JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
Right now the choreographer part of me is hungry for a group of dancers, and what I would want to explore with them is stillness. Why stillness? I hunch it is my reaction to the time we are in and the necessity of sheltering in our home. How do we handle this? We can be as busy and in full motion at home as the times when we go shopping, meet up with friends, and rush around with many errands to do, or we can decide to take some time to be really still, silent and just BE. Maybe this pandemic is asking us to do just that.
A lot of us are meditators with a regular practice, and sometimes our minds quiet down to a “stillness,” and lots of time they just don’t. I am finding it interesting that I have been meditating less the past four months, caught up in the challenges surrounding me here. Last week I had the opportunity to join a local Buddhist book group via Zoom that began with a half hour of meditation, and I was amazed at the impact of just that half hour of sitting quietly.
It has encouraged me to get back to a more regular practice of meditation, and it has also triggered my interest in wanting to choreograph a dance study exploring how to move (not even particularly fast) and then find an easy position to hold and remain there for a while until something either internally or externally calls one to move again. And then repeat the process until you find another position that calls you to be still. What does it require to hold the position? Do we tense? Do we relax into it? Are we aware of our surroundings or do they melt away? When we begin to move again what kind of movement do we want to do? Rarely do I long to have a group of dancers to work with, but creating a piece where we explore the beauty of slowly moving in and out of stillness is calling me.
I wondered if such a piece already existed and began a Google search. I found lots of writers using dance and stillness together as a metaphor for what they wanted to write about. I also found an interesting article in Dance Spirit magazine about how dancers have handled holding a pose on stage. https://www.dancespirit.com/how-to-make-the-most-of-stillness-onstage-2502557437.html But so far no link to a dance that explored going in and out of stillness as the theme of the dance and that is what I would love to do right now. So since I have no dancers to work with other than[fix]myself, and I don’t see this as a solo and my range of movement is very limited, I am thinking I can again turn to art and see what I come up with.
Probably why I am so attracted to this theme is the strong need I am feeling in my own life for just being quiet. In the book that the local Buddhist book group is reading, “Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching” by Thich Nhat Hanh, one chapter really stood out for me. It is Chapter 6, “Stopping, Calming, Resting, Healing.” I love the end, which says:
Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.
Stopping, calming and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing. Individuals, communities, and nations need healing.
When I turned to painting, what I ended up with was a watercolor sketch that might be useful to begin creating a trio. And then later in the day, while enjoying watching a hummingbird come to our feeder, I noticed that even it found time to just rest, and I was able to catch this silhouette of the bird resting calming for quite a while before fluttering back to the feeder.
The hummingbird resting between trips to the feeder.
When we planned on moving to Costa Rica, we had no idea of all the challenges we would face within the first 6 months of living here. I’m not talking about the adjustments to a new country, which we would have had moving at any time, or the surprise fire and earthquake. What I mean is COVID 19 and the heart failure that Murray is going through. Those are two things that are dominating day-to-day life and could not have been predicted back in November when we made the decision to move. A year ago this time, Murray and I were in the Tetons at Jenny Lake Lodge, and while we couldn’t do long hikes, Murray could do short hikes of a mile or so. Sometimes it is a challenge now for Murray just to walk from room to room and or spend 10 minutes walking in the garden.
View in our garden behind a tree that Murray walks to slowly.
And then there is COVID which has made it impossible for family and friends to visit. The borders are closed and it is unlikely that people from the U.S. will be allowed in anytime soon. We have no plans to return to the United States, as we feel safer here. So there is a real appreciation that we are able to communicate via FaceTime and Zoom, because no one knows when we will be able to do so “in person.”
Nearly every day here in Costa Rica, I find myself experiencing the four basic emotions that I sometimes explored when I led movement workshops. Sometimes one dominates more than another but generally in the course of any day I experience all four. They are: happy, sad, angry, scared. Dance and sometimes art have been wonderful vehicles for me to work through my feelings and in the process find appropriate outlets for my emotions. As I write this I am challenging myself to see what I can do here particularly using art as my means.
A few hours after writing these first two paragraphs a strong emotion began to surface so I got my watercolor pencils out and began expressing my feeling on paper. Soon the emotion began to pass and instead a deep fascination with the design elements dominated. Over the next day or so I totally enjoyed creating a small abstract design that had started with strong emotional feeling.
Watercolor exploring an emotion, June 20, 2020. Created by first using watercolor pencils and then adding water and other watercolors.
For years when I led movement workshops, exploring emotions through dance was often an important part of the program. The activities were carefully structured so that everyone in the group was safe both from getting caught up in the emotion and from interacting with another person in an unsafe way.
Confining space is a good tool to use. Ask each person to draw an imaginary circle around themself that gives them about three feet to move. For the duration of the exercise they are to stay inside their personal circle. Give them the following instructions, one at a time, giving them several minutes to improvise each one: 1) They are frustrated and angry at being confined to the space; 2) They have retreated to this space because they are afraid during a thunder and lightning storm; 3) They are very sad and this small space is safe play to express their sadness; and 4) It is during COVID 19 time and they have just received great news on their cell phone while outside with a friend practicing social distancing.
