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.
Oscar, a miniature poodle, is an important part of my life. He is also building a fan club of my guests, so that almost all emails from friends and artists who have been guests at Casa Uno Artist Residency include a greeting to Oscar! He is also the first dog that I have had as an adult.
When I was growing up, we always had a dog in the house. My mom loved dogs and said dogs followed her home from school when she was a child. I didn’t take much interest in the pets we had in the house except when they had puppies, and then it was fun to watch the little Dalmatians grow or the strange mix that a German shepherd and a large French poodle produced.
Cats, and especially a black cat we called Midnight, were a part of my children’s life growing up. My husband and I were cat people, although sometimes I thought it might be fun to have a dog. When I made that suggestion to my husband, I got a look from him that clearly said that wasn’t going to happen.
Things changed after my husband passed and I had a robbery in the house where I live in Costa Rica. While the two young robbers didn’t get much, it was enough for me to decide we needed to take steps to make the house more secure. I did, making sure the alarm system worked and that the property was completely fenced in with grill work on vulnerable windows. I also thought it would be a good idea to get a dog. At first, I was looking at a German shepherd, knowing that they are good watch dogs, but then I got realistic, also knowing that a large dog would be too much for me to handle. While a rescue dog was appealing, I was concerned, as a new dog owner, that I didn’t want to handle problems that a rescue dog might bring. Since some family members were allergic to some breeds of dogs, and as I was anticipating guests, I wanted a dog that would not be a problem for people with allergies.
Photo by Manrique
Next came the fun of naming him. Since he would be a part of the Artist Residencies I was planning I wanted to give him a name that had an artsy ring to it. I first wanted to call him Shakespeare, but I immediately got a resounding “no” from my house manager Manrique, who firmly said, “He is a Costa Rican dog. He needs a Costa Rican name.”
I asked for suggestions of famous Costa Ricans, particularly if they were in the arts.
After a short pause Manrique suggested the name Oscar for Oscar Arias Sanchez, who served two terms as President and was also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. That worked for me since it immediately also reminded me of Oscars in the world of arts, such as Oscar Wilde and Oscar Hammerstein. So now I had a name for my new puppy.
Oscar has been with me for over three years now and is an important part of life here. It has been fun to watch how he adapts to all the different guests. When he hears a car coming up the driveway, he immediately rushes to the door to see who’s here. I find it interesting that when he recognizes someone he doesn’t bark, but if he is unsure, he will bark, letting me know that it may be someone we are not familiar with. Once someone is acknowledged by me as a friend, Oscar is the first to warmly welcome them, and he needs to be acknowledged before I can greet the person. He will often curl up beside someone, expecting to be gently petted. Since his fur is so soft and silky, he gets lots of petting. Sometimes he will sit beside someone and lift his paw, meaning, “please scratch my belly.”
Leslie Zehr is a wonderful host and interviewer, and even though this was my first podcast, she immediately put me at ease. We had a delightful, fun conversation where I was able to share my journey from dancing as a toddler while my grandmother played the piano, through my dance education at the Graham Studio and The Juilliard School, to the creation of the Avodah Dance Ensemble. Her questions enabled me to discuss the transformative power of dance, as we explored how dance is a method of empowerment and healing in women’s correctional institutions, and how it led to filmmaking and in particular the film Through the Door: Movement and Meditation as Part of Healing with domestic violence survivors.
Each month since January 31, 2021, Leslie has produced a different Podcast, all designed to inspire “a community of like-minded souls seeking to understand the cosmic dance of co-creation through the sacred arts.” She wants to expand minds, ignite creativity and explore something new and something old.
Leslie is a sacred arts teacher, workshop leader, mentor and author of two books, The Alchemyof Dance and The Al-chemia Remedies. While she was born in Peru and educated in the United States, she lives in Egypt, where for more than 30 years she has supported women “to reconnect to the Divine Feminine within through the mysteries of ancient Egypt.”
The Podcast series covers a range of subjects. Some examples are: Let Your Yoga Dance; Sacred Self Care Chakradance; A Roundtable Discussion of the Importance of Movement and Dance in Children’s Lives; and Japanese Butoh.
