Author: JoAnne Tucker

Musical Theatre: A Favorite Passion (Part II)

JoAnne Tucker / / Film, Musical Theater, Personal Life

“What books do you suggest I read to learn more about the history of musical theatre and how different composers and librettists work together?” I asked one evening, as a resident graduate of NYU’s MFA program in musical theatre and another resident working on a novel joined me on the porch to enjoy the sunset.

“One of my favorites books,” responded the musical theatre resident, “is called Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George. And I can email you the reading list that students get from NYU when they are accepted into the program.”

She did indeed email me the list, entitled “Year 1 Textbooks & Summer Reading/Listening.” It is an extensive and challenging reading list.  It begins with their required textbook: American Musicals: The Complete Books and Lyrics of 16 Broadway Classics, 1927-1969 (Library of America) by Laurence Maslon.  I was really pleased to see how many of the musicals in their textbook I had seen and enjoyed.  If you remember from the last blog, as a youngster I danced to the original cast albums in my friend’s living room.  Today there are quite a few I listen to while I am walking/dancing in the swimming pool.  I am surprised to see that well over 75% of the sixteen musicals are favorites of mine and I know most of the words of the songs.  Check this link and press “more” to see the names of the 16 musicals that are included in the two-volume set.

The required reading goes on to list 42 more current musical theatre works with which the student should be familiar, and again I have seen many of them.  But there are some I haven’t seen, and so I am building my own list of what I need to listen to, read or see if I can find them on YouTube.  Next there is a list of 50 plays the faculty recommends, as they feel musical theatre has often been lacking in diversity.  I hunch I won’t spend much time going over this list although I applaud the program for wanting future musical theatre writers to be familiar with these works.  The last section intrigues me as it continues with books on the writing and process of creating a musical theatre work.   WHEW… so if I get bored I have a lot of resources to go to in a field I am passionate about.

The resident novelist also responded to my question and made a super suggestion, “Read Mary Rodgers’ Shy: The Alarming Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers.

I didn’t know much about Mary Rodgers other than her being the daughter of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame.  My curiosity was piqued and so I downloaded the audio book written by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green. The book had me laughing from the very beginning.  She immediately lets you know that Richard Rodgers was no saint.  When someone is identified by the narrator Christine Baranski (who is reading Mary’s voice), Jesse Green gives us immediate notes about the person.  For Richard Rodgers, Jesse states,  “1902 – 1979, composer, womanizer, alcoholic, genius.”  The main game Richard Rodgers played with his two daughters was getting them to identify musical intervals.  That’s ear training, which is part of college composition courses.  The girls loved it and his reaction when they got it right. The first chapter, called “Hostility,” goes on to name a variety of games that Mary played with various people in her life, most of whose names are very familiar if you are a musical theatre person.  Among her close friends was Stephen Sondheim, and he figures a lot in the narrative.

It was a quick listen as the book continues with a sense of humor, sarcasm and inside scoop on what the musical theatre royalty celebrities’ life was like.  It was great fun for me, and I learned some interesting things about Mary Rodgers, a writer/composer herself.  Even though she was married two times and had three children with each husband, she was the main support of her family.  She faced many challenges as a woman in the mainly male-oriented musical theatre writing and composing world.

Among her unique jobs was writing songs for the Little Golden Books for children, and assisting the producer for Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts which were television specials from 1958 – 1972.  She wrote the novel Freaky Friday in 1972, and it has had a long life of entertaining people with the playful situation of a mom and daughter switching places for a day. Disney has made three films with the name and story outline. The first one was in 1977 and starred Jodie Foster as Annabelle the daughter and Barbara Harris as the mother. It tickled me to see how the Disney channel describes each of the four movies just a bit differently.

For the 1977 version the description is, “A free-spirited girl switches bodies with her strait-laced mother.”  When they remade the film, released in 2003, it starred Lindsay Lohan as Anna the daughter and Jamie Lee Curtis as the mom and was then described as, “A mother and daughter see things a bit differently when they switch bodies.”  I watched the 2003 film and it was a perfect antidote to the day’s news.  Fast forward to 2018 and now it’s “Disney’s madcap musical teen Ellie and Mom Katherine swap bodies” starring Cozi Zuehlsdorff as Ellie and Heidi Blickenstaff as the mom.

Next time I need a funny cheer-me-up from the day’s headlines I will watch one of the other interpretations.  And I can look forward to one that is soon to be released by Disney called Freakier Friday which is being billed as the sequel to the 2003 film version.

I’m fascinated by how Mary Rodgers’ novel has motivated different interpretations, and I look forward to watching all the films and comparing them with the original 1977 which is probably closest to the book.  In fact, as a beginning writer, curious about how something is adapted to theater or film, reading the actual novel sounds appropriate.

Until reading Shy I mainly knew Mary Rodgers as composer for Once Upon a Mattress.  I was lucky to see the show, which starred Carol Burnett, in 1959. I was taken to see it by my father’s elderly great-aunt and uncle, who lived in NYC when I was taking a modern dance intensive at the Martha Graham Studio.  I had to pass up my favorite habit of waiting at the stage door to get autographs.  While the show didn’t have a long run (256 performances) it is still frequently performed by community and school groups across the United States, and a Google search proved just how popular the show has been.

