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.
Each residency took on its own quality based on the needs of the community. The planning discussions with the senior Rabbi, Rick Jacobs, indicated how important it was to him to have focus on Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, particularly in the Friday Evening Shabbat service. He asked if instead of members of the community joining in the Forgiveness Project, they might do something related to Yom HaShoah as part of the Friday night service. I agreed and figured that I Never Saw Another Butterfly could easily be done with community members as part of it. (Here’s a link to learn more about this piece.)
I don’t remember exactly how many congregants joined the dancers but each of the four solos had one or two community members joining the company. It was easy to teach with each dancer working with a person or two and fitting them into their solo. They learned the ensemble parts that were not technically hard, but required some concentration. All the community members were older teenagers or adults so they learned quickly and the piece went well in the service.
We did two other pieces that evening: Heroic Deeds, (here’s a link to Blog about this piece) and Tent, Tallit and Torah, both pieces that were created new for this season. Tent, Tallit and Torah was inspired by seeing The Lion King. I was fascinated by and absolutely loved how props had been so effectively woven by Julie Taymor into the piece. I wanted to try something like that. So each section involved the dancers working with material in a new way. For music I selected a classical piece by J.S. Bach. I have always loved his music and had always wanted to use his music. I thoroughly enjoyed creating the piece with Jessica, Andrea, Keri and Danielle and was only sorry that it didn’t get more performances. I don’t remember even restaging it with dancers the following season, although two of the sections, in particular, are among the favorite things I have choreographed. I am thrilled to have some excellent pictures and am glad to share them here.
From l. to r. Kerri Anne Thoma, Jessica Sehested, and Danielle Smith Photo by Tom Brazil
From l. to r. Andrea Eisenstein and Danielle Smith. Photo by Tom Brazil
Photo by Tom Brazil
That particular Friday night service was unusually hard for me. On Wednesday night two beams of light were shonefrom where the World Trade Center had been. Seeing them from my home in Jersey City was quite emotional and I found my eyes filling with tears quite often over the next several days. Usually I am happy to speak in Sabbath Services but that particular Friday night I found it very hard.
We also participated the next morning in the family service in the alternative space and while I made it through the service OK I found myself quite emotional afterwards. Some of the prayers were becoming increasingly hard for me to hear following 9/11 and I found this was even true at a congregation that I felt was most aligned with how I saw myself practicing Reform Judaism. It was clear I was moving in a new direction.
From April 9–13, 2002 the dance company was in residence at Westchester Reform Temple (WRT) in Scarsdale, New York. The company had a longstanding relationship with the congregation, as the senior rabbi, Rick Jacobs, had been a member of Avodah for six years in the 80’s. JoAnne also regularly led workshops there, and the company’s week of exploration with Ulla (See blog) was held there.
As with each residency, prior to coming, JoAnne met with the leadership to determine how to best serve the community. Rick wanted to schedule the time around Yom HaShoah, (Holocaust Memorial Day). He wasn’t interested in members of the congregation participating in the Forgiveness Piece itself but thought that maybe congregants could participate in I Never Saw Another Butterfly instead and that could be part of the Friday night Shabbat service. In addition, our new Holocaust piece Heroic Deeds (see Blog ) would also fit in very well. A new piece I had just choreographed called Tent, Tallit and Torah also appealed to him. Now… when would we do the Forgiveness Piece? He suggested we do it at his staff meeting time on Wednesday and I agreed especially if the full staff could be there which would include clergy, maintenance staff, teachers and secretaries. The company would lead a workshop and then afterwards the company members would perform the Forgiveness Piece. This would be our only residency in which community members did not participate in the piece itself.
Again, I am very grateful to Kezia for her notes of the very busy day on Wednesday, April 13that the congregation. It included a workshop for staff with a performance, a lecture-dem for pre-schoolers, a workshop for 16-year-olds and participation in two Holocaust Memorial services for 6th, 7thand 11th/12thgraders.
Kezia described the forgiveness workshop with the full staff so beautifully that I include her notes here:
JoAnne began by instructing all participants (including the company dancers) simply to walk throughout the room. As they did so, accompanied by percussionist Newman Taylor Baker, Tucker provided a continuous stream of movement instructions which were both fun and purposeful in directing participants’ exploration of elements of movement. Moreover, the participants in the room quickly became peers in executing the assignments to navigate through imaginary peanut butter or jello, to move as quickly as possible, to make sudden changes of direction, or to focus on moving certain parts of the body. There was 100% participation, and smiles were plentiful.