While the Podcast is not done live, Leslie does no editing, so I knew that I had to be as clear and focused as I could be. When the interview was over, we had a few minutes to check in about how it went. I expressed my gratitude to Leslie for her warmth, and we both agreed we had fun sharing together. The interview is available to listen to as a podcast and to watch on YouTube.
A business trip back in the early 1990s, on which I was able to accompany my husband Murray, still has special significance to me. Murray had a case in Singapore that required him to travel there for some onsite research. We decided to begin our trip with a five-day visit to Thailand. After a long day of flying, which included changing planes in Tokyo, we arrived around 1 AM in Bangkok. I still have a very vivid memory of our taxi ride from the airport to our hotel as traffic was bumper to bumper! And that is how it seemed all the time in Bangkok – never a time when there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the roads. A quick Google search as I am writing this post shows that traffic in Bangkok is still a major problem. Murray and I soon learned that many of the tourist sites were close to one another along the river and that it was possible to take a water taxi on the Chao Phraya River that connected The Grand Palace, Temple of the Reclining Buddha and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. We also took a river trip to the old capital and another river trip in smaller canals to get a flavor of local life. While we did not stay at a hotel on the river we determined that should we ever return, we would certainly do that, to radically limit our time on traffic-filled streets.
While the trip to the old capital was very interesting and I loved the various Buddha statues, my favorite part of the trip was the time in Bangkok at The Grand Palace. Upon entering the grounds my immediate reaction was that I was on the set of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s play The King and I. Everything felt so familiar to me, having been such a fan of the musical. Of course I realized that this was where so many of the set ideas had come from. And for choreographer Jerome Robbins, the position of the figures in many of the facades were woven into the dances.
My own history with The King and I goes back to shortly after the original production starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner opened on Broadway in March 1951. My good friend Regina had an original recording of the show. We would dance to the songs in her living room. In 1956 the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical came out, and what a dazzling production with amazing sets! Jerome Robbins recreated his ballet Small House of Uncle Thomas for the film, and I loved that ballet.
In 1964, after returning to Pittsburgh following my two years at Juilliard, I was asked to choreograph a production of The King and I that was being done at Taylor Allderdice High School, the very high school that I had attended. I had a wonderful time doing it. There are three wonderful dance moments in the musical: of course, the sixteen-minute ballet Small House of Uncle Thomas; The March of the Children, when they are introduced to their new teacher; and the duet between Anna and the King. Working with the two leads in the high school production was particularly fun and they were very appreciative of my help.
Over the years I have enjoyed watching the movie quite a few times and seeing revivals of the production. While I didn’t see the 2015 Broadway revival with Kelli O’Hara I was pleased when it won a Tony for best revival. There is even talk right now of a remake of the film. What a great contribution Rodgers and Hammerstein have made to musical theater!
I conclude this blog with a few pictures from our trip to Thailand and welcome your comments related to your connection to the award-winning The King and I.
Photograph taken of a Buddha during our tour to the Old Capital
Images on a façade at The Grand Palace that might have inspired Jerome Robbins’ choreography.
Murray and me on the grounds of The Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand.
Preface: Why am I continuing to paint and write this blog at a time when the world is in crisis? An honest answer is because it allows some structure to this time when Murray and I aren’t leaving our home. For part of each day there is an element of peacefulness and joy in my life as I reflect back or create anew. Doing something creative engages me and I invite you along on the journey. I also welcome guest blogs… won’t you share how you are structuring your time to find some peacefulness and joy!
Even though it is nearly 60 years since I ventured to Steamboat Springs and attended Perry-Mansfield, the memories are crystal clear in my mind. The blend of the arts, the Colorado landscape, the rustic setting with horses – all evoke smells, sounds and visual images swirling me back in time. I was lucky to attend at a time when Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield were still very active as the founding directors. According to Wikipedia, “Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp was founded by Charlotte and Portia in 1913 and is the oldest continuously operating dance and theater school in America.”
Perry-Mansfield’s website describes:
…two ladies came to the frontier mountain town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado with a mule named “Tango.” Although the town was populated with people primarily engaged in mining and ranching, it was Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield’s vision to explore and teach “natural dance forms” and “artistic expression close to creatures and mountains and out-of-doors.”