On YouTube you can watch two made-for-television productions, both starring Carol Burnett, one made in 1964 and the other in 1972.  In 2024 Sutton Foster played the Carol Burnett role of Princess Winnifred on Broadway, and in fact opening on July 16th there is a production at Central City Opera in Central City, Colorado.  Indeed, as Mary stated in her book, there is always a production of Once Upon a Mattress playing somewhere.    Next time I am looking for something to dance to in the pool, it will be the original cast album of Once Upon a Mattress available on YouTube.

I highly recommend Shy for the inside story on famous people in the musical theatre world during the 40’s through 60’s.  It was also valuable to learn how shows are developed and how Mary Rodgers persevered as a woman competing in a male-dominated career.  I love that her work continues to have a presence in the entertainment world today, over 50 years later.

 

Book Cover

Next blog will be a look at Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George by James Lapine.  Meanwhile if you have seen Once Upon a Mattress or Freaky Friday I would love to hear your thoughts!  And of course, if you have read Shy, please share too.

Musical Theatre – A Favorite Passion (Part I)

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Costa Rica, Musical Theater

Three years ago, I began an Artist in Residency program at my home in Costa Rica. Slowly the residency has built from three sessions (a total of seven artists) the first year (based only on my own mailing list) to nine residencies this year with  three artists here at a time. I will again be offering nine next year.  The word is out, and it is now listed in several writers’ newsletters. Last summer it was sent to alumni of a musical theatre MFA program. Several graduates of musical theatre programs have attended, which has added an extra delight to my hosting, as I have loved musical theatre since I was a child.  It is fun having residents here who are developing scripts, working on both the libretto and music. The first group here donated a portable keyboard they had brought. Music will often drift out of the casita or from the porch, reminding me of the halls of Juilliard.

My introduction to musical theatre began with dancing to recordings in my friend Regina’s living room.  I’ve written about it in an earlier blog sharing how much fun we had dancing to musicals of the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Here’s a link to that blog.

In 1956, my Dad had a business meeting in NYC and decided to take my mom and me along. Knowing how much I loved musicals, he got us tickets to see My Fair Lady with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, and Gypsy with Ethel Merman. If I wasn’t hooked before that trip I certainly was after it.  I loved seeing the musicals on stage, not just listening to the records.  And of course, as an enthusiastic 13-year-old, I insisted on waiting at the stage door to get autographs.  Julie Andrews was so sweet, inviting me to stand under her umbrella (it was lightly drizzling) as she signed my autograph.  The night before, Ethel Merman wouldn’t even stop to acknowledge me.  Oh well… I still loved her performance in Gypsy.

From then on, Mom and I regularly went to see musicals at the Nixon Theatre in downtown Pittsburgh.  One highlight was seeing Damn Yankees, with a cast member Al Checco.  My Mom remembered him from when he would hang out at my grandparents’ house during the WWII.  He and my uncle had not been drafted and were in school at the time, in a music and theatre program.  My father had been drafted and so my Mom and I were living at my grandparents’ house. It was quite lively with my uncle’s friends often playing music and singing in the living room.  At Damn Yankees, I asked if we could go backstage and of course we did. I had fun seeing the reunion between my Mom and Al, with Al being very kind to me, having remembered me as a toddler.

I’m not sure exactly how old I was then, but I was old enough to apply to be an usher at the Nixon Theatre for Saturday afternoons.  I don’t think I got paid, and it must have been some special program they had for high schoolers to get to see more theatre. For at least two years I regularly ushered, and my favorite thing was when a show was there for more than one week and I could see it twice.  When Can-Can came to town and was there for two weeks, I noticed that the person who had recreated Kidd’s original choreography, Socartes Birsky, was touring and performing in the production.  I boldly went backstage after the show and introduced myself to him and invited him to come and visit my house on his day off and to see a piece I was choreographing to Ravel’s Bolero.  He did come and was very polite and encouraging.  He joined us for dinner and then one of my parents drove him back to the hotel where he was staying.

My choice for attending Perry-Mansfield was based on Helen Tamiris being the guest teacher for the first three weeks.  She was a pioneer of modern dance as well as a choreographer of several Broadway shows.  My experience of working with her for three weeks profoundly impacted my life.  Here’s a blog where I have written about working with her.

When I realized how important it was to be a triple threat for a career in musical theatre, and my singing voice just couldn’t cut it, I put my performing focus on modern dance.

I did choreograph a high school production of The King and I and later directed community musical theatre. I have written about my experience directing Fiddler on the Roof. Here’s the link to see that blog.

Having graduates of musical theatre programs in residence working on original theatre pieces is a delight.  We have lively conversations about favorite musicals.  I learn about new trends and recommendations of books to read and where to find musicals online that I might not know about.  I’ll be exploring that in Part II. I end this blog with a picture of the group currently in residence.  They graduated from Berklee’s Theater Arts Collaborative in New York City last year.  They are continuing to work on Coretta – The Musical  that they started when a part of the program.

From left to right: Neil Baker, Akili Wynn-Beavers, and Letitia Bullard

 

Finding Balance in a Challenging World

JoAnne Tucker / / Art, Current Events, Personal Life

One of the last pieces that I created for The Avodah Dance Ensemble was called Balancing Act.  I was fascinated with the different ways we catch ourselves when we are losing our balance and how we can support each other to find balance.  The motivation for creating the piece was mainly from a physical point of view, although there were certain emotional challenges that I was facing at the time.  I didn’t explore any; I just approached the choreography with a physical fascination.

