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.
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.
I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but somehow as I step into this new year I sense a need to have a philosophy or an approach to handle the continuing challenges of the time we are living in. As I pondered what this approach could be, what came to mind was the important role improvisation has played in my work with the dance company and in the many workshops I have led in so many different situations. When an improvisation works it transcends the moment, connecting the participants together in a new and unique way. Somehow each participant has let go of their individual agenda and given themselves fully to the moment and to each other. Over the years I have experienced this in a variety of different places, and the feeling of connecting deeply was sometimes surprising and always very fulfilling. I have observed it when the Avodah Dance Ensemble nailed an improvisation of a particular Torah portion. Once when I was leading a group of students in a Doctor of Divinity Program it happened as we responded to a line of text in movement, and after the beautiful movement improvisation of about 10 minutes we quietly sat together, not sure what words to use to describe the experience, and just remained quiet, taking in what had happened.
So we are living at a time when it is important to let go of being fully committed to plans. We just don’t know what’s around the corner related to COVID… will there be a new variant that will close things down? How do we interact with people, even if we have gotten the vaccines and booster? This is all very new, and I find I am reminding myself of what I know from years of improvisation and even from the more informal creative movements I learned as a child: having fun and committing myself to the moment and finding the way to respond.
Recently Rabbi Lisa Greene emailed me and asked me if I would speak to a student of hers who was a dancer preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. I agreed and did, and then Lisa and I enjoyed emailing back and forth. Lisa shared a link with me about Viola Spolin, Spolin’s son Paul Sills and Second City Improv Company. It was a program created by the PBS station in Chicago and the description about the program is as follows:
Chicago’s greatest cultural export just might be improvised theater, which was born at Jane Addams’ Hull House during the Great Depression and carried out into the world by the likes of Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert. But while to most people improv might seem synonymous with comedy, the art form was devised by a woman named Viola Spolin who wasn’t out for laughs.
I knew Viola Spolin’s name well and even took a workshop with her in the 60’s in Chicago, probably knowing of her through the graduate work I was doing in theatre either at the University of Pittsburgh or University of Wisconsin in Madison. And I had both her book Improvisation for the Theater and a wonderful box filled with all kinds of cards for games to use in teaching movement improvisation. Her book came out in 1963 and is still available on Kindle or through a website devoted to her work. I highly recommend checking out the website.
Viola Spolin was born in 1906 to Russian Jewish immigrants. In the 1930’s, as a social worker, she began experimenting with theatre games. To learn more about her amazing life, the number of actors and teachers she has directly influenced (along with countless others through them) and why she is called the “mother of improvisation” please check out her biography at: https://www.violaspolin.org/bio
Spolin died in 1994. Her son Paul Sills continued her work during her lifetime and after and there is lots about him in the PBS YouTube link. Her granddaughter Aretha Sills is continuing to lead workshops and has a series online. I just boldly signed up for a workshop beginning March 3rd, meeting once a week for 2 ½ hours, for six weeks. I am very curious to see how she will be leading it online and I definitely want to refresh myself on how an improvisational way of thinking might help to handle the challenges of 2022!
Before I close this blog I want to share a few specific reasons why improvisation can be a guide for 2022. These come from two websites that cite Spolin’s work and express it clearly:
Live in the moment, responding to what is happening
“Yes and,” not “No but”! Be positive
Listen
Meet the needs of your partner, team or situation rather than your ego
I look forward to taking the online workshop and most certainly will write a blog about it! SO here is to a new year navigating with flexibility and improvising as we go!
Both images are from the ViolaSpolin.org website. Although it turned out that I didn’t need permission to use the images (as they have the website on the posters), I did check and was pleased to get a speedy positive response from Aretha Sills.