Quickly regarded by the locals as the “mad ladies of Steamboat,” Charlotte and Portia founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in this spectacular mountain setting – a 76-acre campus 7,000 feet above sea level and 150 miles northwest of Denver.
From their humble beginnings in a few rustic cabins and some lean years when the “scenery was the salary,” Charlotte and Portia nurtured Perry-Mansfield into one of the premier performing arts schools and camps for children and youth of all ages.
JoAnn Fried and I arrived at the Steamboat train station which is now the Arts Depot. I don’t have any pictures of our arrival but I do have one of our departure.
JoAnn Fried and I at the train station at the end of summer.
The first few days were a whirlwind of activity settling into a rustic cabin (no bathroom) up a fairly steep hill. Down the hill was the bath house with toilets, sinks and showers. I quickly got to know three roommates, one from Denver, another from Wyoming, and I don’t remember where the third was from. I also think our counselor may have slept in our bunk, but I am not sure. I do remember her name was Jo and she was from Minnesota. Auditions and class placement were also an important part of the first few days. I excitedly and boldly auditioned for both Helen Tamiris’s piece that she would be setting on a selected group, along with Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theater production to be staged in the first few weeks of camp.
In an earlier blog I mentioned that I hadn’t prepared anything for an audition and quickly put together favorite phrases from Jeanne Beaman’s class, ending with a fun fall of sliding onto an outstretched arm and then rolling to get up. When I completed my phrase of probably two minutes, Tamiris asked me to please repeat the fall. A day later a list was posted outside the office door listing the selected campers. I remember being thrilled to see my name there. Only two of us under college age were selected, myself and Martha Clarke, a year younger than me.
At that time Perry-Mansfield went from young campers (in a section called The Ranch) all the way to College-age students, each age having its own section at the camp. All ages attended at the same time.
I also auditioned for Midsummer Night’s Dream. I don’t remember the initial audition but I do remember the callback. Three of us were called back to read for Titania. I was stunned. I had never taken an acting class and never thought of myself as anything other than a dancer. I had gone to the initial audition because I wanted to apply myself to as many different opportunities as possible. I didn’t get the part and did get cast in a small role in the production, which I declined, feeling that the rehearsals for Tamaris’s ballet were enough for me. It was exciting to have made the callback and to have had the experience of auditioning for the part of Titania.
Since I was cast in the ballet I was also permitted to take Tamiris’s advanced technique class and Tamiris’s composition class. The composition class was a real eye opener. I don’t have much memory of the technique class other than doing relevés into falls and catching ourselves, in each direction. The composition class left me with two main approaches that in ways are still part of my life. First, that one can start with an ordinary gesture and from that build a whole dance, and second, that one must totally commit to what one is doing!!
The piece Tamiris developed that summer was Dance for Walt Whitman. It was in three sections, each featuring a poem that was read. The middle section was my favorite, inspired by the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” All the women linked arms and moved as one body. My mom surprised me and came out for the performance. As I was packing for the move to Costa Rica I found a letter that she had written my dad. Reading it was very moving to me and I share just a few sentences from it.
JoAnne was an important part of the group. Tamiris added a fall for her… she slid half way down a 3 ft ramp and got up gracefully 10 beats later. The ballet lasted 20 minutes and the effect was magnificent.
I’m getting more convinced that she really has something to express in dance.
Program from Perry-Mansfield’s Evening of Dance
Picture of Tamiris that I took!
Working with Tamiris was a turning point for me in dance. The confirmation of being selected and then the experience of the actual classes, rehearsals and performance cemented my determination to have a career in dance. But the experience at Perry-Mansfield had another major influence on my life. It introduced me to the western Rocky Mountains and confirmed my love of being in nature. During the summer I would hike up from the cabin to the top of the hill, and in a level area do a short dance of thanksgiving for being in such an amazing environment.
Picture taken by one of my friends, of me dancing at the top the hill at Perry-Mansfield.
After the Tamiris ballet experience I had several more weeks of camp and wasn’t particularly impressed with Harriet Anne Gray, who took over for Tamiris. Instead there were two other experiences that stand out in my mind.
On her day off, Ray Faulkner, the head counselor of our Hill unit, invited me to join her on a hike up Fish Creek Falls to a lake at the top. It was breathtaking and awesome and the wildflowers were amazing. Hiking, wildflowers and being in nature have been important parts of life since then.