I love this picture from the piece. In this moment the dancer is grounded to the floor with her one leg while the rest of her is reaching out… looking … exploring what’s around her, with both arms testing the space, her focus up and one leg in the air reaching for a giant step forward.  Try this … balance on one foot with your head facing the ceiling!  Natrea Blake did an outstanding job in the piece.

Photo by Tom Brazil

If I were to create this piece today it would come totally from an emotional place.  The events of the past year pose daily hurdles for me to keep my balance and stay informed with what is happening in the world without sinking into a deep depression.  A quick Google search of the relationship between the news and mental health showed that I am not alone.  In today’s blog, I’ll share what is helping me to stay aware of what is happening, while maintaining a healthy outlook. I welcome you to add a comment as to the tools you are using.

  1. Setting limits. I set boundaries as to how much time I will spend keeping up with the news.  I find I can no longer spend even a half hour listening to news.  I am best to read headlines on the computer and then a few paragraphs of an article.  I also rely on a few daily email journalists on Substack to skim what they are sharing.
  2. Being creative each day is essential. For me, spending some time painting is very calming. When I am painting, all my focus is on the picture.

A painting I just completed of a Pitahaya in full bloom.

  1. My new project of creating a dance film about resistance is helping. Even though I am realistic that my goal will be to finish it and share it on this blog, it feels good to be doing something related to my concern for democracy in the United States.
  2. Challenging myself to do something new.  And then feeling good about accomplishing it.  Leaf cutter ants are both amazing and a problem in Costa Rica. Overnight an army of these ants can destroy a tree, making a parade back to the nest carrying a part of a leaf.  Recently when I was walking the property I discovered I had three different areas affected.  I solved the problem through both pellets and painting a dot on the leaves as the ants marched by. The ants carry either the pellet or the leaf with the poison dot back to the nest.  I only spent 15 minutes focused on painting leaves or putting out pellets, and there are no more ants doing damage today.  Of course, I will need to keep a daily watch and most likely repeat this several more times in the next few months.
  3. Reaching out to friends, particularly in person, and enjoying time together with only limited conversation related to the news.
  4. In the evening watching fun movies that cheer me up.

 

These are some of the things that are helping to keep my spirits up.  I want to hear what you are doing.  Please share in the comment section so we can all benefit.

Burning Desire to Choreograph – A Dance of Resistance

JoAnne Tucker / / Current Events, Holocaust Repertory, Personal Life

For the past few months, I have found myself missing working with dancers the way I did for over 30 years with The Avodah Dance Ensemble.  At first my recent focus was on creating a work inspired by the labyrinth in my garden.  I haven’t abandoned the idea and still envision a piece that can be performed on the labyrinth and filmed.  It will also be developed into a performance piece for the stage.  But in the past few days another idea has been driving me, and that is what I want to focus on in this blog.

I am very glad to be living in Costa Rica rather than the United States right now. However, that doesn’t mean I am not VERY concerned with what is happening in the United States, and I do want to take some kind of action to support the growing call for change.  Surprisingly I am inspired by the writing of David Brooks in The New York Times.  Brooks was one of my husband’s favorite columnists.  Brooks is a moderate, centrist, and conservative unlike me.  I consider myself a liberal and strong Democrat.   Yet the past two articles that he wrote resonated with me.   For example, in an April 17th column he stated:

Trump’s behavior has aroused great moral indignation. It has aroused in people’s hearts a sense that something sacred is being trampled here — democracy, rule of law, intellectual freedom, compassion, pluralism and global exchange. These things are worth fighting for.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/trump-harvard-law-firms.html

Then in an April 24th column he wrote:

[W]e are the beneficiaries of a precious inheritance. Our ancestors bequeathed to us a judicial system, great universities, compassionate aid organizations, great companies and scientific genius. My mission statement would be: America is great, and we will fight for what has made America great. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/opinion/trump-administration-energy-strength-weakness.html

After reading the second column, the urge to use my talents to respond was triggered.  A dance of resistance.  And I have a clear vision of how it will begin.  There is a moment in the piece I created in 1976 called I Never Saw Another Butterfly, based on poems written by children in the Terezin concentration camp, where the dancers link arms and lunge forward moving strongly on the diagonal. That is how my new piece will begin.

Kezia Gleckman Hayman and Beth Millstein demonstrating linking the arms together in a rehearsal.
The Avodah Dance Ensemble performing I Never Saw Another Butterfly at a high school: the lunge with arms linked.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly was the first piece I choreographed for a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. It was soon joined by Kaddish, which is set to the opening eight minutes of Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony.  Primo Levi’s poetry inspired a third piece, Shema, several years later.  These three pieces were an important part of Avodah’s repertory using dance to bring awareness to the Holocaust and were performed in settings such as a Catholic Boys School in Jersey City, an Interfaith Conference, and a Community College in Philadelphia, in addition to many schools, universities, synagogues and Jewish community centers.

My new piece would see dancers (maybe 20 or 30) coming from different directions of the stage and slowly linking arms in several lines building a strong force of energy to become a unison statement to lunge forward and continue to progress in unison with choreography yet to be designed.

