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.
I am writing this on December 21, the winter solstice, in Atenas, Costa Rica. When I lived in the United States this was the darkest point in the year and also the point where each day began to get brighter until June 21. Living in Costa Rica the shift is very small. For example, there is just about a half-hour difference in sunrise and half-hour difference in sunset over the full year. So the range is about an hour difference maximum for the year, compared with nearly a five-hour difference in Santa Fe, the last place I lived. I am not a morning person. For as long as I can remember I have loved to stay up late, often getting a burst of creative thinking or loving to watch a movie and just relax, sometimes going to bed around 2 AM. Now that doesn’t work so well here, as the mornings are so beautiful. Murray loved the mornings and often got up shortly after sunrise while I continued to sleep. Perhaps I will experiment a bit more, seeing if I can go to bed earlier and get up earlier to enjoy the morning – maybe seeing if I can turn my internal clock around and be creative first thing in the day.
One of my favorite activities that I did in dance workshops, for participants ranging from young children to adults, was to explore ideas related to light and darkness. Often we used a line from Genesis to get things going: “And G-d separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:4) There are so many easy and wonderful ways to quickly motivate movement with this line of text, and activities for this line as well as other suggestions can be found in the book I co-authored with Rabbi Susan Freeman called Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash which I am pleased to say is still available on Amazon.com. (Link to book.)
For today’s blog I want to focus on how I relate to light and darkness at the present time!! First of all I find things to celebrate about light and darkness in nature and in my art. I also find a negative side. When the light is too bright I find it very uncomfortable. Darkness can be scary at night, especially with strange noises. On the other hand darkness can be very comforting. A dark night allows us to see the stars more vividly and there is a wonderful joy in that. The few times I have been up to see the sun rise there is something very welcoming and satisfying in that.
When I first studied art at the Art Students League in NYC I was required to do charcoal studies of gradation from very dark to very light and then look carefully at the model and start with the darkest shadow first. I still use this concept when painting. I am beginning to explore watercolor and am learning to decide where the lightest point might be and to leave the paper paint-free with the white showing through. This came in very handy when making some holiday greeting cards where the white became a very important part of the design as illustrated in the photo of this holiday card.
Greeting card I created this December
A favorite painting I created in 2009, in which I particularly like how I used light and darkness. I am pleased to share that this painting sold in Santa Fe back in 2011 and continues to be one of my favorite paintings mainly because of the contrasts in it
I close wishing you a very happy holiday season and hoping this coming year will be a healthy and creative one for us all as we explore our new normal. For me, I might focus on enjoying more of the daylight here in Costa Rica, maybe welcoming the sunrise, finding opportunities to be creative in the morning and learning to go to bed earlier!! And then again my body and mind may just not want to change, no matter how good it sounds.
There is no way of escaping the use of the word “transition” when you turn on the news. It is extremely disturbing how there simply is not the normal process of one President passing the baton to the next. The citizens of the U.S. are left in a state of suspension, a most uncomfortable feeling. And yet in a way that is its own form of transition. An abrupt sudden change. And with this kind of transition in the midst of a pandemic the potential is there for unnecessary deaths and much pain.
As a choreographer my goal was to make a piece in which the transitions were seamless. One section flowed appropriately into the next. 2020 is a year of major transitions for me with each one challenging me in a new way. They are not seamless like a good piece of choreography nor are they sudden and abrupt. Hints of what comes next have helped prepare me. In reflecting I have had three major personal transitions and experienced a fourth, worldwide transition. I share some of my thoughts on each of these.
The first major transition, which I have already written about, was when Murray and I decided to sell our house in Santa Fe and move to Costa Rica, buying a house in Atenas. Learning how to live in a new country, run a house with a beautiful garden and learn Spanish are indeed challenges in themselves. Things got more complicated when Murray’s health problems continued to surface after we had been here just two weeks. And they continued, except for the month of April, until the end of October when he passed. Now I am transitioning to being on my own. In the midst of all of this, COVID-19 changed all of our lives and we all made a rapid transition to learning how to use FaceTime and Zoom as our major ways of connecting with each other.