Perry-Mansfield also offered special western trips. I had signed up for a three-day trip to the Grand Canyon. It actually wasn’t to the Grand Canyon but rather to Dead Horse Point which is in Utah where the Colorado River cuts through it much like it does at the Grand Canyon. That was another awesome nature experience. We camped out and that night was during the August meteor shower and I remember an amazing night counting shooting stars.
Picture of me at Dead Horse Point!
As the 6-week experience ended and we boarded the train to head for home, I found myself filled with a new energy and a clear direction for my life.
It was late fall and I was 14 ½, nearly 15 years old and browsing through Dance Magazine. I had continued to be very focused on dance, having progressed from the creative dance classes of Genevieve Jones to more structured modern dance classes with Jeanne Beaman. Jeanne’s classes were a nice blend of a variety of modern dance techniques, definitely including some Graham technique sprinkled in.
Hungry for lots more technique and intensive training, I was determined to find a program to attend in the summer. Dance Magazine was an excellent source and I came across an ad for Perry-Mansfield’s Camp/Performing Arts Program which said Helen Tamiris would be teaching there for the first three weeks. I looked up Tamiris and found that she was not only a pioneering modern dancer but was also the choreographer of several Broadway shows. Wow, that would be a perfect person to study with! The challenge was that the camp was located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and that was pretty far from Pittsburgh. When I approached my parents they said they would pay for the tuition but I had to pay for my transportation. I found that one could take the train from Pittsburgh, change in Chicago to Denver and then take a trainfrom Denver to Steamboat Springs. I seem to remember that the round trip fare was around $75 (this was 1958). Another friend, JoAnn Fried, was also interested in going. She would focus on drama while I would be a dance major.
Now how to raise the necessary money. Definitely babysitting would be one way. Then in brainstorming with JoAnn Fried we came up with the idea of teaching classes in my basement. We could charge 25 cents per class, and have a culminating creative type recital like Genevieve Jones did. My Mom was very enthusiastic and said we could use the finished room in our basement, which even had its own bathroom. Luckily there wasn’t too much furniture and we could easily move it to the side, giving us plenty of room to dance. Finding students wasn’t hard either, between younger kids in the neighborhood, my sisters’ friends,and daughters of my Mom’s friends. The word quickly got around and we had a nice group of kids to work with.
Picture of JoAnn Fried and myself working with two of our students. I’m holding the arm of my sister Suzanne (of blessed memory). This picture is from a Pittsburgh newspaper, May 1958, which I recently found in a saved file.
Once my parents realized that I would indeed be able to make the transportation costs, they agreed that I could attend camp and allowed me to apply. They made the deposit for the summer and agreed they would pay the rest of the tuition. JoAnn Fried and I called ourselves Jo-Jo Inc. and had fun putting together a production we called Westward Ho as a culminating event. We needed a place to perform and Mom helped us to rent the local grade school auditorium for an evening.
Looking back I realize that my parents’ asking me to raise the transportation costs was an excellent experience that ended up providing me with tools that have helped me through my life. Maybe it is best summed up by saying I learned that I could envision an idea and carry it through. That kind of skill set enabled me to found the Avodah Dance Ensemble and run the company for 30 years and then later in life develop the film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories.
It has also served me in my personal life. Recently it was put into practice as Murray and I moved to our new home in Costa Rica. Having learned from the time I was a teen that it was OK to attend a summer program halfway across the United States, I didn’t find it so overwhelming to be building a new life in Central America. Knowing that from the age of 14 I was able to collaborate with another person and build a program with a culminating event fueled my confidence that I can envision and make change happen. Early I learned that one needs a certain level of determination and problem-solving ability to make one’s vision happen. I am grateful that I was encouraged from a young age to do this.
My cousin Maxine, who is a year younger than I am, started taking dance classes when she was 4 or 5 and my family would drive to Uniontown, which was about an hour from where we lived in Pittsburgh, to watch her recitals. These were long evenings with kids in satiny, glittery costumes doing various routines. Usually the kids had several costume changes since they were in quite a few numbers. So when my Mom wanted to expose me to dance classes she selected Kelly’s School of Dance, which was in our neighborhood and run by Louise Kelly. Louise was one of Gene Kelly’s sisters. Gene had grown up in Pittsburgh and now was in his prime in Hollywood. It was somewhat similar to the kind of dance school that Maxine had gone to, with the emphasis on recitals and costumes and young kids being exposed to tap, acrobatics, and a kind of intro to ballet.