In the past when I decided on a theme, one of my first steps was to research all I could find on the subject. A few days ago, I googled dances of resistance.  Wow did I get a lot of information.  I encourage interested readers to do the same and see how dance has for centuries been a tool to bring a community together and to make strong statements of resistance.

I was also curious to see if there were examples of linking arms together for resistance and change, and indeed there are.

One is an event that created a human chain connecting Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to the Tennessee State Capitol, which took place April 18, 2023. The purpose was to support changes in gun laws to make public spaces safer.  https://news.vumc.org/2023/04/19/linking-arms-for-change-images-from-the-event/

A title of a book that was published in 2001 called Linked Arms: A Rural Community Resists Nuclear piqued my curiosity. The book describes how a rural group used civil disobedience to defy the nuclear industry and governmental authority, preventing the building of a nuclear dump in western New York.  While I don’t know if the group linked arms as part of the demonstrations, my hunch is they did, hence the title of the book.

On May 1, 2025, The New York Times reported that after a speech in Philadelphia by Bernie Sanders, “dozens of demonstrators locked arms and sat down at an intersection near a highway entrance for about 30 minutes before police began to make arrests.”

Artists have long been responding to injustice, political upheaval, and social causes with their talents.  This is an important time for all of us to be active.  I close with some recent words from Mikhail Baryshnikov’s International Dance Day Message (April 29, 2025):

It’s often said that dance can express the unspeakable. Joy, grief, and despair become visible; embodied expressions of our shared fragility. In this, dance can awaken empathy, inspire kindness, and spark a desire to heal rather than harm. Especially now—as hundreds of thousands endure war, navigate political upheaval, and rise in protest against injustice—honest reflection is vital. It’s a heavy burden to place on the body, on dance, on art. Yet art is still the best way to give form to the unspoken, and we can begin by asking ourselves: Where is my truth? How do I honor myself and my community? Whom do I answer to? Link to article.  

A Chance Meeting and A Shared Interest – An Inspiring Project – Flyaway Productions: Collaboration with Incarcerated Women

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance related to work in Prison

Each three-week Casa Uno Artist Residency Program ends with the artists presenting their work before invited guests who live in Atenas.  Recently I asked a friend to help me set up and clean up for these events.  For one presentation she had a conflict and suggested that her daughter could help instead, and that is how I met Raya and learned of a shared interest in the arts.

As Raya and I chatted, I mentioned how meaningful the work was that the dance company I had directed(Avodah Dance Ensemble) had done with women in prison.  This resonated with Raya, as two weeks earlier while in San Francisco, she had seen a performance called “If I Give You My Sorrows: Women Exposing Prison through Dance.”  She promised to have her mom give me the program and an accompanying poetry zine, The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art and Poetry.

The program and zine of poetry fascinated me and made me want to learn more about the project, especially Jo Kreiter, the Artistic Director of the dance company.  The performance that Raya saw is part of a larger project of Flyaway Productions.

I learned that Jo Kreiter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and the Guggenheim Foundation website provided excellent information.

Jo Kreiter is a San Francisco-based choreographer and site artist with a background in political science. Through dance she engages imagination, physical innovation and the political conflicts we live within. She founded Flyaway Productions in 1996. Flyaway is an apparatus-based dance company that explores the range and power of female physicality. Flyaway creates dances on both architectural and fabricated steel objects, with dancers suspended anywhere from 2 to 100 feet in the air. The company uses the artistry of spinning, flying, and exquisite suspension to engage political issues and to articulate the experiences of unseen women.

In the program that Raya shared, Kreiter states: “Our work is politically driven, site-specific, and off the ground.  Flyaway’s tools include coalition building, an intersectional feminist lens and a body-based push against the constraints of gravity.”

In the Director’s Note, Kreiter recounts: “I became a woman with an incarcerated loved one.  I therefore know a lot about men’s prisons. I’ve sat in the waiting rooms of half a dozen men’s prisons around the country both visiting my loved one and working with activist men doing the radical work of prison systems change from the inside.”

For the past eight years, Jo Kreiter has turned her attention to incarcerated women, and I very much agree with her that they are “the most overlooked and under-resourced people living behind bars.”  She reports that according to the Sentencing Project, “between 1980 and 2021, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 525% with the rate of imprisonment for Black women over 15% higher than for white women.”    A TED talk that I did with Aine in 2015 shares similar statistics and describes our experience of working with women in jail in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The zine The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art and Poetry was motivated by the prompt, “How is your bed an antidote?”  It is a repeat collaboration between Flyaway Productions, Empowerment Avenue, and Museum of the African Diaspora which focused on the experiences of women from the nation’s largest prison for women – Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. It was curated from the prison by Chantell-Jeannette Black and Tomiekia Johnson.

The format of the zine is unique with a transcribed poem on the left page and a scanned original document handwritten with artwork on the right side.

A visit to Flyaway Productions’ website surprised me with the following notice:

Flyaway is proud to share the entire performance of IF I GIVE YOU MY SORROWS. Folks often ask us if we can share a whole show with them, so here you go. Let us know what you think!

