Author: JoAnne Tucker

Options for Streaming the Nutcracker Ballet – December 2022

JoAnne Tucker / / Arts in Education, Current Dance Events, Dance History

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.

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Past …. and Present – December 2022: A Guest Post by Dina McDermott

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Guest Posts

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.

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Dance History Resources

JoAnne Tucker / / Current Dance Events, Dance History, Personal Life

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,

Just for fun I Googled a few names to see if there were collections at different places.  One of my favorite writers and teachers of improvisational movement is Barbara Mettler.  She donated some of her collection to Hampshire College, and this is easily available online. Here’s a link to the collection: https://www.hampshire.edu/library/archives-and-special-collections/other-archival-resources-and-full-text-documents/barbara-2.

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.

Dance and Poetry: An Elegy for Helen Tamiris

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life, Poetry, Uncategorized

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!

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Book Review: Daniel Lewis: A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History
Front cover image, Daniel Lewis in La Malinche, choreography by Jose Limon, photograph by Eddie Effron, courtesy Daniel Lewis archives.

I found this book particularly fascinating and fun to read because it enriched and filled in gaps in my knowledge of modern dance from 1962 to 2011. I was active in the New York City dance scene some of the time from 1958 to 2004, and I knew, or knew of, or saw perform, many of the people that are a part of this book.

The format of the book is unique.  It is jointly written by Daniel Lewis and Donna Krasnow.  Each chapter begins with a paragraph written by Lewis, followed by information about that period in Danny’s life in a biography format drawing on “60 archival boxes of photos, programs, letters, newspaper articles, reviews, posters. And even old airline tickets.”  Danny also gave Krasnow a list of people to contact and interview. Included in the book are sections called “Through His Friends Eyes.” Krasnow identifies the friend and how he/she knew Danny and then provides a direct passage from the friend.

As is pointed out in the preface, “[Danny’s] life covered every aspect of the field – dancer, teacher, choreographer, collaborator, artistic director, administrator, mentor and benefactor.” By the time I finished the book I had an inside look at all these  facets of his life.  While I have only briefly met Danny, I think at a Juilliard alumni event, I do remember watching him in class at Juilliard.  I was a second-year student and he was a first-year student.  The first year I had to take modern dance technique developed by Jose Limon and technique by Martha Graham, but the second year I did not.  I was clearly a Graham person, but one day (and I am not sure why) I was watching the Limon class and was struck with how beautifully Danny moved across the floor in various combinations.

It was really interesting to learn that during his Juilliard student years:

Danny was teaching as a substitute for Jose when he couldn’t be there and demonstrating regularly for his classes, so Danny had a strange kind of in-between role as student and faculty.  He was still friends with the students as well as having close ties with Martha Hill and Jose Limon.  Finally in 1967, Danny was hired by Martha as a regular faculty member when he was only twenty-three years old.

Krasnow describes in the preface how she took classes with Danny, and the importance of his unique approach to teaching the Limon technique.  She describes his gift so clearly, and I quote:

He situated the technique in a larger vision of Limon as the choreographer, the musician, and the artist.  We were learning exquisitely gorgeous movement phrases with intricate rhythms, precarious balances, and complex multilimbed coordinations, but all the while, Danny was expressing in analysis and imagery the principles of the work: fall and recovery, suspension, opposition, isolation, and always weight and breath . . . .

After reading about Danny’s style of teaching,  I certainly wondered if I wouldn’t have liked Limon technique much more if I had had classes with Danny.  How fortunate for Juilliard students who came just a year or so after me, that Martha Hill recognized Danny’s talents and had him teaching!

It was also in his first year at Juilliard that he began touring with the Limon Company. Danny shares that “the experience of touring, performing and having dances created on me by a master artist shaped me not only as a dancer, but as a choreographer and person.”  In this section of the book we learn a lot about Jose Limon and the company.  I have loved seeing a number of Limon’s works, particularly There is A Time, The Moor’s Pavone, and Missa Brevis, so I found this section right on target.  Danny became Artistic Director of the Limon Company from 1972–1974.