My cousin Maxine in one of her recital costumes. (When I shared this picture with Maxine she remembered the following about the picture and the role her dance classes played in her life.)
My recollection is that this was taken when my ballet dance class performed Swan Lake. I think somehow we must have had individual photos. I was definitely in the chorus of ballerinas and sort of remember being in a semicircular formation with the other dancers. Note the braces so I think this was towards the end of my involvement with dance training 6 days/week when I decided as a teenager that I liked academics a lot more than dance and did not have the talent or the desire to be a ballerina or a dancer.
Today, I am most grateful for the self discipline, the coordination, mental development, the muscular training and the appreciation for the art of dance that I received from all of that hard work. My involvement with Tai Chi over the past 10 years brings back so much of the joy of dance – practicing steps, being graceful and remembering combinations. I also attribute my physical strength and my ability to comeback from my traumatic brain injury to this early training.)
Once I got to know my friend Regina and learned about the dance classes she was taking I thought I would like to try the kind of dance she was doing. Regina was studying with Genevieve Jones and had recently been in a delightful production of Johnny Appleseed. She was invited to play a skunk with an older group of kids. Genevieve had a totally different approach to working with kids. Students were encouraged to make up their own movement, usually to a story she shared. The music was mostly live accompaniment. I wanted to do this instead of learning routines!!
Genevieve was a real pioneer in modern dance in Pittsburgh. She was born in 1906 in Pittsburgh and attended the University of Wisconsin, majoring in dance. (The University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to its website, offered the first university dance degree program in the country.) Genevieve brought her love of modern dance back to Pittsburgh. In the 30’s she began bringing such dance legends as Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Jose Limon to her hometown.
I soon was loving the creative movement classes she led, and I remember one dance program in which I was an Irish Lady and we danced a poem about the Irish famine when people only ate potatoes.
Practicing in costume for the Irish Lady, in the living room of our house on Shaw Avenue in Pittsburgh. I think I am about 10 in this picture.
In addition to the children’s classes that Genevieve taught, she also conducted quite popular ballroom classes for pre-teens. Five of us from Shaw Avenue carpooled to these classes. One of our parents would drive us to the class and another would pick us up. Jimmy Levinson, Joan Davis, Regina, Bobby Moser and I would pile into a car and off we go to her very large studio with chairs all around the room. I seem to remember we had to wear white cotton gloves and it was all very formal learning how to do the basic ballroom steps. We learned to graciously accept being asked to dance, and when it was women’s choice, to ask someone to dance. Afterwards we would go back to one of our houses and have fun hanging out together. While I didn’t keep in contact with Joan Davis, I do know that Bobby Moser took over his father’s interior design business in our neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. He died in his sixties. Jimmy and I have kept in contact through the years. He has done amazing things in agricultural economics and with work in India. His son is part of an amazing non-profit in India which works with pregnant women and their newborn infants. And of course, if you have been reading this blog you know that Regina and I continue to enjoy both our friendship and working and collaborating together.
As a teenager I began teaching classes in my basement as a way to earn some money and found myself using many images and ideas from Genevieve Jones’s classes. And many years later when I had a full-grown practice working with children in Tallahassee I again turned to ideas I had experienced in Genevieve’s classes. By that time she had published a book sharing her stories, telling how she guided children in using them in movement, and providing original music from the person who had accompanied her classes. Her materials were wonderfully useful, especially for working with children ages 3 to about 8.
I also remember the simple imagery she used when doing some warm-up exercises like saying hello and goodbye as we pointed and flexed our feet!!
Teaching in Tallahassee, Florida, saying “hello and goodbye” with our toes. Picture taken around 1975.
Genevieve was a wonderful influence in helping me develop my creativity and starting me on a fun journey in dance. As I became a teenager I wanted something different and found other dance teachers with a more disciplined and structured approach.
As I was going through my scrapbooks getting ready for our move to Costa Rica, I came across an obituary that I had saved, written when Genevieve died in 2002. In it she is quoted as saying, “Dance (always spelled with a capital D) is a sacred thing, a great and wonderful thing.”