While I couldn’t see the performance in person, I did watch the entire 55 minutes at home, and you can too. Here’s the link:  https://vimeo.com/1062523185

I highly recommend watching the performance, as it is an exciting example of a well-constructed dance piece that stays focused on its theme, with variety – using words, diverse music, and solos, duets, trios, quartets to an ending quintet.  Some of the choreography is on the ground; other times a bed is floated in the air with the dancer or dancers interacting. The 55-minute piece constantly changes how the beds are used, from the opening small bed held by a dancer, to hanging beds — sometimes horizontal and other times vertical.  The dancers are excellent.  We hear the voices of the four poets often with key phrases repeated.

Thank you, Flyaway Productions, for making it possible for those who don’t live in the San Francisco area to be able to see the artistically filmed performance.    And thank you, Raya, for sharing the program and poetry zine with me.

Zine Cover of Women’s writing.
Program cover from a performance.

A Visit to La Senda

JoAnne Tucker / / Costa Rica, Personal Life

Ever since Ronald Esquivel designed Camino del Artista – the labyrinth at my home, Casa Uno – I have wanted to visit La Senda, the largest labyrinth in the world, which Esquivel collaborated in creating.  It is located outside of Tamarindo, about 4 hours from my home. I also knew that someday I would get there.  I did, on my birthday this January.  Pam Wax, a friend and poet who leads workshops and writes about labyrinths, also wanted to visit, so the trip was planned when she was here.

First challenge was how to get from Atenas to La Senda without renting a car.  It’s fun how things fall into place. Several months ago, former Avodah dancer Kerri Anne Grace visited and shared how she had found an easy way to travel around Costa Rica by using Interbus (https://www.interbusonline.com). While they don’t list Atenas as one of their routes, I learned from Kerri that you can call and make a reservation and request both a pickup and drop off at a gas station outside of town. We took a 20-minute taxi ride from home to the gas station, and the bus was right on time to pick us up.  About halfway into the trip our small bus of about 18 people stopped at a large roadside area that had a restaurant, gift store, bathrooms and a large parking lot where other vans were parked.  We all got off and had a relaxing time enjoying some refreshments while our driver moved any checked luggage to the next van that would take us to our destination. The wait for the next van can be as short as 10 minutes or as long as an hour depending on traffic and vans’ arrivals.  I was impressed with the organization of the system and the comfort of the waiting area.  It was fun to talk to some of the other passengers and to discover this was a very safe and economical way to travel around Costa Rica.  I thought to myself… yes, I would use this again.

Once in Tamarindo we were met by a driver from La Senda and made the half-hour drive to the beautiful 74-acre property located in a tropical dry forest. We were met by  one of the owners, Ann Vervoort. Although I had not met Ann in person we had been on several Zoom and WhatsApp groups related to labyrinths in Costa Rica so it felt like I was meeting a good friend.  She drove us to our glamping unit which was almost a half mile away.  Pam and I each had our own separate unit.

La Senda’s website (https://lasendacostarica.com/en/) describes the glamping units:

These units that we call Leaves of Hojas in Spanish are architectural pearls, 4 meters (13’) high and 10 meters (33’) long.  They each have a private, partly open-air bathroom and a terrace with view of the forest.  All Leaves are equipped with movable fans. We did not opt for AC so prana can flow freely.  Staying at our Leaves opens the opportunity to connect fully with Nature.

Shortly after I got settled, I heard rustling outside of the front door, and sure enough there were several monkeys playing in the trees.  I sat on the steps of my unit watching and photographing them.

As it was cooler and the air more refreshing, I decided I wanted to walk to the labyrinth and begin to experience it.  The glamping units have a lovely path through the forest to the labyrinth. It is a back way to enter, not the usual day-visitors’ entrance.  As I walked I felt like I was going to a special sacred site.

I easily found the sign to enter the labyrinth.  I immediately felt its largeness and how the path is defined by diverse cacti of different sizes.

A description on the website states:

the position of the entrance in the North, and the exit in the South, the fact that all turns had to take place in the central part of the labyrinth, there had to be 14 layers (two times seven = two complete musical scales), and it had to be built out of cactus to attract Prana (Life Force), according to the knowledge from local indigenous tribes.

As the biggest in the world, the labyrinth measures above 2.5 acres (over 1 hectare) and the path is almost 2 miles (3km) long. It took 6 years to develop and now is fully planted with over 5.000 cactus. All sentient beings, like humans, animals, and plants in La Senda constantly live under the upbeat influence of this big pulsing heart of energy.

I walked slowly and sometimes stopped to make sure I had made the correct turn.  The sun was beginning to set and the colors were intense and beautiful, particularly looking toward what I learned was Tiger Mountain.

 After a while I was beginning to feel tired and realized I was also near the first of the two centers.  It was a big circular opening with cut down tree logs to sit on.

I sat down.  Within a few minutes I both felt and saw clear waves of energy coming from the sides of my legs.  The palms of my hands felt intensely warm.  I stayed very still and quietly heard a voice inside me say, “Be.”  I knew I didn’t need to do anything.  Just sit there.  I sat for a while until the sun was set and it was getting dark.  I put on the phone’s flashlight and made my way out of the labyrinth and back to the path that led me to my glamping unit.  Since La Senda only serves breakfast and twice-a-week Farm-to-Table dinners, I had brought food for dinner as this was not a Farm-to-Table evening.  I didn’t have much appetite, and I was too tired to do anything other than “be.” I did not write, read or sketch as I had planned. Even today, over 6 weeks later, I still am processing the experience.