Murray and I were very fortunate that neither of us had a major illness that required much caretaking of the other during the 56 years we were together. While Murray had been diagnosed with heart issues quite a few years ago he did not have a serious incident until just a few weeks before we were due to leave for Costa Rica. The doctors OK’d our plans to continue our move to Costa Rica after Murray responded well to a pacemaker.
From mid-February to mid-July I gradually transitioned into my role of caretaking. It was challenging for both of us because Murray loved his independence and it was very hard for him to be in a wheelchair needing help to get around. We had help during the day with our full-time house manager/driver/cook who developed a wonderful relationship with Murray (which will be a separate blog). We also had a nurse’s help for a few hours several days a week. But from 4 pm to 9 am and on the weekend we were on our own and often liked that quiet time together. Since Murray needed help to and from the bathroom at night I learned how to function on interrupted night-time sleep. A conscious decision was made by Murray that he did not want to go back to the hospital and I supported that 100%. In Costa Rica, doctors still make house calls and lab technicians come to the house too so that made things so much easier.
So many times we expressed our joy and relief to be in Costa Rica and not the U.S. at this time with COVID changing things so much in the U.S. and not so much here. We were very careful. Murray did not go out of the house at all after mid-July and I only went to the grocery, pharmacy or bank. Most of all Murray was able to continue enjoying our beautiful garden here. And when he was indoors all the rooms have large windows treating his eye to one beautiful section of the property after another. One of our favorite views was (and still is mine) looking out to the butterfly/hummingbird garden we put in where there had been a non-functioning Jacuzzi. In particular, the butterflies were very regular visitors. A gradual transition was progressing as Murray’s concentration and strength weakened and I had more caretaking roles. Given the option of having the nurse here more, especially on the weekend or after 4, I chose not to take it for several reasons. There was a peacefulness of just us being here together and I could keep things more normal. That’s not to say there weren’t frustrating moments for both of us or that I didn’t sometimes feel overwhelmed.
View from the bedroom window of the broken Jacuzzi that we turned into a garden.
We really missed family and loved the group Zoom calls with our daughters and grandchildren. Murray so cherished and looked forward to them. Yes… it would have been super if family could have been here but, like all the world, we were and are adapting to new ways of living because of the pandemic. And over and over I felt and feel deep gratitude that Murray could transition in our home in a setting of sheer beauty.
Via Zoom we were able to have a meaningful memorial for him. It was organized by our daughters and granddaughter, with a slideshow that brought both smiles and tears to me. Led by my next-door neighbor growing up, who shared playing in the Allderdice High School Orchestra with Murray, the memorial had a very personal touch. Although alone in Costa Rica, I felt so much love and warmth during the service and from feedback afterwards. I am very grateful that our daughters and granddaughter went forward with this at a time I was just plain exhausted.
Now it is a month later and I am making another transition. It is filled with a combination of missing Murray and the grief that goes with that, along with lots of questions. Most of the questions are just that… open questions which will take time to explore and for me to figure out. They center around how I want to structure my daily life, from when to eat, what to eat, and what my body rhythm is. How do I want to structure my creative activities? Except for writing this blog (and not as regularly as I wanted to; I love and want to get back to the once-a-week schedule), I haven’t painted much [or done other creative work] at all. So much time is spent with paperwork after a person dies, and while a lot has been accomplished there is much more to do. That too is a major part of the transition.
Some things are becoming clearer. Meditation is playing a bigger role each day and I am finding it very meaningful to start each day with a half hour of meditation followed by some journal writing. Being part of a Buddhist book group has also become important. When asked whether I plan to return to the U.S., the answer is I have no plans [to move back] at this time, but down the road when perhaps there is a closer-to-normal lifestyle I will look forward to some visits. I will keep a legal address in the U.S., and maintaining the ability to vote and stay connected is important to me. I am glad to be continuing to work on a film begun nearly two years ago, on men’s experience of domestic violence and what services are available to them. There is still much to be done related to domestic violence, and our film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories is very important to me.
The haunting question with no answer is why I feel so connected to being here in Costa Rica and what my purpose is here. I feel so fortunate to be living in such a beautiful setting that Murray and I fell in love with a year ago. His presence is very much here, from the papaya tree he planted from seed in March, which is now producing papaya, to our careful selection of just some minimal furnishings. For right now I am settling in and the answers will emerge.