I very much wanted to find a picture of Genevieve Jones to include in this post. I wasn’t able to, but what I did find, in a literary journal, was a wonderful piece entitled “Letters to Genevieve,” which describes her beautifully and shows the profound impact she had on one individual’s life. The work was written by Sarah Golin, and here is the link to it. https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v18n1/nonfiction/golin-s/letters-page.shtml. Thank you, Sarah, for writing this.
Regina Ress has also written about her experience in dance and the influence of Genevieve Jones. Here’s a link to it. Thank you, Regina, for sharing this.
In an earlier blog I wrote about an intensive discussion I had at about the age of 8 with Regina, a very good friend who lived down the street from me, about who was the better ballerina, Moira Shearer or Margot Fonteyn. In this blog I want to share the great fun I had dancing in Regina’s very large living room.
I am not sure where Regina got the half parachute that we played with, but what a joy it was to wave it, dance under it and use our imagination to turn it into whatever we wanted.
We lived on the same street about a half a block from each other. Regina is only about two months older than I am, but because her birthday is at the end of November and mine isn’t until January and the cut off date for kindergarten was December 31, we weren’t in the same grade. She was a half year ahead, having started kindergarten in September while I began in February. (The Pittsburgh School district had admissions to start in both September and February, and one could even graduate in February from High School. I doubt this still exists.)
Anyway, back to the living room. It was very large, reminding me of the living room in my grandmother’s house that I use to dance in as a toddler. There was lots of open space for us to move in. I remember in one part of this magical space, close to where you entered, was a record player along with lots of musical theatre records. During our grade school years and into the beginning of middle school I remember spending so many afternoons listening to musicals of that period such as The King and I, Oklahoma, and Kiss Me Kate. Regina had a lovely singing voice and she would sing along. I did not, so I was strictly about dancing. We talked about a favorite actress, Gertrude Lawrence, who was the original Anna in The King and I and was on the recording we regularly listened to. Her biography, Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A, became a favorite of mine. I saved that book for many years, occasionally returning to re-read it. That book and Agnes de Mille’s Dance to the Piper were major sources of inspiration during my pre-teen and early teen years.
Another favorite actress that I remember liking during this time was Celeste Holm, who was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma. With my awful, out of tune voice, I sometimes tried to sing I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No. Alas… even this kind of song did not work for me. It was a good thing I liked to dance, ‘cause a triple threat (singer, dancer, actress) I would never be.
l. to r. JoAnne, JoAnne’s sister Peggy, Regina at Peggy’s birthday party. The only photo I could find of us at the age when we were having fun in Regina’s living room.
Those early after-school/weekend times influenced me in several specific ways.
Many years later, when I built the Creative Dance Center in Tallahassee, Florida (See https://mostlydance.com/2018/11/09/feminism-meets-the-bank-building-a-dance-studio/) one of the first things that I made sure to have was a parachute as a prop to use both with children and adults. This time it was a full parachute that I was able to purchase from an Army Surplus Store. It was an all-time favorite of all ages. Sometimes we just made a large circle and watched the wonderful waves it made. Other times we lifted it as high as we could, making the shape it would be in when it floated down from the sky and then brought it back to the ground. Sometimes I would invite a child to be in charge of how she wanted the rest of the class to hold the parachute so she could dance under or around or what she was imagining it to be, such as a roaring ocean waves.
When I do a search for creative movement with a parachute, the results are usually focused on pre-schoolers or young school-age children, and there are lots of fun ways the parachute has been used. However, nothing comes up for use with adults, and I found that use equally satisfying. Leading adult workshops, particularly in Tallahassee when I was doing “permission” workshops as part of Transactional Analysis Training (that’s another later blog), I used it with great success especially with encouraging adults to find or rediscover their inner child.
Clearly those afternoons fostered and reinforced my love for musical theatre, which led not only to attending theater but also choreographing and directing some musical theater.
Regina and I continue our friendship and creative journey to today. Over the years we have led workshops together, and sometimes as we are dancing around a room with 20 or so participants, we pass each other and smile remembering those times so many years ago when we were doing something similar in her living room.