One of the most helpful parts of the book is a chart that gives the timeline of Danny’s life from his birth to the present.  Since the book isn’t written in strict chronological order, it is helpful to refer back to this.

From 1987 to 2011 Danny was the Dean of Dance at New World School of the Arts (NWSA).  I really loved reading about,  and have huge admiration and respect for, the innovative way that Danny developed the dance program at the NWSA.  It was very interesting to read how he slowly built the program.  He would re-evaluate the curriculum each year and see ways to improve it.  One unique aspect was that the school always kept  a “broad range of dance styles from various cultures.”  The program began first as a high school and then developed into a college program with its first graduating class of ten students in 1992.

Among the students who studied at NWSA is Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.  Battle’s section on “Through His Friends Eyes” was one of my favorites.  Battle reports, “Danny told me that one day I should have my own company.” Indeed Battle did  have his own company, and now he leads one of the major dance companies in the United States.  Battle also shares:

When I returned to NWSA to set a work … sitting in the office talking with him was like watching a circus act. Danny would be doing multiple things at once – on the phone, solving problems and making things possible. I came to appreciate this quality in my own life, the job of juggling many balls at once . . . .

When Battle spoke at Danny’s retirement ceremony, he said, “I can only quote the words of Patrick Henry, ‘I know of no other way of judging the future but by the past,’ and so I seriously doubt Danny is retiring.”

As a friend of Danny’s on Facebook, I can see this is true.  Danny continues to play an active role in the dance community in a variety of different ways.

My goal in this review is to point out a few of the parts of the book that strongly resonated with me and to encourage you to read the book for yourself. I have left out much about the time Daniel directed his own company and many important people in the dance community such as Anna Sokolow that he worked with or the numerous things he did while at NWSA . Learn more by ordering the book and by following some of the links at the bottom of this blog.  The book is easily available via Amazon. I enjoyed reading it on my Kindle here in Costa Rica.  Thank you, Danny, for your outstanding contribution to dance and for making the documentation of your life work available for the dance community!

Other recommended links:

https://daniellewisdance.com/videos/

https://daniellewisdance.com/awards/

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Guest Blog by Regina Ress: Spiraling into the Center and Outward Bound

JoAnne Tucker / / Guest Posts, Poetry

JoAnne’s Introduction:

When I opened my email a few days ago, I was thrilled to see a message from my good friend Regina Ress, sharing a poem she wrote back in 2013 after we led a workshop for women inmates at the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility. It resonated with me for two reasons. First, the work I have done in prisons and jails since 2002 has been very meaningful, and sometimes Regina and I worked together in those settings. Secondly, I recently built a labyrinth on my property, and walking it is something I do daily as well as encouraging guests to enjoy it.  Regina’s poem was written in a follow-up workshop with the women on writing about our experience together walking a labyrinth (which I helped create) in the barbed wire encircled yard of that county jail.

Thank you, Regina!

About Regina:

Regina Ress, award-winning storyteller, actor, writer and educator, has performed and taught for over fifty years from Broadway to Brazil in a wide variety of settings from grade schools to senior centers, from homeless shelters and prisons to Lincoln Center and the White House.  To learn more about Regina visit her at:  www.reginaress.com/about.html

Spiraling into the Center and Outward Bound:

A Reflection on Walking the Labyrinth with the Women

Santa Fe County Corrections Department Adult Correctional Facility

October 3, 2013

                  by Regina Ress

Being in the Center.

Being is the Center.

Walking slowly

Entering, Centering.

 

The Path winds and doubles back

In and out into the Wider Path

Which winds and definitely doubles

Back upon itself; upon myself.

 

I encounter myself

In all the others

On the Path.

 

I love these women who, willing to walk,

Stay with me, with each other, with themselves

In the Center of this labyrinth.

 

Knowing what?

That we share the space

That we share the grace

Of the Center.

 

What is the way in?