With an adult or teenage group, start by making a large circle. One person goes into the center of the circle and makes a shape (with their body) that expresses one of the four emotions. They hold that pose, while another person goes into the circle making a complimentary shape (relating to but without touching the first person) that also illustrates that same emotion. The first person leaves and the next person comes in making a shape of the same emotion, and so it continues with one person entering and another person leaving. This activity can be expanded by having the participants still enter the circle one at a time, but allowing a few participants to remain in place in the center at once, thus creating a larger “sculpture” of the given emotion. (If doing this, make sure participants take positions that can be held comfortably for a few moments.)
And of course exploring emotions can be taken to a whole different level as it was in the composition class that I took from Pearl Lang at Connecticut College Summer Program in 1960, where for the six weeks I created an anger study and a laughter study. Working from gestures, much as I had done in my first composition class with Helen Tamiris, the gestures were expanded into phrases and the phrases built into sections with Pearl coaching and insisting everything be believable. I remember being very excited to perform one of the studies in a Saturday workshop.
Recently we included exploring emotions as part of a film we made with women from a domestic violence program in Santa Fe. The film includes both leaders with a dance background and women who are exploring movement improvisation for the first time. Here’s a link to view it.
I feel so fortunate to have had practice in finding ways to express my emotions and not become overwhelmed by them. Indeed we are in very challenging times and we need to use all the resources we can!
In my last blog I mentioned how well the Prime Minister of New Zealand had handled the pandemic. Jimmy Levinson, friend/reader, sent me a picture of a woman hugging another and said he had just added the picture to his wall of heroes. I have to admit I didn’t know who the woman in the picture was, even though her name was printed underneath. When I said so, Jimmy wrote back that it was the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Oh… I thought to myself, that is what you get for not watching the news. Here is someone managing a country very well and you don’t even know her name. So I immediately googled Jacinda Ardern and began learning about her. And wow, if I had a wall of heroes she certainly would be there.
I learned that she is just 39 years old. Uri Friedman wrote in The Atlantic, April 2020:
Her leadership style is one of empathy in a crisis…. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing.
During a session conducted in late March, just as New Zealand prepared to go on lockdown, she appeared in a well-worn sweatshirt at her home (she had just put her toddler daughter to bed, she explained) to offer guidance “as we all prepare to hunker down.”
She introduced helpful concepts, such as thinking of “the people [who] will be in your life consistently over this period of time” as your “bubble.”
On June 9th when she learned the country was free of COVID she is quoted as saying “I did a little dance.”
Picture of Jacinda Ardern — part of Jimmy’s Hereos’ Wall
I love that my friend has a wall of heroes, but that should not come as a surprise to me because Jimmy is a very unique and special person. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he was my next door neighbor. Through the years we have kept in touch. F. James Levinson, as he is known professionally, has had an outstanding career in Public Health and Nutrition projects throughout the world. Here’s a link to his bio as part of the Board of Directors of his son Noah’s organization, Calcutta Kids. Noah has won awards for his work with Calcutta Kids which is an organization “committed to empowering the poorest children and expecting mothers in the underserved slums in and around Kolkata, India.” I strongly encourage you to check out their website and even consider donating to Calcutta Kids.
I asked Jimmy to send me a photo of his Wall of Heroes and got 6 photos showing a diverse group of individuals, some I recognized and some I didn’t. The idea of a wall of heroes is quite wonderful and I am thinking how I might create that here in Costa Rica. It will not be quite as elegant as my friend’s, where each picture is carefully framed, but I am lucky to have a printer and can print out photos and maybe mount them on another piece of paper, and with my watercolors paint a frame. The first two will be Jacinda Ardern, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I will call it my SHeroes’ Wall. I look forward to thinking about other additions and while I will be focusing on women I will certainly include some men too. If you were to create your wall who would be on it? Certainly the quality of empathy and compassion from a leader will be an essential qualification.
As I think about compassion and empathy and caring about people, I remember how I ended many workshops that I led. It was very important to me that we left caring about each other and wishing each other well as we continued on our journeys. So we ended with blessings in movement. If it was a large group that hadn’t worked together for very long, we would pass blessings around in a circle. One person (usually myself or a member of the faculty, for the purpose of modeling the instructions) would turn to the person to their right and, thinking a warm thought, would express that, through movement, to the person beside them (without touching). Perhaps they would circle their neighbor’s face or place one hand near the person’s heart and the other on their own heart. Or maybe they would encircle the person and then starting at the person’s head, gently move their circled arms down to the person’s feet. That person would then create their own movement blessing for the person next to them.
If it was a small group that had worked together for several days, each person would go individually into the center of the circle and then the other participants, one by one, would go in to offer that person a movement blessing. No matter which format we did, we ended by blessing ourselves.
With the very challenging world we are living in, we need every tool we can find to help us. May we bless each other and bless ourselves. And let us create our own wall of heroes or sheroes so we are reminded of how many caring and compassionate leaders there are, and have been, on our planet.
It is with mixed feelings that I begin to write this blog because it is about a piece that I was so proud to have in Avodah’s repertory, and yet today I realize, as with many other pieces I choreographed between 1972 and 2000, a lot of my thinking has changed. It is also a strange day outside with no sun and very heavy fog. I am feeling weighed down. A bit of inspiration, much needed at the moment, came earlier today when I listened to a presentation by Christiana Figueres that is part of Awakened Action 2020 Resource Page at Upaya Zen Center. It’s entitled “Transforming Climate and Global Realities” and she shared the program with Jane Fonda. Among the things she spoke of were 6ththings we can learn from COVID 19 that are very relevant to all the problems we are facing today. One of those is the success of feminine leadership. The countries led by women, with New Zealand being a prime example, are much better off. She contributes this to the fact that women are better listeners, are humble and are guided by collective wisdom. This certainly resonates a lot with me and perhaps in some small way was hovering in my mind back in 1984 when I created a piece for Avodah based on the M’Chamocha prayer. Reflecting back on the piece today, I can see some seeds there that I can relate to.
