of men did their first performance in a barn that still exists and is used for classes and performances today. Here’s a link to learn more about the founding of Jacob’s Pillow. The camp I attended was called Belgian Village and was located in Cummington, MA . I was there on a scholarship teaching dance to the younger campers. I can remember sitting in the Jacob’s Pillow theatre and being awed by both Ted Shawn’s inspiring words and an amazing performance that included modern dance, ballet and ethnic dance.

Martha Graham (1894 -1991) – I first met her at the age of 15 when she came to Pittsburgh for the premiere of her movie A Dancer’s World, which you can watch on YouTube. It is a wonderful introduction to her and her technique. Jeanne Beaman, my modern dance teacher in Pittsburgh, hosted a reception for Martha following a private showing of the film. I have a clear memory of being introduced to her and her encouraging me to come to NYC and take the Xmas course even though I was very young. I did go a year later, and from that time on, Graham technique was my favorite way to train. That was not the only time I had classes directly with her. She taught a week of classes at the six-week summer program at the American Dance Festival which I attended twice. There were also occasions when she taught at the New York studio. She, the technique she developed, and how she choreographed her pieces were a major influence on me!

Helen Tamiris (1902-1966) – I auditioned for her in 1958 at Perry-Mansfield Camp and was accepted into a piece she choreographed during the three weeks she was there. Martha Clarke and I were the only two younger-than-college-age dancers who were part of her piece Dance for Walt Whitman. (I’ve written before about Tamiris and Dance for Walt Whitman; here is a link to that blog. The fact that Tamiris recognized my abilities reaffirmed my commitment to be a dancer. She also influenced significantly my understanding of choreographic elements. Currently Elizabeth McPherson, a member of Avodah Dance Ensemble during seven of the years I directed the company, is working on a book about Tamiris. When Elizabeth spent three weeks at the artist residency program I hold at my home, we spent many hours talking about Tamiris, and it was great fun for me to learn new things about her life. I was so glad that we were able to stage some of Tamiris’s choreography when Elizabeth set Tamiris’s piece Negro Spirituals for the Avodah Dance Ensemble.

Charles Weidman (1901-1975) – I was part of a class he taught in kinetic pantomime at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in 1960. He staged a demonstration that we performed in a Festival program. It was during one of his rehearsals that Martha Hill, the chairman of the dance department of Juilliard, saw me rehearsing and remembered me from an audition I had taken for Juilliard about six weeks before. She found me after class and asked me to reaudition. I hadn’t made that first audition, but she felt I now would get into the school.

Photo from Connecticut College, 1960, of the Charles Weidman piece I was in. I am the dancer on the left. I do not know who the other two dancers are.

Martha Hill (1900- 1995) – I mentioned in the last paragraph that she encouraged me to reaudition for Juilliard, which I did about a year later. While I didn’t have a lot of direct contact with her while I was at Juilliard, the program that she developed at Juilliard and my two years as a student there shaped me as an artist. The tools and ability to focus on my “art” carried over from dance to painting and filmmaking. I have tremendous respect for the role she played in the development of dance education in colleges. Elizabeth McPherson has written an excellent book about her, and here is a link to a blog I wrote about the book.

Louis Horst (1884 – 1964) – I took my first of three composition classes from him in the summer of 1961, at Connecticut College. In Pre-Classic Dance Forms, he encouraged me to continue with him, even though I wasn’t yet a student at Juilliard. I did so (as a special student), continuing to take his second-year course, Modern Forms. By mid-semester I had become a full-time student at Juilliard. The following year I took his third and final formal course, Group Forms. I loved his classes. His demanding insistence that we follow the clear form of different musical dances instilled a discipline and focus on how I used movement in dance pieces. His second-year course began a long appreciation of art and how much we can learn from different periods of art history. A good example of how this later influenced me can be found in how I used a painting as a basis for I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Here’s a link to a blog where I go into detail about this. Last fall, Nancy Bannon was here on an artist residency working on a play about Louis Horst and Martha Graham, and I learned lots of interesting things about Louis’s life. She shared with me a wonderful book by Janet Soares about Louis that I look forward to reviewing in an upcoming blog.

There are two pioneers from the period that I didn’t get to study with directly although I did study with their disciples.

Doris Humphrey (1895 -1958) – Her name is associated with Charles Weidman (they formed together The Humphrey-Weidman Company) and with Jose Limon (she mentored him when he was her student, and when she retired from her own company, she became Artistic Director of his Limon Company). I took classes in Limon technique at Juilliard and sometimes had a class directly from Limon. Although I wasn’t fond of the technique, I loved Limon’s choreography as well as pieces that I saw of Humphrey’s. In particular, Humphrey’s Water Study (1928), The Shakers (1931), and Passacaglia (to Bach’s Music) are among my favorites. Passacaglia was revived at Juilliard during the time I was there. I am so glad that I got to see Jose dance in The Moor’s Pavane along with Betty Jones, Lucas Hoving and Pauline Koner. Some of his other pieces that have created a lasting memory are There Is a Time and Missa Brevis.

While I did not study directly with Humphrey, her philosophy and writing did have an influence on me, such as her movement exercises of fall and recovery. “She called this the arc between two deaths. At one extreme an individual surrenders to the nature of gravity; at the other, one attempts to achieve balance.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Humphrey). Her book The Art of Making Dance (1958), which I read several years after it was published, was also helpful to me, and it was a regular reference book in my library. I keep in mind to this very day her statement that the last seconds of a piece of choreography are most important. For me, that reminder carries over to all art forms.

Hanya Holm (1893 – 1999) One of the dancers that she strongly influenced, Don Redlich, choreographed a piece that I was in while a teenager in Pittsburgh. It was interesting working with him, but I don’t remember anything unique about the experience that I can trace back to Holm. I do remember loving her choreography in My Fair Lady which I saw shortly after it opened with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in 1956.

Writing this blog has felt like a journey down memory lane. I am grateful to have experienced firsthand so many of the modern dance pioneers. I welcome readers who may have worked with some of them to share their experiences in the comment section.

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