That first step supported by the breath,

Moved forward on the breath;

Forward, spiraling gently in,

And gently out again.

 

The Center awaits us all.

As does the sun glistening on barbed wire.

An oddly beautiful spiral of circles,

Of spiraling circles,

Endless circles reaching out

To the blue sky beyond.

 

An odd gift, this cage.

A glimpse of moving wire

Meant to keep us in

But when looked at from

A different perspective,

It is a Trail, a Path

Of outward bound.

Photo by Judy Naumburg of the barbed wire in the Santa Fe County Corrections Department Adult Correctional Facility.

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Five, four, three, two, one!

JoAnne Tucker / / Costa Rica, Personal Life

I was shopping one day in PriceSmart in Costa Rica (like a Sam’s Club or BJ’s), when I passed an aisle of workout equipment.  I had passed such displays before but I had never seen a recumbent bike available.  I had sold mine before we moved, and I missed it.  My hips don’t do well on a regular bike.  A recumbent bike actually helps my hips. I feel less pain and best of all I get a workout!!  Needless to say I bought it and was lucky to have someone put it together for me.  That was in late May and I have now enjoyed riding it almostevery day, having  logged in 71 rides.

“Five, four, three, two, one…. Now take the speed up higher and the resistance too!  Ride at a higher cadence with higher resistance for a minute!  Five, four, three, two, one… OK back to a slower pace with less resistance for a minute before we go again.”   These are typical instructions from the IFit trainer.  The bike is designed to go with programs produced by IFit.  I had a 14-day free trial and after that I didn’t hesitate to sign up to continue on a monthly basis.  A fun side benefit is that not only is the coaching excellent but the rides are filmed in locations all around the world.  I have done rides in Fiji, Hawaii, National US Parks, Costa Rica, Italy and Turkey!

Now why am I writing about this?  Recently, a writer was in residence at my home as part of the Artist in Residence program I offer.  At the end of her residency she led a writer’s workshop and gave us the prompt of writing about transitions.  First she asked us to list seven transitions that we had experienced in our lives and then to select one to write about.  No problem, I certainly had lots of major life transitions to write about, several of which were very recent, like moving to Costa Rica and losing my life partner of fifty-six years.  But what fascinated me at that moment was the little transitions I make each day related to aging, and I found the transition from slow to fast on the bike, and then back again to slow, a good metaphor.

In the last blog I wrote about finding a model of someone who has done new things in their 80’s.  That is very important for me and equally important is how to do them. What I am taking away from the writing prompt, and using the bike experience to write about, is a way to pace myself.  I want to be able to enjoy new and challenging things in a safe way. The bike exercise is  a strong reminder that a push, whether it is physical or mental, needs to be balanced with a time of lower energy and relaxing!

In the biking workout it has been an equal balance of pushing heavily for either a half minute or a minute and then pedaling easier for the same amount of time.  I do not know quite how I will carry this over into my life but I do know it is important and something I will keep in mind!

As I get nearer my eightieth birthday, questions on how to make this a quality time of life are often on my mind.  I wonder what other readers might want to share about this, whether it is turning eighty or experiences they have had at a younger age. I welcome your feedback and thoughts in the comments!

Photo taken by Manrique, who helped to put the bike together!

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Felix Fibich – Aging with Grace and a Model for “You are Never Too Old to . . . ???”

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Personal Life

I knew very little about Felix Fibich when I worked with him in the Children’s Theatre production I mentioned in my last blog.  It has been great fun to learn about him now and to realize that he is a good role model for me as I am nearing my 80th birthday!  In fact, it was when he was 83 that he had national visibility.

Marsha Leon describes this beautifully in an article she wrote shortly after his death in 2014 at the age of 96.