There are many places on the Internet to learn about the M’Chamocha prayer so I am not going to spend much time writing about that. Instead I want to share that the reason I decided to create this piece (which could be danced both in Shabbat services and in concerts) was that the prophetess Miriam is associated with the prayer and related text, and Exodus 15:20 says Miriam “took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.” I was constantly looking to know more about biblical women at the time, and of course how appealing it was that the word “dance” is connected with Miriam here. But as many people have written, there are elements in the surrounding biblical text that are troubling. Particularly that the Israelites are celebrating while the Egyptians are drowning in the sea. Fortunately there is a midrash that says God told the angels to stop dancing and celebrating, as the Egyptians are “my children” too and they are drowning. This midrash inspired the middle section of the piece, where the women show compassion to each other and for the Egyptians, and that is the section I can still relate to today.
The piece was commissioned by Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, NJ with music composed by Cantor Deborah Bedor, then a cantor on Long Island. It was especially meaningful to be working with a woman composer on this piece. Later she would compose another piece for us based on the wedding ceremony.
What I remember most about this piece was how much I enjoyed the beautiful dancing of the three women. I loved the beautiful interpretation given by the many women who had roles in this trio through the years. For me the heart of the piece is compassion, and through compassion an appropriate kind of appreciation of freedom can come, not a celebration when someone else is dying. More than ever, leadership with compassion is the bottom line. May each of us hold compassion in our hearts as we struggle through our various challenges.
Please continue to scroll down and see some of my favorite pictures of the M’chamocha in rehearsal. One rehearsal outside by a lake and another while on tour in the San Francisco area.
Standing: Deborah Hanna Sitting from l. to r. Beth Bardin and Kezia Gleckman Hayman
From l. to r. Kezia, Deborah and Beth
These two pictures were taken when we were “in-residence” for a summer program and had some free time. I thought the lake made a beautiful setting to run the piece.
These two photos of Kezia were taken by Tom Scott in a rehearsal (onstage) of the piece.
Biblical quote that inspired the piece:
“Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing” (Exodus 15:20).
It is now the rainy season in Costa Rica and I am learning that the Ticos have lots of different names for rain. My favorite is pelo de gato (Spanish for “cat’s hair”) and it is a very fine misty rain. The first time I heard the phrase was one afternoon when a Tico friend/helper was here and asked me if I could see the very fine rain that was coming down. I couldn’t at first, but I could feel the gentle mist on my arms. He playfully began “dancing” in the rain. Smiling, I enjoyed the moment and then I began to remember a “rain dance” that I had been a part of years ago.
In 1959, Pittsburgh was celebrating the bicentennial of its incorporation. Among the different activities planned was a musical play, which would run for about 10 weeks during the summer, telling Pittsburgh’s history. In February I saw an audition notice for dancers and went. Much to my surprise I was called back for a second round of auditions and was selected to be one of the twelve dancers (6 women and 6 men). Rehearsals began June 1 and since I was just sixteen and would be missing most of the last 3 weeks of school, I needed a work permit and permission from the Pittsburgh Board of Education. My parents were supportive, so it was no problem to get the permit and permission. Since I was a fairly good student, teachers were flexible and I managed to attend enough classes to finish the semester. In my scrapbook are the letter and contract I had to sign. They asked for my Social Security number and I filled in that I was applying for it!! I received $30 each week for the 3 rehearsal weeks and $60 each week for the 10 weeks of performances.
The choreographer was Bill Hooks. I remember three major dance sections. The first was a dance representing Native Americans, and this was the dance we began to nickname our “rain dance.” The pageant-like performance was done in a large amphitheater built for the summer at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Known as The Point, it is the beginning of the Ohio River. The city had erected 3 floating stages on barges, with our dressing rooms underneath.
From my scapebook. Picture from one of the main Pittsburgh papers, showing the building of the amphitheater and the barges.
After the performance the 2500-seat amphitheater was taken apart, and now there is a beautiful fountain in its place. Since “The Golden Crucible” was running all summer long, there simply wasn’t enough interest to fill those 2500 seats regularly. Often we were performing for several hundred people with just the first few rows filled. If it drizzled the performance continued but if there was a good solid rain the show would be cancelled at whatever point we were at. So as the summer wore on, we would jokingly call this opening dance the “rain dance,” hoping it would be an early evening.
I think the low audience turnout and the fact we thought of this opening dance as a rain dance gives you an idea that the quality of “The Golden Crucible” left something to be desired. For me it was a great experience with a few sour moments and I am glad I was a part of a cast of 70. While there were several young children in the show, I was the youngest actual cast member and found myself socially very young compared with the other dancers who were in their 20’s. While there were a few college-aged members of the cast and crew, most of the chorus and actors were adults with many theatre credits to their name. Several actors were also recruited from New York. Everyone played multiple roles in the piece.