Tucker gradually introduced interaction through movement, building from a simple greeting when passing, to structured mirroring in pairs (whereby one partner must become the mirror image of the other, as they move together). At Tucker’s direction, pairs were constantly dissolved and formed anew, so each participant worked with many others, creating partnerships that may not occur on a daily basis – rabbi with maintenance worker, cantor with secretary, pre-school teacher with high school teacher. Additionally, within pairs, roles were rotated, so each participant experienced being both “a leader” and “a follower” within each of these distinct partnerships.
At this point, when movement skills were sharpened and the group appeared at ease moving, Tucker asked the group to verbally brainstorm “blocks to forgiveness.” A range of replies were offered and visibly considered by the group, as evidenced by nodding heads and comments such as “I never thought of that.” Using the tools they had just developed, the group explored the ideas suggested, through further mirroring and then through paired “conversations in movement.” All pairs were intently focused and, based on the coordinated timing and complementary style of their created movements, indeed appeared to be successfully “conversing.” The Rabbi later revealed to Tucker and me that several of these participants, in their everyday interaction, refuse to speak to each other.
Avodah dancer Jessica Sehested and a member of the WRT staff having a conversation together in movement.
The final participatory portion of the workshop was an activity by which participants, through movement, “shared a hurt” with others. With insight and a sense of humor, the groups ended this exercise with the Rabbi on the floor, so overloaded with everyone’s “sharing” that the group had to lift him. To resolve the overwhelming “hurt,” the group, at Tucker’s instruction, passed a “letting go” movement around the circle of participants, and the last person, at her own initiative, threw the “hurt” out of the circle.
Participants sharing a hurt.
The participants then watched a performance of the Forgiveness Project piece (without community involvement). At the conclusion of the piece, there was no applause. The viewers attributed their silence to being stunned by the piece’s intensity, not to lack of appreciation. One participant asked whether she was supposed to interpret intellectually what she had just seen. A dancer pointed out that, just as the percussion instruments in an earlier activity had immediately invoked different emotions without requiring any intellectual articulation of “why,” so dance can deeply affect a viewer without requiring a verbal analysis. The Rabbi pointed out that “Forgiveness itself is not just intellectual.” Another participant noted that it was helpful to have done the movement exercises before seeing the piece. The Rabbi was curious as to whether performing the piece regularly “heals” tensions with the dance company; in response, one dancer discussed dance as a levelizer”; another dancer pointed out that using movement allows any group, with any “issues,” to have a chance to communicate without having to talk – to be thrown into a new activity together, to have fun. A few of the participants nodded in agreement, and the Rabbi mused, “Maybe we should have all our staff meetings like this.”
I am very grateful to Kezia for keeping such careful notes of the workshop and have included them without any edits, as particularly the paragraphs before the last could serve as a model for someone leading a movement workshop on the theme of forgiveness.
I found the workshop to be a very meaningful part of the residency at the congregation. However, I was disappointed that we were not able to involve more of the congregation in the theme of forgiveness, or involve community in a performance of the piece,as I found those performances much more meaningful for the audience.
Of course, it is important to respond to the needs of the community, and the leadership felt that focusing on Yom HaShoah for the balance of the activities was more appropriate. In Part II, I will share how we engaged some members of the congregation in the Friday night service, and describe the other pieces we integrated into the service.
In the last blog I indicated that Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal had all mentioned the importance of looking at the question of forgiveness and German and Jewish relations. It was important for me to wrestle with this difficult question too. I wanted to find a collaborator of my same age from Germany. I reached out to contacts that I had and was referred to Toby Axelrod, Assistant Director of the Berlin Office of the American Jewish Committee. She suggested Ursula (Ulla) Schorn, a dance and movement therapist very involved with second generation Holocaust survivors and perpetrators. Ulla and I began emailing back and forth, sharing our backgrounds and interests.