During the time I was in New York City in the early 60’s I welcomed the opportunity to explore a variety of ways that one could have a profession in dance. Of course, most of my energy was focused on performing and choreographing, especially when I was at Juilliard and studying at the Martha Graham Studio. But I was curious about two other possible options. One was related to reconstructing and preserving dance using Labanotation (a system of dance notation recording movements, directions, timing, etc.) which we were required to take at Juilliard, and the other was the new field of dance therapy. Most likely I learned about dance therapy through attending an American Dance Guild conference at the 92ndStreet YM&YWHA in NYC. I particularly remember a workshop led by Anna Halpern, and while I didn’t relate to it very well I was fascinated with the use of dance to bring people together. I also have a vague memory of being introduced to the work of Marian Chace perhaps at the same conference.
Marian Chace is considered the founder of dance therapy in the United States. She began her dance career as a dancer, performer, and choreographer. She opened a school in Washington, DC and it was while teaching that she noticed the benefits to her students.
The reported feelings of wellbeing from her students began to attract the attention of the medical community, and some local doctors began sending patients to her classes. She was soon asked to work at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. once psychiatrists too realized the benefits their patients were receiving from attending Chace’s dance classes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_therapy
She began working at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1942. She developed a program called “Dance for Communication,” and that was really the start of a new mental health profession called dance/movement therapy. In 1947 she was employed full time at St. Elizabeth’s as a dance therapist. In 1966 she was one of the founding members of the American Dance Therapy Association which continues to play an active role with a strong membership of dance therapists. Here’s a link for more information about her life: https://www.adta.org/marian-chace-biography.
I remember reading a book and some articles Chace wrote, and being totally fascinated. I was also aware of the American Dance Therapy Association that she founded in 1966. In the 1970’s, living in Tallahassee, Florida I found myself in need of therapy and sought out both individual and group therapy in the then popular Transactional Analysis. The therapists that I worked with also offered training in Transactional Analysis and soon I was attending workshops and training to be a Permission Educator using movement as the main tool. Some of these workshops were held at the Creative Dance Center Studio that I build in the mid-70’s. At some point I also began leading movement workshops in the psychiatrist floor of Tallahassee’s main hospital. At the same time, The Avodah Dance Ensemble was growing, and I realized that being a choreographer and director of the dance company was much more satisfying, so I eventually stopped leading workshops and focused on just the dance company.
When we began working with women in prison, some 15 years later, some of the training in Transactional Analysis came in handy but mainly in an indirect way. The concept of a nurturing parent giving permission to the creative child was at the core of what I had learned and begun practicing when leading workshops. However, as a dance company, and as myself as director, I clearly did not view what we were doing as therapy in any kind of traditional sense. Instead we had a clear agreement with the women participating that the goal was for them to join the dance company in a performance and to share what they had learned and experienced with other inmates. Feedback from teachers and the participants themselves indicate that they had a great sense of pride and accomplishment that they had stayed with the week-long workshops and followed through in the performance. For many of them that was a major achievement.
Later when I worked with women from a domestic violence shelter I found that there were two different ways I approached the work. When I went into group sessions it was to give permission to express one’s feelings through movement and to relate to another person in a safe non-verbal way (i.e. mirroring with a partner). Alternatively, we offered the option for some of the women to participate in a more intense way and become part of a film project using movement and meditation for healing. Each participant was required to sign an agreement that they would attend a certain number of rehearsals and that they would be performing for an invited audience, and that both rehearsals and performances would be filmed. Again there was feedback from the women expressing satisfaction and enthusiasm for having followed through. And when the film was accepted into film festivals, there was additional pleasure.
While working with a therapist in a private setting or as part of a group is important in growing, healing and recovery, for some people the participation in being part of a performing group, when led with the right approach, can be very beneficial! This was clearly apparent to me and, based on feedback, to the participants too. Observations included gaining new skills in teamwork, completing an agreed on task, having fun and as one woman remarked, “getting high in a legal way.”
When directing a performance piece with a group of non-dancers, particularly when they have experienced physical abuse in their lives, I am glad that I had the Transactional Analysis training as it guides me in how I lead. I am aware that I am giving the participants permission to use their body in a new way, to be creative, to be part of a team and to share what they are learning with others. I also strive to help them do their very best. In leading groups with the assistance of well trained dancers we are able to guide them in a short amount of time to reach a pleasing performance level. I have found this very rewarding work. I have a lot of respect for those who go into dance therapy and a keen awareness that while I was glad to have had the training that I had, I needed to follow a different path.