Following our Native American opening dance, our next big scene was a Polish polka. I don’t remember the context of the dance – it might have been a wedding scene – but it was to honor the large Polish population of Pittsburgh. Our final dance was in a party scene and had a kind of Charleston feel. It required partnering, something I had never done. I was glad that my partner was Walter Raines, a very kind and caring person who went on to become an important part of Dance Theatre of Harlem. Not only was Walter a charter member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, he went on to be the director of their school. A native of Pittsburgh, he was most likely a student of Carnegie-Mellon University during the time of “The Golden Crucible.” I felt safe and comfortable with Walter, something I didn’t feel with many of the other dancers and chorus members.
From my scapebook. In the costume for the polka dance. What a fun headdress I had to wear.
Often, as we made our way to the dressing room in the lower level of the barge, we had to walk across a backstage crossing, where chorus members and actors hung out. We women dancers were targets for not-so-nice remarks and pinches and “wandering hands.” Some of the other dancers thought this was fun and flirted. I didn’t like it and just wanted to get to the dressing room as quickly as I could. That summer was my first taste of dancers being thought of as “easy women.” A publicity shot in the newspaper (showing the dancers hanging onto a train) printed our names, and then I had rather obnoxious phone calls at our house. Some of the comments that were made to me on the phone were sexual references I didn’t understand and my mother had to explain what they meant and how inappropriate they were for a 16-year-old. Calls soon were screened for me, which I appreciated.
Another memory I have from that summer is of a high school friend coming to see the performance on his day off from his job as a summer counselor at a nearby sleepaway camp. He was so sweet and expressed how fond he was of me and how he loved seeing me dance. Then he wanted me to take his high school ring and be his girlfriend. I think I was totally surprised and shocked and hopefully told him in as nice a way as I could that while I liked him I was not ready to be anyone’s girlfriend. I am not sure he understood, and he had a hard time looking at me after that.
I also got cast as an understudy to one of the actresses, which meant I had to do a short love scene with a mature actor. I learned how to do a theatre kiss where we really didn’t kiss. We would rehearse understudy scenes one night a week. I never got to perform it but it was another experience to add to the summer of seeing dance and theatre in a new professional light. This wasn’t exactly summer stock but it did give me the experience of performing six nights a week and working with seasoned professionals. I liked it and continued to feel very devoted to developing my dance career. And what a surprise to have these memories come flooding back to me after acknowledging a gentle rain, “pelo de gato,” here in Costa Rica.
It has been four months since Murray and I arrived in Costa Rica and closed on our new home. The world has changed a lot during these four months as has our own personal life. I have written before about how the skills I learned directing a dance company have contributed to problem solving day-to-day challenges in life. That certainly has been the case as unexpected events have colored the four months of adjusting to living here. Some have been very mundane and others life threatening. Let’s begin with the mundane.
If you have been following our journey here you know that we came with all of our life belongings in 8 suitcases. While we made some purchases of major furniture such as beds, sofa and a few folding tables and chairs, it is in the kitchen that I have learned to improvise the most. And even more so as COVID 19 limited shopping trips out. It seems I never have enough containers to store leftovers so I am constantly recycling food containers from take-out and jars that contained other food. That’s something I have never done before. Just this week I had made a concoction of chicken, zucchini, tomatoes and onions and had some left over but alas no formal container to put it in. Looking in the cabinet I noticed an empty glass jar from Rego Spaghetti Sauce with Mushrooms and that became a storage container for the chicken dish. Yes I had to carefully spoon it in, but now it is safely in the refrigerator to make a nice lunch in a few days. I have one glass bowl that is great for stirring things in but it was filled with some fresh pineapple so a medium-size pot worked just as well when I needed a bowl to make pancakes. I could go on and on with examples but you get the idea.
About six weeks after our arrival during the summer dry season here, there were a lot of fires around our area. Over a long weekend they kept getting closer and closer. Luckily our community has an emergency WhatsApp where we keep in touch with each other and share where fire is and what houses might be threatened. Quite a few homes very nearby were fighting the fire sometimes with the help of the local fire department and sometimes with a neighbor that had a fire truck that could take the water out of swimming pools to use for the fire. (I’ll call that thinking outside the box… as that was totally new for me and sure makes a lot of sense.) When fire began getting close to our house, coming down the hill, I put that on WhatsApp and asked what to do. Someone responded and said take our hose and start using it. Well I indeed did have a hose nearby but upon looking at it and at Murray and myself and contemplating becoming firefighters at age 75-plus, we shook our heads, packed a few essential things, called our driver (as we do not have a car), and asked him to please pick us up. He was at our house in just few minutes and we left, hoping for the best.
A neighbor sent us this picture of a stranger who did grab a hose and helped to prevent the fire from damaging our property. We are very grateful for his help.
Once we got to the central area of our town of Atenas, Manrique asked where we wanted to go. Murray and I looked at each other and said, “We don’t know, do you have any suggestions?”
Manrique made a few calls. Most nearby places were full with other people fleeing the fire but he did find us a place about 30 minutes away. Off we went, grateful to be safe and with a place to sleep for the night. Manrique checked on our house along with our realtor and we were lucky that the fire never came on our property. This was back in early March. Now the hillside that had burned is filled again with lush grass and scrubs.
When I say finding the pulse, I literally mean finding the pulse. Murray arrived with a new pacemaker. Three months in, the pacemaker began to fail. We didn’t know this at first but knew something was wrong. Following a trip to visit his cardiologist, Murray was in the hospital with a procedure called an ablation and now his pacemaker is back working perfectly with an exact pulse rate that we check regularly back at home. We are very pleased with the health care here. The doctors even make house calls. At this point we are experiencing the private health care, as we don’t have residency yet in which case an Expat can qualify for the public health care. We are lucky to have very good health insurance from Murray’s work in the U.S. government which covers most everything. The doctors we have met are very knowledgeable and up-to-date on latest procedures. Nursing care is very good. And the hospital Murray was in had all private rooms with a sofa that turned into a bed so I was able to stay overnight. There are some things we could complain about but overall we are impressed with the medical experiences Murray has had here. And we will keep checking his pulse.