I discovered that Ulla’s father was a Nazi and she was raised in Hamburg, Germany. My father was in the United States army, a tank driver who saw heavy combat at the Battle of the Bulge. Ulla and I were close to the same age. I was born in 1943 and Ulla in 1942. Ulla was and still is a dance and Gestalt therapist working in Berlin. She studied extensively with Anna Halprin and is a Halprin practitioner. In fact in 2014 she, along with two other authors, published a book on Halprin called Anna Halprin: Dance-Process-Form.
I invited Ulla to come to the United States and to spend a week joining the four dance company members and myself in exploring the theme of forgiveness. She agreed. Now my thoughts turned to figuring out how to make that a very meaningful week.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs offered to provide a space for us to work in. As part of the Westchester Reform Temple (WRT) he had created a very flexible space with a good wood floor that on the weekend was used for religious services for youth but during the week was free. The folding chairs could be removed and it was an ideal space for dance. Separate from the main building, it provided privacy. I invited composer-percussionist Newman Taylor Baker to join us and accompany our movement. I also decided it would be helpful to have a guest theologian speak to us each day on forgiveness providing some of their favorite text for us to use as motivation.
For the season of 2000-2001 four dancers were under contract to work for 16 weeks. Stacy Limon Cohen, Julia Pond, Becka Vargus and Candice Franklin had already been working together for over two months prior to the week in March when we gathered together to work in Scarsdale at WRT.
Two of the company members improvising on the theme of Forgiveness in a workshop. Stacy Limon Cohen behind and Candice Franklin in front.
Ulla graciously agreed to accept home hospitality with Murray and me in our home in Jersey City. Each day we drove together from my home to and from WRT in Scarsdale giving us plenty of time to get to know each other as well as enjoy meals together. I learned of the various feelings she had of growing up with a father who was in the military, the guilt connected with her father being a Nazi and the pressure he put on her and her siblings to have a certain level of excellence. At my house and traveling we were two women simply learning about each other. However when we were at WRT working with the dancers a different level of symbolism happened. I felt I was representing a Jewish point of view and Ulla a German point of view.
On Monday, Rabbi Kenneth Chasen, the assistant rabbi at WRT, used the biblical Joseph story, particularly 45:1- 8 to motivate our thinking. This text is about Joseph revealing himself to his brothers who had sold him to the Egyptians. Joseph does not hold it against them. On Monday, while Ulla and I both improvised with the four Avodah dancers we were not on the dance floor at the same time. Clearly there was a level of discomfort for us to formally interact with each other.
On Tuesday, Nell Gibson, an Episcopal Lay Leader recommended by Canon Lloyd Casson (since Canon Casson was unable to be part of the week, due to other commitments), presented material from the New Testament. She shared Luke 34 – “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do.’” Ulla and I both found ourselves on the dance floor at the same time but did not interact together.
Wednesday was the breakthrough day for me. Rick Jacobs presented two different texts and since Rick had danced in the company from 1980-86, I requested, on the spur of the movement, that he come up with a movement idea for the text he was presenting. He agreed. He introduced text from Moses Maimonides – “Even if a person spent his entire life sinning, yet repents on the day of his death, and dies as one who has turned to God, all of his transgressions will be forgiven.”
The improvisation for the Maimonides text had one person at a time imagining that it was the last day of her life and that the rest of the group were people from whom she needed to ask forgiveness.
The second text that Rick shared with us was even more powerful. It was from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. “Known as ‘Rabbi Shlomo’ to his followers, Carlebach (14 January 1925 – 20 October 1994) was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as ‘The Singing Rabbi’ during his lifetime” (Wikipedia).
Carlebach was born in Europe before WWII and came to America from Vienna as a teenager because of the Nazis. In the 1990’s he returned to Vienna and to several other cities in Austria and Germany to give concerts. While there, he met with non-Jews as well as with Jews. Someone asked him why he did it. “Don’t you hate them?” he was asked. His answer was, “If I had two souls, I would devote one to hating them. But since I only have one, I don’t want to waste it hating. We have just one life, one soul – we shouldn’t waste it on hating: not the Nazis, most of whom are gone by now, not their children who are not guilty of the sins of their fathers and mothers, and surely not the people around us.”
The improvisation task for this quote was to respond in movement, interacting with each other, revealing the soul that does not hate!
Ulla and I were now interacting together in movement. My notes from the day indicate the Ulla and I found ourselves dancing together with simple mirroring movement, naturally flowing back and forth in terms of who was leading. The empathy we felt for each other in this experience was powerful and very emotional for both of us.