Nine women from Esperanza Shelter join four dancers in the finale of “Through the Door,” an example of building a team and sharing for an invited performance. Photo by Judy Naumburg. Here’s a link to view the film: (https://vimeo.com/259920776).
In my last blog, I shared that Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from the team competition and some of the individual events in the Olympics increased our focus on mental health. COVID, the challenges of staying at home for over a year and then returning to interactions with people, and the need to navigate a new normal are stressful for most of us. Coping with these challenges certainly has been difficult for me, especially in the spring when I did not physically feel well. During this time I came across a book which I found very meaningful. The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind and the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk is currently #1 on The New York Times Best Sellers Paperback Nonfiction list and it has been on the list for 149 weeks. It is #1 on Amazon for books related to Mental Illness. It is also available as an audio book.
In a review by Concepcion de Leon on October 18, 2018 she clearly summarizes the three approaches that the book covers for people recovering from trauma: 1) top down by talking; 2) taking medicines and 3) bottom up – allowing the body to have experiences. She then goes on to note:
Survivors usually need some combination of the three methods, writes Dr. van der Kolk, but the latter — the mind-body connection — is most neglected. His work is predicated on integrating body-focused treatments into trauma recovery work, like yoga, role-play, dance and meditation. Another method he suggests is writing and keeping a journal. Click here to read the full review.
What struck me as I listened to the book was the fact that van der Kolk, a very respected researcher and expert on trauma, gives credibility to what many of us have been aware of for a long time: the power of yoga, role-playing, dance and meditation in healing. He points out that they are referred to as alternative therapies in healing, with drugs being the primary approach. In Part 5: “Paths to Recovery,” he states that it should be the other way around and that drugs should be the alternative therapy.
In my research I found four different articles in The New York Times citing van der Kolk’s work. That kind of exposure gives resounding recognition. While the medical community may be reluctant to give up talk therapy and medication, the public is hungry for alternatives. The first article was in 2014 in the magazine section of The New York Times. It opens with a description of a workshop van der Kolk gave at Big Sur in California called “Trauma, Memory and Recovery of Self.” Working with one participant he took role-playing to a new level which he calls “Structure,” which grew out of the psychomotor therapy developed by Albert Pesso, a dancer who studied with Martha Graham. The article goes on to describe van der Kolk’s career in much detail and I highly recommend checking it out. Here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/a-revolutionary-approach-to-treating-ptsd.html
The second article is the review which I have already quoted and the third and fourth articles are from this summer. How amazing that a book that came out in 2014 is receiving so much press and interest now! The third article basically is asking the author if he follows how his book is doing. The last article is a brief introduction to a long (over-an-hour) podcast with the author and Ezra Klein. I loved that in the introduction Ezra Klein points out that van der Kolk:
co-founded and leads a trauma research foundation and has been studying ways to try to heal these deeper parts of our psyches, everything from movement therapies like yoga and dance to E.M.D.R. to internal family systems therapy to MDMA treatment. We talk about all of it in here.
Here’s the link where you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript.
It is affirming to have read this book because I was first introduced to this kind of work in the 1960’s when I was a student at the University of Pittsburgh. As a theatre major I first took a course in Creative Dramatics from Dr. Barbara McIntyre (1916-2005), and later as a graduate student I was her teaching assistant. As I write this section, I pause with gratitude to Dr. McIntyre and the warm mentoring she provided. Born in Canada in 1916, she came to the University of Pittsburgh in the 50’s with a master’s degree and a career in children’s theater, teaching and using creative dramatics. While at Pitt she saw the therapeutic value of creative dramatics when asked to work with children who had speech impairment. That led her to work with Eleanor Irwin, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in Pitt’s School of Medicine. Ellie (as we called her) promoted the use of creative drama in drama therapy. Barbara received her doctorate in 1957. I studied with her between 1963 and 1965. It was during this time that I began to see the relationship between drama and movement in healing. In particular, she and Ellie Irwin introduced me to the work of Jacob Moreno and psychodrama.