Regina and JoAnne attending a film festival, September 2014. JoAnne and Regina are Board Members and filmmakers with Healing Voices – Personal Stories. The organization was honored that its film “Jessica’s Story” was selected for the Festival and won best LGBT film in the Festival. Photography by Murray Tucker.
Whether it is building a dance studio, keeping a dance company running for over 30 years, starting a film company that has now has completed 7 films, or selling our art-work on ETSY, I realize a certain pattern in my life and work. It is with deep gratitude I acknowledge two qualities that were wonderfully reinforced for me: creativity from my Mom and a sense of (and joy in) business from my father.
I am a war baby, meaning that shortly after my birth my father was drafted and went off to fight in WWII. My Mom and I lived at his mother and stepfather’s house, a large three-story house in Pittsburgh that was filled with all kinds of energy. His stepfather was a family physician and his office was in the home with the waiting room at the front of the house. My grandmother loved people and music. Their youngest child Bill was at that time a student at Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon) and lots of his friends from the music and drama department filled the house. As a young toddler I got lots of attention from them. A cousin a year younger would visit and we were a bundle of energy.
I enjoyed pretending I was a Doctor. When I finally became one, it was of a different kind!
Uncle Billy letting me play his cello.
Mom and I spending a few special moments with Dad when he was on leave.
My mom had lots of time on her hands so she encouraged my creative endeavors. This continued throughout my childhood. Although my grandmother took me to see my first touring Broadway show, Peter Pan with Veronica Lake, it was my Mom who took me to see Moira Shearer in Swan Lake when I was five or six and the Saddler Wells (now the Royal Ballet) came to town. Mom continued to encourage me by enrolling me in dance classes and responding positively, as I got older, to ideas and projects I wanted to pursue. When I wanted to teach dance classes in our basement to earn money she easily made it happen. I always felt her support even as an adult. She enthusiastically came to performances, entertained the dance company members when we toured to where she lived and was always a good listener when I wanted to talk and talk about a creative project.
Mom (Dr. Janet Klineman) got her Ph.D. after we were grown up and had a career in Special Education. She was very devoted to the complex children she worked with, and compassionate to their parents, showing them ways to help their challenging child. It was only after she retired that she rediscovered her artistic talents. Her father had painted and she had done some painting when she was younger but nothing had come of it. She started taking classes in watercolor painting in Sarasota when she was close to 80 and continued painting until three weeks before she died at age 90. In fact the last picture she did of her dog, Mickey, hangs in our house in a prominent place where I see it every day. It is a daily reminder to me that nurturing and expressing my creativity is essential!!
Mom’s painting of Mickey.
My father was a salesman. When he returned from the war he joined the company that his father (who died in the flu epidemic of 1918 or so) and uncles had founded, Majestic Sportswear. I grew up hearing his enthusiasm for the line of clothes he was selling. I remember sample sales at the end of the season. At times I even helped him organize order forms. So his business talk, including meeting goals and enthusiasm for what he was selling, was also an influence. While at times he didn’t understand “modern dance” and what I might be trying to express he never put it down and usually agreed to support what I was proposing.
As a teenager I joined Mom on a trip or two to New York City where Dad had quarterly sales meetings and I remember his tolerant and patient presence as he and Mom waited at stage doors while I eagerly got autographs from Julie Andrews after My Fair Lady and Susan Strasberg after Diary of Anne Frank. Then there was another time in Pittsburgh when Mary Martin came to town in a one-woman show… while I waited to get her autograph Dad had a lively conversation with her chauffeur. Later, after graduating high school and while I was studying dance in NYC and attending Juilliard, I would join him and several of his fellow salesmen for dinner and a night out in the City, often not getting home until 3 AM.
Both Mom and Dad were persistent, each in their own way, and so that quality coming from both of them has served me well. In fact, Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (recommending an Avodah concert) said, “There are not too many practicing choreographers of dance based on religious themes in these godless days. In her quiet way, JoAnne Tucker is one of the most persistent and one of the best, creating simple, luminous and heartfelt dances based on Jewish tradition” (January 9, 1998).
Of course both parents presented challenges and there are things I didn’t like about growing up in our household. The older I get,these occasional memories fade further and further away. Today I am filled only with deep gratitude for lessons learned from my parents.