Reflecting back on the April 21st telephone call when 11 of us gathered on Zoom to remember choreographer Louis Johnson who died on March 31, I am struck by two main areas I want to write about: memories I had not heard before, related to Louis Johnson and Let My People Go; and ways the participants are continuing with their work during the pandemic.
While lots of memories were shared, many of which I have written about in earlier blogs, these are a few new ones.
Cantor Mark Childs shared what it meant to go down to Henry St. Settlement House where rehearsals and a performance of Let My People Go were held. That was a place where his grandparents and great-grandparents went, and he said it was “such a special experience in my heart” to be able to be there.
Elizabeth McPherson taught at Henry St., where Louis was head of the dance program. Louis was known for his high standards and even had the same high standards for 4-year-olds as for professional dancers. Getting ready for a performance involving students, Louis was yelling at a 4-year-old boy to go to his right. The child wasn’t understanding, so Elizabeth explained to Louis that “4-year-olds don’t know their left from their right.” Louis threw up his arms and said, “You teach them.” Elizabeth did that gladly, telling the young boy to go toward the window.
Freddie Moore shared how meaningful it was to have a chance to work with Louis directly in the Avodah projects because when Freddie was a certificate student at Ailey, the historian Joe Nash would bring Louis in regularly to the dance history class and Louis was such a kind, sweet spirit and always passionate about whatever he was doing.
Jeannine Otis reminded us that when Louis would see her, years after she had performed the cantor’s role in Let My People Go, he would shout out, “There’s the black cantor!!”
As our gathering continued I asked each person to share what they were doing now. Part of each person’s sharing was how they were coping with COVID – 19.
Elizabeth McPherson, Director of the Dance Division and Coordinator of the MFA in Dance at Montclair State University, reported that they have a program with 120 undergraduates and 14 graduates. She has published two books and is now working on a book on Helen Tamiris. She also shared that she was just reading a Master’s Thesis Project that quotes Freddie Moore. ( A common element to our gathering was the intersecting paths that we all have in each other’s lives.) Elizabeth is in current discussions with the dean about changes that the college President may make for the fall semester (including perhaps starting the semester in October, having everyone wear masks, and having students alternate weeks on campus so classes would be smaller and students would have more space between them). Currently she is reviewing video auditions of students for the freshman class. She loved one creative video where the student did the barre in her kitchen, petit allegro in her living room and grand allegro in the street.
Beth Millstein is a psychotherapist and now seeing patients on Zoom and hearing their experiences of how they are handling staying at home. She is taking dance classes on Zoom and performs once or twice a year.
Jeannine is as busy as ever as Music Director at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan. Now with the pandemic she is working from home and doing online services. Each week she and her partner Larry feel like they are producing a radio show, finding the location, setting up the keyboard and doing the service from home. She is also involved with Theatre for Social Change, working with kids, and her book A Gathering has been turned into a theatre piece.
Kezia Gleckman Hayman is still doing administrative work at the same law firm she joined when she joined Avodah. She is currently busy working from home, while keeping an eye on her 12-year-old son, who is also attending school remotely and trying to sneak in video games simultaneously. She takes adult ballet classes (now Zoom) with Kathy McDonald, who was in Avodah’s first New York company. Kezia has recently joined some of her adult classmates in studying pointe, 33 years after she last performed in toe shoes.
Kezia trying her new pointe shoes in her Zoom dance studio — her small kitchen.
Freddie Moore has been at Ailey for 35 years now. A graduate of the Certificate Program and dancer with Ailey II, he has also had his own company, Footprints Dance Company, for 30 years. For the past eight years he has been running the Certificate Program and is Rehearsal Director of the Ailey student group, preparing juniors and seniors for performance. In addition he works with churches all over the world, building liturgical dance ministries. He is also raising two of his granddaughters, ages 6 and 8. Right now he is challenged by home schooling and live Zoom classes. In April when we were talking he was planning a graduation program for Ailey.
Deborah Hanna has just moved back to Italy after 7 years in South East Asia where she taught English and some dance. One experience she shared was introducing Martha Graham to a community in Myanmar that had no idea what modern dance was, let alone the Graham technique. Now in Italy she and her husband are working on family property to create a holistic art and cultural center. She can be found having coffee with three chickens, chopping down a tree and painting fences. She hopes once the pandemic is over we will come and visit.
Deborah (looking like a Graham performer, says Kezia) working on the family property in Italy during COVID 19.
Candice Franklin has been teaching with the Joffrey Ballet since 2007. She was caught right as the pandemic began to lock down things in the US when she was on tour holding auditions for the Joffrey Ballet. One day they had a room full of eager dancers and the next day there were just two dancers. She got on a plane in Kansas to return to NYC. She is doing a lot of teaching on Zoom and she finds it much harder to teach on Zoom then when it is a live class. She has to prepare extra carefully and really focus to get everything done in the hour. She had been training to teach ballroom dance. But that will need to be on hold, although someone in our Zoom group suggested using a broomstick for a partner!!