Jacob Moreno (1889-1974) was born in Bucharest, Romania and practiced psychiatry near Vienna from 1918–1925. In 1925 he moved to New York City and continued working as a psychiatrist and experimenting with psychodrama, which included core techniques such as mirroring and role-playing. I have a vague memory of attending one of his sessions and seeing role-playing in action.
In the early to mid-sixties I also became aware of Judy Rubin and her work in Art Therapy. Judy and Ellie worked together, and in fact my mom, Janet Klineman, Ph.D., who was Director of the Lower School of The Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, was very familiar with their work. After I moved away from Pittsburgh in 1966, my mom often mentioned them, as I believe they may have worked with students at the School for Blind. A quick Google search of Judy Rubin and Eleanor Irwin showed that they are still very active in the field. In 1985 they developed an Expressive Media Film Library and as recently as this spring Judy Rubin’s Facebook Page celebrated a Launch Party on May 22 featuring a number of art therapists sharing theory, practice tips and personal experiences.
Reading The Body Keeps Score was an experience in reaffirming my long-held belief that body work is a very important component of healing. The book provides excellent language to describe how the brain and body work together, and cites research work that van der Kolk and his colleagues have done to support this. Before closing I want to highly recommend reading the book and especially Part Five, Chapter 16: “Learning to Inhabit Your Body: Yoga” and Chapter 18: “Filling in the Holes: Creating Structure.”
I close with two pictures from the project I did using creative movement with women from Esperanza, the domestic violence shelter in Santa Fe.
Expressing Anger, Through the Door Project, Esperanza Shelter, Santa Fe, NM Photograph by Judy NaumbergExpressing Joy, Through the Door Project, at Esperanza Shelter in Santa Fe, NM Photograph by Judy Naumberg
This was not my first trip to Israel. For my 50th birthday Murray and I traveled to Israel, staying first with friends at Kibbutz Lotan located in the South and then taking a small minivan tour of the country for about a week. While it was a very positive experience and I especially liked Tel Aviv and have vivid memories of watching large groups of people gathering by the beach to folk dance on Shabbat, I did find not myself in a hurry to return. As I flew into Israel on Friday morning to begin this nine-day trip with five workshops scheduled I wondered how my work would be received particularly among traditional orthodox Jewish participants. The five workshops were scheduled throughout the country and I had no idea who the attendees would be.
I am very glad to have written about the trip, shortly after it happened, in an Avodah Newsletter, and the majority of this blog comes from the newsletter. As was my regular practice when leading dance midrash workshops, they were always based on that week’s Torah portion and I had a particularly rich and easy one to work with. I decided to focus on two specific lines in the portion “Lech Lecha”: Genesis 12:1, “The Lord said to Abram, ”Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” and Genesis 16: 1-16 where Hagar bears a child for Sarah.
Arriving in Israel on Friday I would have Saturday to spend with friends who offered a place to stay where they lived on Kibbutz Tzora. They had originally lived at Kibbutz Lotan, where Murray and I had visited them six years ago. Now, along with two adorable twins, they lived on Kibbutz Tzora which had a much more urban feeling than Lotan. I was also able to use time to review the Torah portion I would be working with. Even though I had worked with many Torah portions many times I often found new insight depending on my life events and world happenings. This particular week I decided to address the question of what quality in Abram triggered God to select him to “go forth.”
For the section on Sarah and Hagar, I decided to find moments of interaction between them that are not described in text, such as what Sarah might have said to Hagar to convince her to bear a child for her, or what Hagar might have said to Sarah when Hagar knew she was pregnant. In other words, I wanted to make the relationship very real between these two women.
All five workshops were built from these two scenarios, and each workshop had the same outline: movement warm-up, introduction of ritual movement (i.e. movement already existing in our tradition, such as putting on a tallit or bending and bowing), exploration of text in movement, questions, and feedback. Each workshop took on its own character and emphasis based on the participants, and there was a huge range!