The next morning after breakfast I had a chance to talk with Ann and learned that there are two opposite charged centers found in the middle of the labyrinth. One is feminine and the other masculine. The labyrinth was designed with these two spots as centers. Where I was sitting was the feminine center.

Sergio Salas, an expert in energy work, discovered these energy points on the property. Sergio collaborated with Ronald Esquivel and together they designed the unique layout based on sacred geometry and the energy setting.

My second day at La Senda, I decided to walk the perimeter of the labyrinth instead of following its path and completing the full distance of visiting each of the two centers and exiting.  I photographed as I walked, taking in its diverse cacti and acknowledging how large and unique it is.  I climbed the stairs of a pavilion and took some pictures but was not able to get the full labyrinth in a single camera shot.

My body felt an internal energy surge different than I had ever experienced. I felt mindful to be quiet and still.  I didn’t feel unsafe or unhealthy, just a clear message to “be.”

I am now home and walking my home labyrinth that I had a part in designing with Ronald Esquivel. Since visiting La Senda I may be finding a different, quieter purpose emerging for this chapter in my life.  It is to “be” here as a keeper of this home I call Casa Uno and to share it.

Wicked: An Extraordinary Dance Scene

JoAnne Tucker / / Current Dance Events, Dance Education, Dance in Film, Healing Voices - Personal Stories, Movement Workshops

In Wicked, which I loved and have watched three times, there is a dance scene that speaks to me in a very special way.

It’s the dance scene that takes place in the Ozdust Ballroom.  We are introduced to the Ballroom by the animals playing the musical instruments – a fun touch to make this experience resonant in a different way.  This isn’t any ballroom; it is the Ozdust Ballroom.

Immediately a stomp kind of dance begins, introduced by Fijero, the main male love character.  This section becomes unique when Nessarose and her partner join in.  Nessarose is confined to a wheelchair, and energetic movement has been designed by the choreographer to match what the rest of the dance partners are doing.  Watch Marissa Bode talk about her role in Wicked and see clips from this scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP4nZI24osI

When Elphaba enters she does very intense abrupt movement, different than we have seen in the movie before.  In an interview of choreographer Christopher Scott in Dance Spirit magazine, he explains, “Elphaba does have a voice through movement, but it’s a very specific voice and it’s different ….And that’s who she is, she’s just different.”

The movement is jarring and establishes Elphaba’s character.  That was one of Scott’s goals, as the interviewer in the Dance Spirit recounts.  The process was a collaborative exploration. “First, he sat down with each cast member to discuss their version of their character, so that his choreography could enhance, rather than conflict with, their vision. ‘It was amazing how much information they had at the beginning, how thoughtful they were from the day they came into the first rehearsal.’”

In the ballroom scene it couldn’t be clearer how movement enhances Elphaba’s character development.  Elphaba’s dance begins with sharp movements and then quiets down with hand movements.  At first the others in the room make fun of her. What happens next affirms how thoughtfully the choreography was created to advance the plot.  Glinda joins her and slowly takes on her movement.  She is mirroring Elphaba’s simple gestures and establishing a total connection to her that captivates all the other participants in the ballroom, and soon they are also picking up the gestures. Elphaba and Glinda’s duet ends with a hug establishing their closeness.

While there is much more to say about how powerful dance is throughout the film, I want to  focus on this segment of choreography and the power of Glinda’s mirroring of Elphaba’s movement. Elphaba’s choice of movement establishes her character at a deeper level.  Glinda’s mirroring of the movement shows a change in their relationship and empathy between the two.  The community of dancers at the ballroom taking up the gestures further enhances Elphaba’s acceptance.

While as a choreographer I don’t remember using mirroring as part of any pieces I created, it was a regular technique I used when leading workshops.  In fact, when I occasionally lead a movement activity today it is often the way I invite a group of non-dancers to begin to experience moving together.  It is simple to instruct:  1) find a partner; 2) decide that one person in the pair is the leader and that the other will be the follower; 3) begin moving using simple movements that will be easy to follow, with the goal that an observer can’t tell who is leading and who is following.

Once the partners are working well together, give the instruction to switch the roles within each pair without stopping the movement.  Give these directions quite a few times so the pairs are regularly alternating leadership.   Next invite them to change partners and repeat the same process again.  Repeat this as many times as seems appropriate for the group.

The result I have observed is that people begin to get to know each other.  They quickly build relationships, and especially if they really focus on each other, it can build a special connection.  During COVID I participated in a movement workshop on Zoom, where we were divided into rooms with one other person and did the mirroring activity, and it was extremely meaningful.

A good example of how mirroring works can be seen in a film I directed for Healing Voices-Personal Stories where we used mirroring both in building trust and empathy with the group of domestic violence survivors.   We then demonstrated the activity as part of a performance the group shared. Here’s a photo from the film and a link to the film.  The section on mirroring occurs at 5:00 minutes in.

From Healing Voices – Personal Stories film Through the Door.
From a workshop with children living in temporary housing. Leading the group is Kezia, this blog’s editor,
standing behind the two girls. Kezia notes that when working with children, it is often necessary to remind them that the goal is NOT to try to trick each other, but to match each other as closely as possible, and WITHOUT touching each other.

 

From an adult workshop in Staten Island.