The rest of the week went well with more interacting with Ulla. I don’t have any notes related to what happened on Thursday and Friday but I know that I began to understand more of the emotions she carried from being the daughter of a Nazi.
After she left I found myself wrestling with new emotions related to forgiveness that I had not experienced before. Things were no longer black and white and I was definitely on a new journey in both my own personal life and in what I wanted to express as a choreographer.
Fortunately, I don’t have to rack my memory to figure out the beginning steps for The Forgiveness Project, as they are well documented in the February 2001 Avodah Dance Ensemble Newsletter. Much of what I am sharing in this blog comes from the Newsletter’s opening article.
I did indeed read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness which Canon Lloyd Casson had suggested. Towards the end of the book Tutu has a paragraph related to the need for Israel to wrestle with forgiveness for Germany. He is not the only one to point this out. In January 2000, Elie Wiesel spoke of forgiveness in a speech he made on the German Day of Remembrance when he addressed the Bundestag. Simon Wiesenthal addressed this important question in his book The Sunflower. Certainly the question of forgiveness related to post-Holocaust German/Jewish relationships is one of the most challenging. My plan was for the dance company to wrestle with this difficult question in a new way through movement. There was no goal to come up with any one definitive answer, just to wrestle with the question.
We would also look at forgiveness from a variety of perspectives – forgiveness of oneself, forgiveness within a relationship, forgiveness as it relates to God and forgiveness between communities. We officially began our work on forgiveness for the project in the fall of 2000 when we presented a lecture demonstration on Yom Kippur afternoon at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s High Holiday Services for College and Graduate Students. For this presentation I decided to focus on forgiveness between self and God. To prepare I read the Book of Psalms and jotted down any lines that related to forgiveness. After much pondering I came up with four stages in the process of asking forgiveness of God: being aware of needing to ask for forgiveness; accepting the responsibility to do so; asking for forgiveness; and feeling certain expectations upon being forgiven by God. Three dancers, including Beth Millstein who had worked with Avodah for over seven years, joined me, and we explored the four stages with related lines of text from Psalms.
Much to my delight I have notes from this demonstration and I share them now. Readers who are interested in leading workshops on forgiveness are very welcome to use the text and ideas presented here.
Here are the stages of Forgiveness with supporting Psalm references
1. Reflect or ponder our actions
“So tremble, and sin no more; Ponder it on your bed, and be silent (Psalm 4:5)
2. Take Responsibility
“For my iniquities have overwhelmed me: They are like a heavy burden, more that I can bear.” (Psalm 38:4)
“I recognize my transgressions And am ever conscious of my sins.” (Psalm 51:3)
“I have considered my ways, And have turned back to your decrees.” (Psalm 119:59)
3. Take Action
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you; I did not cover up my guilt;” (Psalm 32)
4. Express how we feel/or anticipate how we will feel after taking action
“Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered over.” (Psalm 32:1)
“You are my shelter: You preserve me from distress: You surround me with the joyous shouts of deliverance.” (Psalm 32:7)
“God redeems your life from the Pit, Surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy.” (Psalm 103:4)
“Yours is the power to forgive So that You may be held in awe.” (Psalm 130:3-4)
We used some of these lines of text in our demonstration as part of the Yom Kippur afternoon service at HUC-JIR and I am most grateful for Rabbi Larry Raphael (of blessed memory) for inviting us to present. In the formal presentation at HUC-JIR the dancers improvised to the lines of text while members of the congregation watched.
As the Forgiveness Project continued we wove these lines from The Book of Psalms into future workshops guiding groups of various ages to explore them. Usually I started with the first stage, read the line of text and then asked each person to respond in movement to the imagery being expressed – for example, to imagine he/she is pondering on “his/her sins” and express what that would be like in movement.
We added other texts into the Forgiveness Project, including biblical texts, writings of Moses Maimonides, lines from the New Testament, a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh and a passage from Wally Lamb’s novel I Know this Much is True. I will be sharing more about these texts and how they fit into the Forgiveness Project in the next few blogs.
JoAnne, on tour in Florida in the fall of 2000, sharing text from the Book of Psalms with a group of religious school students.