As I reviewed my write-up in the Avodah Newsletter I noted that I only mentioned four workshops. Actually a fifth one stands out in my mind and I hunch that I decided not to write about it for the newsletter. For this blog I will just share one very strong memory of that workshop (the first), which I led in Jerusalem. I remember my friends driving to and from the location, and that I felt a huge relief to be leaving Jerusalem, as I felt the energy from both the workshop and in the streets to have been somewhat frantic!!
While each workshop had the same outline, each one definitely had its own character and emphasis based on the participants. The second workshop, in Tel Aviv, like the one in Jerusalem, was attended by all non-dancers and thus my main job was in motivating movement and leading the group to be comfortable with movement as a way to explore text.
The third workshop was in the city of Beit She’an which is located in the northern part of Israel in the Jordan Valley. It was held in a beautiful dance studio, part of the region’s cultural center, and had the highest level of dance participants, with several professional dancers and advanced dance students. I also seem to remember this was the home community of Elisabeth, the person who had visited my dance midrash class in New York City and arranged for me to come. A single sentence was enough to motivate rich movement, and sophisticated improvisational dance challenges quickly became an important part of this workshop. A particularly memorable improvisation occurred on the letters in God’s name (yud, hay, vav, hay). I taught a simple movement phrase based on a meditation related to these letters and then asked the participants each to think about her own God image and to incorporate that in her improvisation. The intensity in the room was incredible and while I was dancing with the group I sensed an extraordinary energy happening, with amazing movement interactions taking place in my own improvising. One person had chosen to observe and was mesmerized by what she saw. Not surprisingly, in the feedback section, this exercise was commented on the most. From an orthodox woman came the statement that she was apprehensive when asked to do this activity but found it profound. A secular woman also shared the same reaction – an initial reluctance to dance the letters in God’s name, but then a discovery of great meaning to the exercise. I felt a certain affirmation in having been able to provide such an experience for women coming from such different backgrounds.
From there I traveled to Yeroham which is in the Southern District – Negev Desert. The workshop was held in the Bamidbar Creative Beit Midrash which had been built in 1990 following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, and which serves the local community as well as visitors. It is also an unusual space in that it has served as a bomb shelter. Put to happier use, all the furniture had been removed for our dance workshop, and there was also an art exhibit by oil painter Anna Andersch-Marcus, a world-renowned artist living in Yeroham. This was the only time my teaching in English created a few moments of tension, when some debate arose about how to translate what I said. Luckily several bilingual participants were able to assure the group that the differences were insignificant to the assignment, and the 15 women ranging in background from secular to traditional worked together sharing nonverbally our interpretations of biblical text.
My own improvisations that day were influenced by the fact that we were near a site called Hagar’s Well and I was reminded of the challenges that the environment presents. It made a big difference in my own movement to keep the harshness of the desert landscape in mind as I danced interactions between Sarah and Hagar.
The final workshop was at Kibbutz Lotan. The Kibbutz was further south located in the heart of the desert about 40 minutes north of Elat which is on the Red Sea. I had very pleasant memories of the Kibbutz from my earlier trip to Israel. The reform Kibbutz had developed further with bird-watching trails, sand dunes and the intimacy of a small lush Kibbutz surrounded by the barren desert mountains. I thoroughly enjoyed being there and even discussed with the leadership of the Kibbutz the possibility of doing an intensive five-day workshop to train dance midrash specialists as well as individuals who just wanted to explore text through dance stimulated by the beautiful desert environment and guest facilities of the Kibbutz. I never put much energy into organizing it and so it never happened. Being at Kibbutz Lotan was a wonderful way to end a very full nine days and return to Italy to continue getting ready for our October 31 concert.
The only picture I could find that I took on this trip to Israel. Clearly I was fascinated by the harsh environment of the desert!
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.