If you haven’t seen Wicked yet, I encourage you to.  And if you have and you decide to see it again, pay attention to the Ozdust Ballroom scene.  It was very special to see a movement technique that I often used to build community and introduce non-movers to dance used in a strong artistic way to further the plot and the main characters’ relationships.

 

Dance News Daily: New Project of Danielle Guillermo

JoAnne Tucker / / Current Dance Events, Dance Education

One of the best things about social media is that I am able to keep up to date with dancers who performed with the Avodah Dance Ensemble during the thirty-plus years I was the Artistic Director of the company (after founding it in 1973).  Danielle was a part of the 2002 -2003 season, a unique period because we had an excellent grant and were able to be in residence at four different places, featuring the Forgiveness Project. Danielle was the youngest member I had ever taken into the company.  With fine training, she was very focused and contributed to the success of the season.  She had finished her freshman year as a dance major at Purchase College when she showed up at the audition in September.

Danielle leaping in the Forgiveness Piece.

Following her season with Avodah she continued performing with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II and the Sight & Sounds Theatres in Lancaster.  She has an impressive resume as a choreographer and teacher.  Most recently she was an adjunct instructor at Messiah College (now University) where she taught a variety of courses and was the creator and Director of the Messiah College Summer Dance Intensive.

Today she identifies herself as a brand strategist, web designer, and dance/educator consultant.  She lives with her husband and two children in Camp Hill, PA, which is outside of Harrisburg.

Danielle began her journey designing websites in 2013 and soon became interested in the full range of dance business, not only creating websites for dance companies and schools but helping them develop their business and social media skills.

Her most recent project is a daily free newsletter called Dance News Daily. I was excited to hear about it and immediately subscribed.  I was curious to see how it would differ from Dance Edit, which is also a daily newsletter.  I asked Danielle this question when we recently Zoomed.  She explained that Dance Edit is curated, and she is not currently curating. Dance News Daily aggregates headlines from over 60 different news outlets, organizations, and dance blogs. I have noticed that sometimes the same article appears in both Dance News Daily and Dance Edit.  Dance Edit focuses heavily on Dancemedia, the company that owns Dance Edit along with Dance Magazine, Pointe, and Dance Teacher.

Besides getting Danielle’s newsletter each day, it is fun to go to the Daily’s website and see past articles.  I love the way she organizes the articles and posts them under the appropriate heading.

Snapshot from the website showing the depth of articles covered.

As you can see, Dance News Daily is very broad, with articles that I would never discover without seeing a link in the newsletter or by browsing the website.  A number of the articles come from dance writers who publish their own blogs or dance-school newsletters.

Here is an example of 3 articles I found fascinating and would not normally have come across:

                  Fragility and Disability Discourse: An Interview with Alessandro Schiattarella.

                  5 Ways to Practice Gratitude in the Dance Studio by Shannon Dooling Dances.

                  The Caged Bird Sings: Breaking Boundaries in Ballet by Ballet5:8 (a newsletter of the professional company based in Chicago and Orland Park).

It is wonderful to see how Danielle is contributing to a broad dance community with her business skills and now her daily newsletter.  I highly recommend subscribing to Dance News Daily. Go to the home page and hit the far right SUBSCRIBE button.   I look forward to Dance News Daily’s arrival.  Thank you, Danielle, for expanding my world of dance.

 

November 25: Costa Rica’s National Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

JoAnne Tucker / / Costa Rica, Domestic Violence, Personal Life

Since I moved to Costa Rica I have wanted to get involved in – or at least know what services are being provided for – women who are victims of domestic violence.  I have lived in Atenas for five years but I had not seen anything related to domestic violence until a notice in mid-November on the Atenas Facebook Page that there would be a film and discussion on Friday night, November 22,  and then a March and play presented in the City Center Park on Monday, November 25, for the National Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.  I marked the two events in my calendar and decided I wanted to go.

The Friday night movie,  For Colored Girls, by Tyler Perry, left me feeling very uncomfortable for two reasons. First, because as Virginia Pittman said so clearly in a review, “This is an extremely tough film to get through… it’s hard to watch because it deals with absolutely horrific issues that plague some women in our society.”  And second for me because it differs so much from the Broadway original, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, which it is based on.

There is no question that the cast of Tyler Perry’s movie is outstanding.  It features Janet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad and Kerry Washington, and they give excellent performances.  But the level of realism presented seems forced and overdone. The original gets to the heart of the Black woman’s emotional experience in America in a very different way.

Ntozake Shange’s piece was developed beginning in 1974  and opened on Broadway in 1976.  Shange referred to it as a choreopoem with 20 monologues accompanied by dance and music.  Helen Gilbert describes it well in this review:

Ntozake Shange’s explosive choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, cuts to the heart of the Black woman’s emotional experience in America. Through the arts of poetry, music, and dance, the forces are revealed which are designed to beat her down: poverty, race and sex oppression.

Seven women, identified simply by dresses of different colors, bring Shange’s powerful words to life on a bare stage decorated only by a large, suspended flower.

for colored girls is what art should be: a living, dynamic force which demands that we experience, understand, grow, and relate to one another in a new way. It makes us hate, love, rage, gasp, laugh, cry and cheer because we have come face to face with truth.