Newman shared that he had a gig on March 6th at the Folk Museum in NYC with a hundred people attending, and just 5 days later he had a gig in Brooklyn with only 2 people attending. He pointed out that he has spent a lot of his life not knowing where the next gig is, but now the whole world doesn’t know where the next gig is. He is particularly focusing on how to perform on the Internet. His whole experience has been with live audiences and the Internet is a totally different experience, which he doesn’t like. He knows he has to change and he is particularly inspired by Yo Yo Ma, who in Newman’s words, “gets to the same place” when performing on the Internet as when performing with a live audience. Newman is working to reach that point as well. Newman also shared his new instrument – the washboard. He came to it by accident when he was substituting for another musician. Changing the way the previous musician played it, Newman puts the washboard in his lap and plays it with shotgun shells covering 4 fingers on each hand, which creates a totally different sound. Playing the washboard has also led him to explore his family history, particularly his paternal grandfather who was born a slave and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale in 1903.
Newman noted something important for all of us to keep in mind. After 9/11 most of the places he used to play as a musician were gone. It took a year until people went out again. Newman concluded by saying we will all have to do what jazz musicians do — improvise.
Last month, eleven of us gathered together on a Zoom call to remember choreographer Louis Johnson who had passed away on March 31. (April 10th obituary in NYTimes) We all had some kind of connection to Louis, and most of us had worked with him on “Let My People Go.” We covered a number of time zones and different countries from Italy to Costa Rica to the US (from NYC to CA). The next morning we received this beautiful email from Deborah Hanna. I asked her if I could share it as a guest blog.
Bio of our Guest Blogger:
Deborah Lynn Hanna grew up in Charleston, West Virginia as a sports lover – playing basketball, swimming and riding horses competitively. This love of movement transformed into modern dance, and she graduated with a BA in Humanities from Stetson University in Deland, Florida, earning “The Most Outstanding Humanities Student” Award in 1981 and 1982. Next step: New York City and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance where she worked and studied for 5 years, achieving her 3rd year Trainee Program Diploma at the Advanced Level, while acting as Coordinator for the Martha Graham Ensemble and dancing with the Ensemble for 3 years in the annual revival pieces of “Primitive Mysteries,” “Steps in the Street” and “Celebration.” Primarily, Deborah grew as a performer with The Avodah Dance Ensemble from 1987-1992 in its 15-piece repertoire, dancing and giving workshops in all parts of the US. She then moved to Italy with her Italian husband and began teaching the Martha Graham Technique and choreographing, as well as teaching English as a Second Language. In 2013, the latter work took Deborah and her husband to Myanmar for 7 years, where she taught English and dance, and also performed in interesting, but unlikely venues. In July 2019 Deborah and her husband returned to their family property in Tarquinia, Italy and are in the midst of creating a holistic center for Cultural and the Healing Arts.
Guest Blog by Deborah Hanna
I woke up this morning (a few hours later actually, with our time difference here), remembering pieces of our conversations, your faces, my thoughts and reflections, and most importantly, a profound sense of love… love for the beauty and uniqueness of what was shared, along with such awe and respect for the amazing talent and achievements represented on that tiny screen – everyone in their homes, sort of a humbling and very human factor, that gives us an equal voice at the table as human beings, as we all walk through this unique period of history together…. with a glance backwards towards another era.
My first consideration, as we all expressed last night, was the unifying force of JoAnne, her creative vision for Avodah and the ever-changing landscape of her choreography (of which we all played integral roles in the creation of movement), the beauty of so many diverse collaborations, performance arenas, teaching workshops, cities, towns and even countries, and the continual unexpected, which made every performance and new work exciting. This is an amazing accomplishment, JoAnne – one that gave so much to so many of us as artists, not to mention the audiences and workshop participants. The other beautiful quality of Avodah was the bond of friendship and healthy spirit of collaboration that existed amongst us… a very rare quality in the NYC dance scene – at least coming from the Martha Graham Dance Company perspective. Last night, after we listened to Candice’s memory of getting lost in a piece of Avodah choreography and JoAnne being amused as to how she and the rest of us would figure our ways out of these tight spots, Kezia brought up a similar moment for me, with the Graham work Celebration.
Deborah Hanna in the studio in a Graham movement.
During one City Center performance of the first reconstruction of Celebration (464 jumps in 6 minutes), as I was beating out a 64-count phrase, I became lost in imagery that Martha herself had given to us during one of the last rehearsals. I simply departed on my next jump series 8 counts too soon – alone, instead of with another 5 dancers. I remember being out in the middle of that big City Center stage, feeling all of the responsibility that comes with representing Graham in that arena, and thinking to myself, “Okay, Deb, you’re here…. just keep jumping until the others arrive and keep the image of light pouring down, so no one can see in your eyes that you screwed up royally.” I was the only one moving on the stage at that moment in an intricately choreographed Graham piece, where every single second was carved to perfection. Just in that moment, a quite accomplished dance reviewer snapped my photo, which only made matters worse! Eight counts later, the other dancers arrived and we finished the piece successfully. The next day, the dance review and photo were sitting on my dressing room table, with all of the other Ensemble members gathered round. To my mind, I had successfully come out of an error and actually done really well. Naturally, Yuriko (the director of the Ensemble) didn’t agree! She stomped into the dressing room – her tiny but powerful stature steaming, venom flowing from her eyes. I felt this ancient Samurai power about to unfurl …. she was furious and said that if I ever did anything like that again, I was out of the Ensemble! There was no chance to explain, no excuses!