Dancers improvising for the students, on lines of text from the Book of Psalms.
While
Facebook gets lots of criticism and has its drawbacks, one of its very positive
things for me is connecting to the many dancers I’ve worked with from the time
Avodah began in the early 70’s to the women who were part of the recent Healing
Voices – Personal Stories film Through
the Door. Lisa Watson, a member of
Avodah in the 90’s, is a friend on Facebook and this past May 19th
she posted about Dr. Edith Eva Eger (now 92) who wrote a book at age 90 about
surviving the Holocaust. The book is called
The Choice: Embrace the Possible, and
I thank you, Lisa, for bringing the book to my attention.
Recently I
have tended to stay away from reading accounts of Holocaust survivors but this
book held special interest for me because prior to her deportation to Auschwitz
in 1944 at the age of 16, Eger had been training as a dancer and gymnast. The post that Lisa shared on Facebook related
to the fact that Dr. Eger was in the Netherlands to meet with the director, the
actor and the ballerina who would be portraying her in a performance about the
time that Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz asked her to dance for him. There is a wonderful interview of her trip to
the Netherlands which includes her watching a rehearsal and hugging the dancer who
is portraying her. The interview is a
good account of her life and philosophy and I highly recommend it whether or
not you plan on reading the book. https://dreditheger.com/2019/05/04/interview-with-eenvandaag-dutch-national-television/
I wonder, if I were still running Avodah, if I would choose
to build a piece about Eger and the moment that
she danced for Mengele, who had come into the barracks looking for a
ballerina. She found that the way she
was able to dance for him was to close her eyes and pretend that she was at the
Budapest opera house dancing Romeo and Juliet. But it is not only that moment that I find
gripping and would want to convey. It is
her overall philosophy and spirit, even in her 90’s, that I would want to
capture (demonstrated by the fact that she ends her lectures with a high kick).
Among the many gems in the book is her recalling and giving
examples over and over again of the inspirational words from her mother, spoken
in the cattle car as they were being transported to Auschwitz. Her mother said
to her that no one can take away from you what you think and feel inside. The day they arrived her mother and father
died but she and her sister survived. Toward
the end of the war, prisoners were marched to Austria. She and her sister were found by a soldier on
May 4, 1945. She was barely alive, sick and with a broken back.
We learn how she recovered, married and moved to the United
States where she eventually studied Psychology, earning her Ph.D. and becoming
an expert particularly with war trauma victims.
She shares stories of some of her patients and how they help her work through her own challenges. While physically free she shares the struggle to mentally free herself. She relates this to her patients that are living in their own prisons, and so much of what she shares has relevancy to all of us about how we can live in a prison of our own making, choosing to be our own jailers. A comment by her I noted, most likely when she was recently interviewed by Oprah, is to choose expression rather than depression. It is what we keep secret and do not work through that causes our depression. Here’s the link where you can watch the interview.
One of her mentors is Victor Frankel, another Holocaust survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. She describes their friendship.
To conclude I want to share quotes from two sources. First,
a review in The New York Times written in October 2017 ends with the
reviewer’s comment, “I can’t imagine a more important message for modern
times. Eger’s book is a triumph and
should be read by all who care about their inner freedom and the future of
humanity.” Second, the Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate Desmond Tutu said: “The Choice is a gift to humanity. One of those rare and eternal stories
that you don’t want to end and that leave you forever changed. Dr. Eger’s life
reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that
suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness
and shows us how we can as well.”
I am so glad to have read Dr. Eger’s book, which then led me to watch her various interviews. What a wonderful role model she is for those of us looking for people in their 80’s and 90’s leading rich meaningful lives.
In 1993 when I first visited Israel, I remember a very emotional day spent at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. Among its many remembrances, Yad Vashem honors over 11,000 Righteous Gentiles. These are individuals who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. I knew that someday I would choreograph a dance to honor them and that happened during the 2001-2002 season. That was a particularly creative season since I choreographed three pieces on four talented dancers: Andrea Eisenstein, Danielle A. Smith, Jessica Sehested, and Kerri Thoma. The Avodah Dance Ensemble had moved from a part-time dance company operating throughout the year to a full-time company operating for 16 weeks of the year. The opportunity to work so intensively for about six hours each day was very stimulating.