But it was in 2001, with the widely aired sidesplitting Cingular TV commercial, that Fibich got national visibility. Looking like a bald leprechaun in a black body-fitting leotard, he attempts to teach a group of 300 lb. football players how to perform plies (elegant balletic squats) and entrechats (a balletic feat that involves twice crossing your legs at the ankle in mid-air). He exhorts these gravity-bound Sumo size athletes “to strut- trut-strut like a peacock” to “walk like a camel in the desert” and “sway like a Redwood tree.”            https://forward.com/schmooze/195544/remembering-felix-fibich-yiddish-choreographer-dan/

And here’s the link to watch the actual commercial:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28xAjbdiZCM

But that is not all that Fibich accomplished in his 80’s. In an essay which was  based on a February 1997 interviewconducted by Judith Brin Ingber for the Oral History Project, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, New York City), Ingber wrote:

In the 1990s, by then in his middle eighties, Fibich experienced a renaissance as both a dancer and choreographer. He performed a lead role in the musical Planet Lulu [directed by the Belgian Michel Laub]7 which toured extensively throughout Europe in 1998 and 1999; and because of his acting skills and facility with French, Yiddish, Polish and English he acted simultaneously in all those languages in the 1998 full length French feature film, XXL. His homecoming to Poland as a dancer/teacher at the famed Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival in July 1996 resulted in a Polish television special about him and requests for him to appear again in Poland. He has also taught for the last decade under the auspices of KlezKamp at their annual New York Yiddish Folk Arts Program, their master teacher for “Interpreting Jewish Dance,” as part of their “Living Tradition Meetings with Our Masters.”  http://www.jbriningber.com/Fibich_Apr_18_07.pdf

I highly recommend using the link to the full essay and interview if you are interested in learning more about Fibich!

To add to Judith’s article about things Fibich did in his 80’s, there were several other theatre performances, and appearances in Law and Order on television.

In learning about Fibich’s early life, several themes became apparent!  He loved Jewish culture and Yiddish theatre, where he found ways to express himself.  He also was consistently challenged by changes in the world happening around him, fleeing and escaping, often leaving everything behind!

He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, Poland.  He began participating in theater in the 1930’s.  He grew up with Polish as his main language, so in order to audition for the theater company he wanted to join, he learned Yiddish.  It was in the theater company that he met Judith Berg, who was choreographing for the company and would later become his wife.

After Poland was invaded by the Germans, Mr. Fibich and his parents were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1940, Mr. Fibich escaped and traveled to Soviet-controlled Bialystok. It was there he reconnected with Judith Berg who was working in a Yiddish revue.  They toured with the troupe and were married before returning to Poland when the war was over. His parents died in the Holocaust.

Once back in Poland, Fibich and Berg developed a dance program for orphaned children, before fleeing again — this time to Paris in 1949 when the Communists took over Poland.  A year later they came to America where they toured, taught and choreographed, becoming an important part of Yiddish Theater in the U.S. over the next several decades.

In Daniel Lewis’ book  A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance, Danny describes working with Felix beginning when he was in High School in 1961.  He continued working for him until 1967, both in the actual Yiddish Theater on the Lower East Side and also in classical concert performances as part of the Fibich Dance Company.  Danny relates how Felix always went to the High School of Performing Arts and Juilliard to find and recruit dancers.  Danny goes on to say that Fibich had a huge effect on many young dancers and actors, giving them employment and a salary in the early part of their careers.

It is indeed fun to see how one thing can lead to another.  An email letting me know that the National Dance Education Association was doing a panel discussion on Jewish contributions to dance in the United States led me to hear Danny Lewis speak about Felix Fibich.  Not only did it bring back recollections of time spent in a Children’s Theatre production but it led me to do research about him.  I have a lot of respect for how Fibich conducted his life, and he is now a role model for me, reminding me of all the possibilities in the coming years! Thank you, Danny, for your presentation and your book, and thank you Felix Fibich for your passion and determination!

Felix Fibich being lifted by a football player in the Commercial he made for the Super Bowl!

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A Performing Experience Long Forgotten is Remembered!!