Only recently, after having lived in South East Asia for 7 years and having worked with many Japanese, getting to know them and their culture, I can now understand her reaction, but at the time, it was very foreign – especially for a West Virginia hillbilly like myself. Yuriko was deeply dedicated to the integrity and accuracy of Martha’s work, above all else…. and that was the atmosphere of the Graham World. Our rehearsals with Yuriko were very much akin to being in the military, I imagined… for all the greatness and perils that those worlds offer.
So, from there to Avodah…..After I’d finished my first season at City Center with the Martha Graham Ensemble in the reconstructions of Celebration and Primitive Mysteries, Yuriko was interested in having me come to rehearsals and integrate into the permanent Martha Graham Ensemble ( which I had helped cultivate into a full-time second company, having been the booking coordinator – a role I developed as a work-study student, in order to pay for my own classes). It was one of those monumental life crossroads for me. I had just gotten into Avodah simultaneously, during the Graham NY City Center season in 1987, and had to make a decision of which road to travel. I looked at the long line of extraordinary dancers fighting tooth and nail to get into Graham, and fortunately I had the good sense to choose Avodah, where I could be a “little star” in a very healthy, satisfying dance company. And that decision has made all of the difference!
At the end of my intense years both training with Graham and working on her reconstruction works, then the immensely diverse experiences performing in so many roles with Avodah, I felt deeply satisfied as a dance performer and was ready for the next step…. which just happened to be Italy via India…. dance being a constant companion throughout…but in extraordinarily unique settings, far from my NYC days.
I know that Louis would be very pleased to know that he was responsible for helping unite all of us in a little gem of a work that he and JoAnne created…. “Let My People Go!” It was one of my very favorite pieces in the Avodah repertoire because it gave us the chance to do so much – act, sing, dance different styles and change up pace so quickly that you were always on your toes. I learnt this great lesson on the art of choreographing from Louis…the grave importance of changing pace, dynamics, styles, directions, rhythms and energy. That lesson is monumental!
I’ll finish off this rather indulgent email (only in these times is this kind of epistle really possible – to write and perhaps even to be read) with how “Let My People Go” started on its first debut, to its final performance of the first season run. Our “virgin” performance was on a notably long, and rather narrow bema in Ohio, where we left notes on stage right and left as we exited, in order to remember where and when we entered and what we had to do….. to the last performance for that season, at Henry Street Settlement – 15 performances later – all done in less than a 2-month period.
That final Sunday afternoon matinee performance at Henry Street was a humble, but magical one! It was raining, I believe, and a rather gloomy Sunday afternoon, so there was hardly any audience and I don’t think Louis was present. But we were there, a now seasoned first cast, having worked together so hard and intensively, travelling for almost 6 weeks – planes, cars, hotels, restaurants, snow storms, missing cast members, dead deer, interesting hosts…. and so, we were seasoned in many ways…. enough so, that the final performance was truly a spiritual experience. We now knew the piece — and each other — very well, and on that stage at Henry Street Settlement, where the project had begun, something extraordinary happened. Every one of us began spontaneously to expand a little on our roles, sing an extra note, give an added expression, leap a little higher, or add an arm for emphasis. I remember watching Kezia, Newman, Loretta, Mark and Rob in between my own entrances, and so enjoying and appreciating their spontaneity and creativity. But above all, there was this amazing, tangible feeling between us – a sort of deep flow and understanding beyond words, of being united by vibrations – those invisible threads that bind us to the core. For me, that last run of “Let My People Go” was the essence and highest level of performance…….collective, joyful, fun and pure creativity in the moment.
Deborah in the performance at Henry St. of Let My People Go. Behind her is Loretta Abbott and drummer Leopoldo Fleming. Photo by Tom Brazil.
Avodah began to do week-long summer dance training programs in 1997, but I want to share memories of our final one, at Perry-Mansfield in August 2004. We were very fortunate to have a grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund. This fund, which began in 1989 upon the death of Laura Jane Musser, is devoted to her interests, which included the arts and helping children. One of the areas funded is Intercultural Harmony and we applied for a grant to provide a five-day workshop teaching how to use movement, music and storytelling to create multicultural programs in schools. The grant enabled me to put together a stellar faculty and to help provide scholarships to participants.
This was not the first Avodah workshop at Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Spring, CO. The first one was in 2001 when Amichai Lau Lavie and Libbie Mathes joined me as the faculty with our week focused on Yoga, Dance and Sacred Text. Libbie was my next-door neighbor in Steamboat Springs and we quickly discovered our common interest in dance and sacred text from both a Jewish and a Buddhist perspective. This was a great opportunity for us to work together. Libbie is a highly trained and gifted teacher of Yoga, having studied in India in both Asana (posture) and Pranayama (breath work). Amichai is now a rabbi, but at the time of the workshop he was a student, extremely knowledgeable about Jewish text. Libbie remembers “loving his analysis and insights into the Moses sagas.” The workshop was part of Avodah’s training program for leaders of dance midrash, and at least one person who had done workshops with me in NYC made the trip to Perry-Mansfield in Colorado.