As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I began to realize that something else was motivating me as well. Living in Jersey City, right across from the World Trade Center, I had witnessed, only a few months before, the collapse of the second tower as I stood about three blocks from our home and looked across the river with our neighbors. And I remembered that our youngest daughter had been working in the World Trade Center in 1993 when a truck bomb detonated inside the parking garage. Her company was located on the 97thfloor and she had walked down. She talked about how people were helping each other. There were no lights and so people were counting stairs and eventually as she got lower the NYC Firemen were coming up and providing additional guidance. As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I found I was not only thinking of the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives but how people can help each other in emergency situations, such as what my daughter experienced, and of course of the many first responders on 9/11 who risked their lives.
Part of both the fun and the challenge of choreographing is finding just the right music. I did, in a piece by the American composer Charles Ives. In a review by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (April 10, 2002) of a concert we did at the 92ndStreet Y on the previous Sunday afternoon she pointed out, “Heroic Deeds distilled community need in a quartet as stark as its score by Ives.”
Once I had the music and had begun choreographing with the collaboration of the dancers my attention turned to costumes. Finding gray tops and ¾ length pants in gray I decided to paint silver, black and lighter gray spots on them to symbolize ashes and destruction of property in an abstract way.
Tom Brazil, a dance photographer who had previously photographed Avodah, beautifully captured the energy of the piece. Here are some of my favorite photos, with the four dancers who helped to create the work. All of the following photos are by Tom Brazil and copyrighted by him.
From l. to r. Jessica Sehested, Kerri Thoma, and Danielle Smith
From l. to r. Danielle, Jessica, Andrea Eisenstein, Kerri
From l. to r. Jessica, Andrea, Kerri, and Danielle
Two blogs ago, I wrote about creating the 8-minute piece Kaddish. It soon became a regular in our repertory, performed in concerts, Holocaust memorial programs, and on the bema before the Kaddish prayer. Over the next fifteen years we were often invited to participate in Holocaust memorial programs, particularly in November around the time of Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”; see June 14, 2019 blog for explanation) and in late April or early May for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust memorial day, based on the Jewish calendar). It wasn’t until 1996 that I choreographed the next piece that became a part of our Holocaust repertory.
As long as I can remember, it was important to me that pieces related to the Holocaust be part of the Avodah Dance Ensemble’s repertory. At the age of 12 or 13 I saw the original production of The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway with Susan Strasberg as Anne Frank and Joseph Schildkraut as Otto Frank. It was during my first trip to New York City with my parents, when we saw several Broadway shows, The Diary of Anne Frank being the only drama. I remember the evening well. We had seats in the first row and I was mesmerized by the play and the performances. I experienced the power of how theater can teach and emotionally engage one in learning. After that I regularly read and learned more about the Holocaust and as I developed as a choreographer it was a natural next step to create pieces like I Never Saw Another Butterfly and Kaddish.
The idea for the new piece, Shema, inspired by Primo Levi’s writing, came from Rabbi Oren Postrel. I hunch that Rabbi Larry Raphael (of blessed memory) probably introduced us, knowing that Oren had a very strong background as a dancer who had seriously studied ballet and performed in the Oakland Ballet. Oren shared Primo Levi’s writing with me and soon we were developing a piece based on it. Primo Levi (1919–1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist, writer and Holocaust survivor. Much of what we used in our piece Shemacame from his best-known work, If This Is A Man, about his time as a prisoner at Auschwitz.
Primo Levi (1950’s) from Wikipedia
The choreography was not only inspired by Primo Levi’s poetry but also by the Broadway play Bent, written by Martin Sherman. The play, which I saw in 1980, revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany. I found the second act particularly powerful with its stillness and senseless repetition as the two main characters move a pile of stones from one side of the stage to the other. When it came time to choreograph Shema I wanted to use some kind of repetition to hold the piece together. So throughout the whole piece the four dancers walk in a straight line back and forth across the stage in the back part of the performing area. Each dancer steps out of the line to share their poem in words and movement and when done goes back into the line. Jack Anderson in a review in The New York Times, May 31, 1997, describes it well:
Shema effectively contrasted relentless pacing, representing concentration camp regimentation with sudden outburst, symbolizing the prisoners’ turbulent personal feelings.
