Costa Rica – Page 4 – Mostly Dance

Improvising, Thinking Outside the Box, and Finding the Pulse of Life in Costa Rica

JoAnne Tucker / June 12, 2020 / Costa Rica, Personal Life

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.

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An Ad in Dance Magazine Leads to an Amazing Summer

JoAnne Tucker / March 27, 2020 / Childhood, Costa Rica, Personal 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.

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Finding my Creative Voice in Costa Rica

JoAnne Tucker / March 15, 2020March 20, 2020 / Art, Costa Rica, Personal Life

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 4^th 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.

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.

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!!!

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