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Personal Life

When I saw that the National Dance Education Organization was having a panel discussion entitled “Celebrating Jewish American Contributions to the Field of Dance,”  I marked the date (May 24th) on my calendar to make sure to zoom in!  I missed the actual time, but it was recorded, so I watched a day later. I was half listening when one of the panel members, Danny Lewis, mentioned being a part of the Yiddish Theatre and said how much he enjoyed working with Felix Fibich!   Wow… I had worked with Fibich too and hadn’t thought about that experience in years!

In the fall of 1961, a friend from Juilliard, Margaret Gettleman, recommended me to Fibich because she was participating in a children’s theatre production he was choreographing, and he needed another dancer.  That’s how I became a wood sprite named Yok Tan in the Jewish Theatre for Children’s production of “To Wake the King.”  Each Sunday from November to April we performed for a large audience of nearly 1,000 children between the ages of 8 to 14 at a theater on the Upper East Side.

The Jewish Theatre for Children was founded and directed by Samuel J. Citron. I have a vague memory of his role as director of “To Wake the King” and found it interesting to Google and learn a little bit about him.  Born in Poland in 1908, he immigrated to the United States when he was thirteen.  He became a lawyer in New York and then earned a Hebrew Teacher’s License and transitioned into Jewish Education full time. Employed by the Jewish Education Committee, he directed its School Dramatics Department and was chair of the Audio-Visual Materials Committee.  For twenty years the theatre he founded presented programs for children each Sunday.  He was also often the author of the plays, as was the case with “To Wake the King” which was based on an old legend that says King David is really not dead but asleep in a cave!

I must admit I don’t remember much about Felix Fibich’s choreography other than an emphasis on how we used our arms and hands as wood sprites,  and I think some of it might have been improvised.  I do remember it was great fun to put on the makeup and costume each Sunday and to receive payment for the performance!  I seem to remember that we received $25 for each performance.  That was pretty good considering it was 1961-62.  We also received reviews in New York City papers.

Program that I saved in my scrapbook!
Photo from my scrapbook taken by the photographer of the Jewish Theatre for Children, November 1961. Can you find me in the picture??

In my next blog I will share more about Felix Fibich.  Danny’s presentation as part of the panel “Celebrating Jewish Americans Contributions to the Field of Dance” is motivation to learn more about the person I worked with 60 years ago.

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Beyond Van Gogh: How It Was Created

JoAnne Tucker / / Art, Costa Rica, Personal Life

About a month ago I saw a sponsored post on Facebook that Beyond Van Gogh would be here in Costa Rica, and I immediately made plans to attend. I was delighted for several reasons.  First of all, since moving to Costa Rica at the beginning of 2020  I had not been to a cultural event here, in large part due to COVID.  Now things were opening up.  I also have always been a fan of Van Gogh and the period in which he painted. And third,  I had seen some favorable posts of friends of mine in the US who had gone to the exhibit.  Here it was in Costa Rica, and I definitely wanted to go.  It was scheduled to be held in a large convention center that was about 45 minutes away so it was definitely doable.  Tickets were already selling and some weekend dates were already sold out.  I made arrangements to go during a weekday with two friends.

Tickets were spaced 15 minutes apart and we got there a little early and had fun taking some pictures outside.

Outside Beyond Van Gogh. Photo taken by my friend.

Soon it was time for us to enter, and I loved the experience from the moment we officially entered.  Slowly we walked through a path filled with quotes exchanged between Van Gogh and his brother Theo, giving us information about Van Gogh’s life.  We zigzagged along the quotes separated by empty picture frames and it definitely was setting a mood.

Photo I took of one of the panels. I love that the quotes were in both Spanish and English, as it gives me a good opportunity to practice my Spanish.  I took lots of pictures so I would have lots of quotes to practice.