From a video of the piece, April 15, 1996, performed by the dancers who helped to create it, in a Yom HaShoah Service at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Dancers from l. to r. Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Elizabeth McPherson, Beth Millstein, and Carla Armstrong Here’s the link to the video
As in the earlier Holocaust piece I Never Saw Another Butterfly, the dance is done in silence and to the voices of the dancers.
As I was writing this blog I came across an editorial in The New York Times published on May 26th (2019). It was written by the Editorial Board, which “represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.” The editorial clearly states that anti- Semitism is sharply on the rise and gives statistics for the increase in Germany and France in particular and also points out that it is not only coming from the far right, but also from the Islamists and far left. The authors mention the increase here in the United States, and end by saying:
Speak up, now, when you glimpse evidence of Anti Semitism, particularly within your own ranks, or risk enabling the spread of this deadly virus.
It is with a deep sadness and concern I read this and realize the truth in what they are saying. I fear we are on the edge of a cliff right now and I echo that we all have a responsibility to speak up and not allow discrimination in any form.
A few people have asked me if I am planning to turn the blog into a book. No, I am not. What I am finding most meaningful is the immediate input I get in the comment section or in personal emails. This week’s blog is a result of a comment that Elizabeth McPherson made in response to last week’s blog. She wrote: “Also remember performing Kaddish at a memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin after he was assassinated. That was a very intense experience.” Elizabeth and I emailed back and forth figuring out more about the event. I think we now have a very good picture of how we came to perform Kaddish as a memorial piece for Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin died on Saturday, November 4, 1995, and it was on November 10th at Rodeph Shalom Congregation that Avodah danced the piece in his memory. Avodah had a strong relationship with Rodeph Shalom (located on 83rdStreet just off of Central Park in New York City). Let My People Go was performed there in 1989 (the piece’s opening season), and during the mid-90’s two Avodah dancers and I would lead dance midrash classes in the religious school. In 1995, we had been booked – many months before Rabin’s assassination – to be part of the November 10th Sabbath service. On November 9thand 10th, synagogues and Jewish organizations often do programs remembering Kristallnacht. The U.S. Holocaust Museum provides the following description of Kristallnacht on its website:
Kristallnacht, literally, “Night of Crystal,” is often referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass.” The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht)
Avodah was set to perform three Holocaust pieces in the November 10th service: I Never Saw Another Butterfly(which I have written about before), Shema, based on the writings of Primo Levi (and which will be the subject of an upcoming blog), and Kaddish.
Elizabeth has kept her datebooks and has excellent notes of when she was at Rodeph Shalom rehearsing the piece and when she had to be there for the performance. She also commented:
I do remember that there was a huge audience attending the service at Rodeph Shalom on Nov. 10th. It was overwhelming, but also felt really important to be there in that space performing at that moment.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for keeping those datebooks!
Picture from Rodeph Shalom’s website. Usually, to provide room for the dancers to move, the center podium was taken off the bema or moved to the side, and any movable chairs were also removed from the beta.
About 10 years earlier, on May 9, 1985, we had danced Kaddish in another memorial service. That time it was at Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue, for Ben Sommers, who had died that week. When we arrived at the Synagogue to begin rehearsing and staging the three pieces we would be doing, the rabbi told us about Ben’s death and that it was appropriate that we were there that evening, as Ben had been the President of Capezio (the famous dancewear company) from 1940 to the time of his death. (Ben had also been a remarkable supporter of dance, including creating the Capezio Foundation, and the Capezio Award for lifetime achievement in dance). We ended our discussion by saying that the dances that evening and particularly Kaddish would be danced in Ben’s memory.
I remember speaking about Kaddish, and Rick Jacobs may have also spoken, since he danced the opening Kaddish solo. During the Oneg Shabbat after the service, Ben’s widow, Estelle Sommers (1919–1994), came up to me and said how meaningful the service was.
For the company, Kaddish was always a powerful piece to perform, but on these two occasions, it was indeed particularly meaningful.
It’s February 5, 1981, and we are premiering a new piece in Avodah’s repertory for a Holocaust Memorial Program at The Savannah College of Art and Design. It is part of a program entitled “Light Through The Darkness,” which has been organized and planned by Congregation Mickve Israel for February 5ththrough 12th. It is part of a three-part program which includes a dance performance, an art exhibit, and a lecture by a prominent collector. We have decided to create a new piece for the program, to the first eight minutes of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony.