Libbie and I did another workshop the following year focusing on Meditation, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg joining us. And then in 2004 we had a faculty of five, all people that I had a long history of working with. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we focused on training teachers to use multicultural programs in the schools. Libbie continued providing the Yoga section and insights from her explorations of India and Yoga’s traditions. Regina Ress, an international storyteller, had a huge number of relevant stories to share and had taught in schools at all levels. Kezia had both an education degree and a dance degree, and had danced and taught with Avodah for 13 years. She and I had led many workshops related to dance midrash and multicultural work that grew out of our piece Let My People Go. Newman Taylor Baker is a percussionist I had worked with since 1989 as part of Let My People Go and then in other teaching situations along with our prison programs. He had years of experience presenting school programs and had the most amazing collection of percussion instruments from all over the world. In addition we invited Julie Gayer to join us, as she was taking on the role of director of The Avodah Dance Ensemble in the fall of 2004, since I was no longer living in New York City and was retiring from heading the dance company.
Our 2004 faculty from l. to r. Libbie, Kezia, Julie, JoAnne, Newman and Regina sitting on the edge of the Louis Horst Dance Studio at Perry-Mansfield.
We not only had participants from throughout the United States, but two members of the Steamboat Springs community, as well. Libbie remembers a chemistry teacher and also an administrator. We were thrilled that we could offer scholarships to participants. Having all worked together before, this was a sheer teaching joy where we could just easily flow from one leader to another. As Libbie and I were next-door neighbors and luckily the townhouse on the other side of mine was vacant, we rented it for the week, and everyone had fun hanging out together after teaching. I remember that Newman introduced me to quinoa and showed me how to rinse it first before cooking it. And then the weekend following the workshop, we had a wonderful time hiking two of my favorite trails.
Storytelling, movement, and music are all ways to connect to others and learn about different cultures, finding common threads and celebrating differences. For me on a personal note it was a wonderful way to complete my work with the Avodah Dance Ensemble as its founding director. Avodah had begun with my exploration of my own Jewish roots and my relationship to Jewish text. Now over thirty years later, I had changed and my focus was on building bridges between people and seeing intercultural harmony (the beautiful phrase used by the Laura Jane Musser Fund). And how wonderful to be able to hold this workshop at Perry-Mansfield in the Louis Horst Studio. It was like so many pieces of my life coming together…nature, spirituality, dance history, personal history, deep friendships and artistic collaborations.
Regina hugging a tree on one of our hikes.
Resting on a hike and totally enjoying being together.
It’s the final day of the 2001 six-week summer program for high school and college-age dancers at Perry-Mansfield. Linda Kent has headed the program and I am watching the repertory class in the large studio of Steinberg Pavilion. Tears of joy are streaming down my face as I watch a very enthusiastic, energetic group of talented young dancers perform repertory they have learned from works of Alvin Ailey and Jose Limon and even some phrases of Twyla Tharpe. My eye catches a few of the people who helped make possible Linda’s role as new director of the dance program, and we smile broadly. In just one summer the level of the performing arts program at P-M has skyrocketed, exposing the students to outstanding teachers, classics of modern dance repertory and new up-and-coming choreographers.
Steinberg Pavillon – taken from the Perry-Mansfield website. I love the way that all the studios at Perry-Mansfield are open to the outside.
Following my lunch with T Ray at the end of the previous summer, I had confirmed that Linda would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield. T Ray and I met with both the Executive Director (June Lindenmayer) and President of the Board (Jim Steinberg) and they liked the idea and then reached out to Linda. I had done my job making the suggestion and now it was up to them to make it happen. There was a deep feeling of satisfaction in knowing that in some way I was contributing to making the dance program as extraordinary as it had once been.
Linda drew on her many contacts in the dance world and put together an outstanding faculty for that first summer and the following 12 that she headed the program. It included both young rising choreographers, and seasoned teachers from Juilliard and other established programs. The Evening of Dance concerts were excellent each summer and one of my favorites ended with a section from Paul Taylor’s Esplanade that Linda set beautifully on the dancers. It was a shared delight for me to watch classes and rehearsals and to get to hang out with the dance faculty. A few weeks into the first summer I hosted a party for the faculty at our home and that became a tradition that we continued until 2009 when we relocated from Steamboat Springs to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
When dance became a part of the New Works program that preceded the official camp session, Linda selected gifted choreographers to come and develop work. They have gone on to have exceptional careers. Two noteworthy examples are Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Camille A. Brown, who not only has her own company, but has been choreographing for Broadway, Off-Broadway and the recent Jesus Christ Superstar production on television.
Linda continued directing the program through the 100th anniversary of Perry-Mansfield. By that time I was well settled in Santa Fe and did not make it up to see the wonderful program she put together featuring a setting of the second half of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo. Supposedly de Mille got the idea for Rodeo when she was on the faculty of Perry-Mansfield.
As happens, the new Executive Director (Joan Lazarus Dobkowski) decided to make a change and the following summer Linda did not return to Perry-Mansfield to head the dance program. I am very pleased that in the course of 13 amazing summers Linda was able to have an impact on many young dancers. Linda is an outstanding coach and is able to guide dancers to find the very best way to execute a movement phrase. A December 2016 article by Kristin Schwab in Dance Magazine, titled “These Five Details Can Make or Break Your Performance,” pointed out that “for Linda Kent, even the slightest shift in focus can change the meaning.” I love the picture of Linda that accompanied the article. I am so glad that I had a role in recommending that Linda head the dance department at Perry-Mansfield and that so many young dancers benefited from the staff she engaged and from her direction and instruction.
Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy of Juilliard, taken from the December 2016 Dance Magazine article.
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