I knew some things about Van Gogh’s life from reading Irving Stone’s book Lust for Life, published in 1934 and based on the letters between the two brothers.  And I also was aware of how many people have been fascinated with Van Gogh’s life. The movie Lust for Life starring Kirk Douglas, based on Stone’s book, was released in 1957.  It won Douglas a Golden Globe for Best Actor as well as an Oscar nomination for his role as Van Gogh.  Anthony Quinn, who played his friend Paul Gauguin, received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  That is not the only movie about Van Gogh.  In a blog posted by Molli in Discover Walks Blog, she shares four other worthwhile films about Van Gogh: Vincent and Theo (1990); The Eyes of Vincent (2005) about his time in a mental asylum; Loving Vincent (2017), an Oscar nominated film which features a lot of animation and raised the idea that his death was an accident and not suicide;  and At Eternity’s Gate (2018) which looks at the final years of his life. Here’s the link where you can learn more and see some trailers of the films.

https://www.discoverwalks.com/blog/paris/the-5-best-movies-about-vincent-van-gogh/

Clearly Vincent Van Gogh’s life and work have fascinated and served as inspiration for many other people in their artistic expression, including the creators of Beyond Van Gogh.

Now back to our experience at the exhibit. Following the space filled with quotes, we wandered into a dark space with a bit of animation and two black boxes which turned out to be the entrance into the main room.  It was a bit disorienting until we realized the black boxes were actually the entrance.  We must have stood there for several minutes with quite a few other people until someone walked through the boxes and then of course we all followed and were treated to a very spacious room filled with animation on the walls, floors and panels that were placed in central areas.  Animation inspired by Starry Night paintings filled the space and then shifted into a number of Van Gogh’s self-portraits.  For the next 35 minutes we were dazzled with over 300 hundred of his paintings appropriately grouped.  As a choreographer I was fascinated by the movement and energy that was created, as well as the unique way one set of images transitioned into another. Sometimes the walls faded and new images appeared… other times it was like a large wave swept through the room.

Some people sat on the floor, others stood in place or wandered around, and some of us were able to sit on the few benches or beanbag-like chairs.  I was pleased to see how many young people attended.  Lots of Ticos in their twenties, thirties and forties.  We found two beanbag chairs to sit on and our third person sat on the floor.  We stayed there totally fascinated and in wonderment at the way Van Gogh’s images were being presented until the program began to repeat. Then as we stood and began walking we realized that the experience was a bit different in each place and so we stayed for nearly the full next set moving about the large room!

Photo I took shortly after entering the large room.

It was indeed an immersion into a world creatively inspired by Van Gogh’s painting and as the title suggested,beyond just the images. It was very different than going to an exhibition of his actual paintings in a museum, which itself is an outstanding experience.  For me it was a different kind of creative adventure inspired by his work — animation (inspired by an artist) with its unique timing, spacing and invitation to step into a new dimension. I knew that as soon as I got home I wanted to learn about the people who created it!

A quick Google search led me to all the information I wanted to know.  Beyond Van Gogh was created by Mathieu St-Arnaud and his team at the Normal Studio.  St-Arnaud and a partner founded Normal Studio in 2009, and a trip to the website provided lots more information. The home page describes their mission to “transform urban spaces into full-on immersive experiences…. 360 projection and architectural mapping, we spark wonder into people’s everyday lives.”  They are a multi-disciplinary team of 30 professionals combining creativity and tech.

They describe their aim in creating Beyond Van Gogh:

Expanding Vincent’s universe to a sharable and lively 360 projection environment requires a different way of thinking, like Vincent himself.  While certain paintings are presented in all their simplicity, others have been enhanced, expanded, enlarged and juxtaposed in order to fill the space with life, texture and colour. (https://normal.studio/en/)

Other projects include: another artist-inspired project – Beyond Monet; a corporate creation for a Toyota Dealer Meeting; the set for La Traviata for the Icelandic Opera; and a stage production of Diary of Anne Frank created by Lorraine Pintal for a theatre in Montreal.

Of course it is still very meaningful for me to have the “classic” experience of seeing the original paintings in the museum setting, but I also adore and am inspired by the blending of the classical with the latest technology.   Thank you, Normal Studio, for creating a wonderful experience, and I joyfully celebrate being able to see it here in Costa Rica with two delightful friends!!

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