In the final scene, as the women reach out to their ultimate support — each other — the audience is drawn in and enveloped in a joyful celebration of and rededication to the crusade for control of our own destinies. Art and life have fused; theatrical rapport is transformed into a revolutionary political affirmation.

I saw excerpts of the original piece and found it very moving and powerful.  It was therefore very unsettling to see how Tyler Perry had turned it into something entirely different.  The occasional times the women recited the original poetry were refreshing and moving, but the continual depiction of the abuse, especially with two children, was over the top and reduced the power of the film, turning it into a Hollywood thriller rather than an artistic piece with a strong message.

In contrast to my Friday night experience, my Monday experience with the March and play was very positive.  Knowing that it would be in Spanish and that my Spanish is very limited, I asked a neighbor who had also been my Spanish teacher to join me and translate.

I also wanted to introduce myself to people in charge to let them know of my interests.

The March was due to start at 9 AM about 6 blocks away from the Central Park.  When we got there about 8:50, there was already a nice group of about 40 people gathered.  It included a school marching band, representatives from the COOPE (the major local supermarket) and a few other businesses.  The police were present to block off traffic as we marched, and we began around 9:30.

COOPE SIGN held by a salesperson from the store.
We marched right behind the band.

I have been in very few marches in my life, and it felt good to be in this one.  I was worried that in my early 80’s it would be hard for me to keep up, but it wasn’t.  There were no other people from the U.S. or Canada marching, so it also felt good to be among Ticos supporting something that is very important to me.

When we got to the park, which is directly in front of the church and has a central area that is often used for concerts, there were various speeches, and again I was so glad that Raquel was with me to translate.  I met the person in charge of the program, who is a psychologist, and with Raquel’s help I was able to explain my interest to her.  She took my contact information, and I have already heard from her.  We are on each other’s WhatsApp, so after the New Year I will be back in touch with her to see how I might help.

The play included two actors – portraying a woman dominated by her husband – with the director performing the role of a helping neighbor. There was no violence; rather it showed the warning signs of how someone’s control leads first to emotional abuse that can then escalate into physical abuse.  It was well directed, and after the performance I was delighted to meet the director. We too exchanged information, and I look forward to being in contact with her.

The psychologist, on the left, leading a Q and A after the play’s performance. The two actors are in the center and the play’s director on the R.

While Friday night proved to be disappointing, Monday was not, and I look forward to learning more about what the community is doing to prevent abuse and to help abused women.  Maybe there will be a way I can get involved.

All three photos by JoAnne.

 

Reconnecting with Kerrie Anne Grace, a Former Avodah Dance Ensemble Dancer

JoAnne Tucker / / Costa Rica, Dance Education, Dance Programs in Prison, Forgiveness Project, Personal Life

One morning I got a text from a dancer who had performed for two seasons with The Avodah Dance Ensemble, saying that she was planning a trip to Costa Rica.  If you are a regular reader of this Mostly Dance you know that I was the founder, and Artistic Director and choreographer of Avodah for over 30 years. I was delighted to hear from Kerrie and told her I would love to see her.

It worked best in both of our schedules for her to plan on visiting at the end of her trip. Kerrie arrived late Thursday afternoon, stayed overnight and then later the next morning caught her flight back to the United States.  It gave us plenty of time to catch up on the events in each other’s lives.

Kerrie was in Avodah at the time of a major transition for the company.  For the first time, we had received sufficient grant money to hire dancers full time for a sixteen-week season.  We also had a major new work, The Forgiveness Project, that was going to take us to weeklong residencies in four different places, including our first visit to a women’s prison.  (See blog.)  I found this prison experience to be life changing, as did Kerrie, who continued with Avodah for the next season.  Here are some pictures of her performing with the company.

Kerrie in Balancing Act. Photo by Tom Brazil

 

Kerrie in Balancing Act with Sidra Bell. Photo by Tom Brazil.

I loved learning about what Kerrie is doing today and was in awe of her good business sense in running a performing arts school, Forevermore Dance & Theatre Arts, located in the outskirts of Chicago.  The school includes three studios for dance classes, two music studios and an area that can be used as a black box for performances.  Her management skills are impressive, as well as the way she was able to keep her business open during COVID.  A particular highlight for me was when I shared that I couldn’t figure out how to build a real dance studio here on the property, and she came up with a wonderful idea.  There are  two open spaces – one outdoor and one indoor – that are plenty big enough for a small class or group to work.  Neither is ideal,but they could work. One is where cars park, right by the entrance to the house, and the other is the atrium of the house, where there are plants and easy-to-move furniture.  Next problem… tile-on-cement floors.  I showed Kerrie some 2 ft.-by-2 ft. pads that I had found at the store and was using for yoga.  They are designed to be put together, and we tested 4 made into a large square and saw that it could work if I purchased enough.  Granted … not a real dance studio but still a place for movement activities that would be safe.  I am very grateful for her suggestion.

Not only did we have fun catching up, but we both gave each other ideas for the future.  The visit was meaningful and reminded me, especially at this time with so much world stress, that we definitely need to reach out to people who played important roles in our lives even if we haven’t seen them for a very long time.  It was over twenty years ago that Kerrie danced with Avodah.  When we work as a team in the arts, a bond develops that provides a rich connection.  It stays strong over time and provides purposeful further interactions many years later.

Kerrie and I on her visit to Costa Rica, November 2024
Photo by Manrique

 

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