Poster from the performance
This was not our first performance in Savannah. This was our third. An article on February 4,1981, in the Georgia Gazettesums up our special relationship with Savannah very well:
The company has performed on several occasions to standing-room-only crowds in Savannah, and Tucker credits Rabbi Rubin (Saul Rubin) with encouraging her efforts during the company’s early years.
The first time we performed in Savannah was in March 1976 using female dancers from the congregation and bringing a male dancer from Tallahassee. I went in a week before and totally enjoyed my time there working with the dancers, who were lovely. Temple Mickve Israel is an old congregation with an historic sanctuary. It is located on a beautiful square, and a March 17, 1976 article in City Beat mentions that “while traffic circled about the verdant oasis, the dancers kicked off their shoes, and in leotards and jeans ran through their paces, barefoot in the park.” The publicity, with several articles and pictures of myself and composer Irving Fleet, was excellent for the Friday night service. In fact, when Irving joined me to rehearse the musicians and we had some time off to stroll along the river walkway and wandered in a shop, the owner recognized us from the newspaper. The Friday night service was indeed packed and standing-room-only. We performed Sabbath Woman and In Praise as part of a creative service that Rabbi Saul Rubin wrote.
Photograph of the Temple on stationery
We returned to Savannah in the fall of 1976 to repeat the two pieces as part of a regional Biennial Convention of the Southeast Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called Union of Reform Judaism). That helped us become better known with congregations in the Southeastern part of the country. (My favorite memory from the performance in the Shabbat service is that I met a cousin and his wife that I hadn’t seen in years.)
We had a special relationship with Rabbi Saul Rubin and Temple Mickve Israel and I was really pleased to have an opportunity to be part of the Light Through The Darkness Holocaust Program. I also liked the fact we would have a good space to perform in at the Savannah College of Art and Design. This was a great opportunity to create a new piece to go with I Never Saw Another Butterfly. I remember listening to lots of music and giving much thought to what to create. I stumbled across Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony and loved the first 8 minutes. The piece opens with about a four-minute reading by a solo voice, with some music. The recording I first found, and originally choreographed to, featured Leonard Bernstein doing the vocal part. So I created the solo on Michael Bush, the male dancer in the Tallahassee company at that time. What follows the vocal section is a wonderful burst of music during which the solo dancer joins the other dancers in one of my favorite phrases, which we often used for auditions over the years. With hands fisted, the dancers rise slowly as a group into a suspended relevé in simple parallel, from which they explode into a skip and leap, and a fan kick into a knee walk into a tilted attitude turn.
The performance in Savannah went well but more important to me was that the new piece Kaddish became a signature part of the repertoire for over twenty years, regularly performed before the Kaddish prayer in services and ending many concerts. Shortly after that first performance I discovered a recording with a female voice (Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre) doing the part, and when I returned to New York, I used that recording and taught the solo to Lynn Elliott who did a magnificent job with the part.
We used the female recording from that point on except when Rick Jacobs performed the solo. (I obtained the permissions I needed to use the music and each year reported the number of performances so I could pay the appropriate royalty.)
Over the years so many wonderful dancers performed the solo part, and it was great fun for me to see how each dancer made it their own. Kezia continued to teach the group section to new dancers even when she was no longer in the company. She adds the following note:
One of my proudest moments, both as Assistant Rehearsal Director and as ensemble member, was during a performance at an arts festival, when the music suddenly disappeared in the middle of the group section of Kaddish – a tricky section with changing tempos. We continued dancing without pause. Our ensemble work was so reliable that when the music resumed, we were exactly where we should have been, as if nothing unusual had happened.
Another one of my most memorable performances was in that same festival, a rain-or-shine, mainly-outdoor event. Let it never be said that we ever performed with less than our full focus, technique, heart and soul – not even when we performed under that LEAKING tent top, for that ONE audience member sitting under his umbrella in the pouring rain to watch us.We laugh at these memories, like other touring mishaps, but they don’t detract from the pleasure of being part of such festivals. This particular occasion also gave us the rare opportunity to enjoy performances by other artists, including most memorably the lovely music ensemble Voice of the Turtle.