The Papaya tree that Murray planted from a seed in March.
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!
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.
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.
We have now been in Costa Rica for just over six weeks. The first four were particularly challenging. We furnished our house with the basics, deciding not to get fancy or spend lots of money. We learned how to pay our bills, estimating colonies to dollars so we could understand the cost of things in a way we were used to. We are still figuring out how to manage our house and the swimming pool with its solar heating and infinity design which still remains a puzzle to us. During these first four weeks I often woke up with, and experienced at other times, a huge knot in my stomach. The last few weeks I have begun to get back to painting and that has made a major difference. Particularly the past week I have made it a point to have at least two hours a day devoted to my quiet creative time, mainly painting but sometimes writing. The knot in my stomach is rarely there now. Yes, regular meditation helps some too. For me something additional happens when I am using my creative voice. Fears, concerns, planning all drop away and I become one with my painting, just as I did with dance.
I am aware that I am experimenting right now, not sure what style, medium, or subject matter will dominate. The views from each room in our house are breathtaking. When I think about what I want to paint I have tons of choices. Where to begin… what to key in on… how to simplify and yet capture the spirit of what I am seeing — these are some of the thoughts that are going through my mind. Of course, at this point all that is important is that I show up and just see what happens — no criticism, just being present and finding the creative voice.
For years I have taught and encouraged teachers to find their creative voice, and guided them on how to help children keep their creative energies, which seem to drop off around 4th grade. When I lead workshops for teachers I particularly focused on the research of E. Paul Torrance and the wonderful way he defined elements that make up the creative process. He also developed creativity tests. I am thinking that it will be useful to remember some of Torrance’s ideas as I explore my creative voice in this new chapter in my life.
When I first became familiar with Torrance, he drew on J.P. Guilford’s thinking and defined creativity as having 4 components – fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration:
Fluency. The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus. 2. Flexibility. The number of different categories or shifts in responses. 3. Originality. The number of unusual yet relevant ideas and the statistical rarity of the responses. 4. Elaboration. The amount of detail used to extend a response. (From Ellis Paul Torrance – The Father of Creativity by Sergey Markov, June 2017) https://geniusrevive.com/en/ellis-paul-torrance-father-of-modern-creativity/
Sergey Markov’s article is excellent and I learned lots of new things about Torrance. I recommend reading it if you have a strong interest in creativity theory and testing. For the purposes of this blog I just want to say I will be exploring and guiding some of my painting by keeping these ways of thinking in mind. Of course… it will be important for me to not get caught up in an intellectual way but rather to simply explore and not judge.
I’ve completed one 9” x 12” oil focusing on one of the plants in a realistic way.
First Painting
Now I’m working on another painting and am approaching it by doing a larger scene but with less detail and looking at it as large blocks of colors. It’s also a 9” x 12” board.
My second painting. Is it complete?
In an earlier blog I wrote about the encouragement I got from my Mom in being creative, and the model she provided by completing a lovely watercolor of her dog just three weeks before she died at the age of 90. Certainly Genevieve Jones’s creative dance classes were a wonderful guide, as was my work in creative dramatics with both Dr. Barbara McIntyre and Dr. Joe Karioth.
For now the creative time is helping me settle in Costa Rica and truly see and appreciate the beautiful landscape we are surrounded by. Indeed, the beauty of our location was one of the guiding forces that brought us here and it could be so easy to get caught up in the overwhelming process of adjusting to a new country and forget that. The two hours of my own quiet time, sometimes in writing and mostly in painting (as non-verbal creativity is more target to me), is so important right now.
End Note (written Thursday night, March 12) This blog was written last weekend. Since then, our community of Atenas has been experiencing major fires due to the heat and high winds. On Tuesday, Murray and I had to leave the house in the late afternoon because the smoke was so intense and large flames were very visible and close to our house. Luckily so far we have been spared any damage. We returned last evening and most of today was spent cleaning. Creative endeavors sometimes have to be put on hold and I am reminded of Rollo May’s hierarchy of needs. Life is certainly a balancing act. After posting this blog this morning on Sunday, March 15th I am going to spend several hours painting. It is not just an option… it is a necessity to keep my balance!!!