When we planned on moving to Costa Rica, we had no idea of all the challenges we would face within the first 6 months of living here. I’m not talking about the adjustments to a new country, which we would have had moving at any time, or the surprise fire and earthquake. What I mean is COVID 19 and the heart failure that Murray is going through. Those are two things that are dominating day-to-day life and could not have been predicted back in November when we made the decision to move. A year ago this time, Murray and I were in the Tetons at Jenny Lake Lodge, and while we couldn’t do long hikes, Murray could do short hikes of a mile or so. Sometimes it is a challenge now for Murray just to walk from room to room and or spend 10 minutes walking in the garden.
View in our garden behind a tree that Murray walks to slowly.
And then there is COVID which has made it impossible for family and friends to visit. The borders are closed and it is unlikely that people from the U.S. will be allowed in anytime soon. We have no plans to return to the United States, as we feel safer here. So there is a real appreciation that we are able to communicate via FaceTime and Zoom, because no one knows when we will be able to do so “in person.”
Nearly every day here in Costa Rica, I find myself experiencing the four basic emotions that I sometimes explored when I led movement workshops. Sometimes one dominates more than another but generally in the course of any day I experience all four. They are: happy, sad, angry, scared. Dance and sometimes art have been wonderful vehicles for me to work through my feelings and in the process find appropriate outlets for my emotions. As I write this I am challenging myself to see what I can do here particularly using art as my means.
A few hours after writing these first two paragraphs a strong emotion began to surface so I got my watercolor pencils out and began expressing my feeling on paper. Soon the emotion began to pass and instead a deep fascination with the design elements dominated. Over the next day or so I totally enjoyed creating a small abstract design that had started with strong emotional feeling.
Watercolor exploring an emotion, June 20, 2020. Created by first using watercolor pencils and then adding water and other watercolors.
For years when I led movement workshops, exploring emotions through dance was often an important part of the program. The activities were carefully structured so that everyone in the group was safe both from getting caught up in the emotion and from interacting with another person in an unsafe way.
Confining space is a good tool to use. Ask each person to draw an imaginary circle around themself that gives them about three feet to move. For the duration of the exercise they are to stay inside their personal circle. Give them the following instructions, one at a time, giving them several minutes to improvise each one: 1) They are frustrated and angry at being confined to the space; 2) They have retreated to this space because they are afraid during a thunder and lightning storm; 3) They are very sad and this small space is safe play to express their sadness; and 4) It is during COVID 19 time and they have just received great news on their cell phone while outside with a friend practicing social distancing.
With an adult or teenage group, start by making a large circle. One person goes into the center of the circle and makes a shape (with their body) that expresses one of the four emotions. They hold that pose, while another person goes into the circle making a complimentary shape (relating to but without touching the first person) that also illustrates that same emotion. The first person leaves and the next person comes in making a shape of the same emotion, and so it continues with one person entering and another person leaving. This activity can be expanded by having the participants still enter the circle one at a time, but allowing a few participants to remain in place in the center at once, thus creating a larger “sculpture” of the given emotion. (If doing this, make sure participants take positions that can be held comfortably for a few moments.)
And of course exploring emotions can be taken to a whole different level as it was in the composition class that I took from Pearl Lang at Connecticut College Summer Program in 1960, where for the six weeks I created an anger study and a laughter study. Working from gestures, much as I had done in my first composition class with Helen Tamiris, the gestures were expanded into phrases and the phrases built into sections with Pearl coaching and insisting everything be believable. I remember being very excited to perform one of the studies in a Saturday workshop.
Recently we included exploring emotions as part of a film we made with women from a domestic violence program in Santa Fe. The film includes both leaders with a dance background and women who are exploring movement improvisation for the first time. Here’s a link to view it.
I feel so fortunate to have had practice in finding ways to express my emotions and not become overwhelmed by them. Indeed we are in very challenging times and we need to use all the resources we can!
In my last blog I mentioned how well the Prime Minister of New Zealand had handled the pandemic. Jimmy Levinson, friend/reader, sent me a picture of a woman hugging another and said he had just added the picture to his wall of heroes. I have to admit I didn’t know who the woman in the picture was, even though her name was printed underneath. When I said so, Jimmy wrote back that it was the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Oh… I thought to myself, that is what you get for not watching the news. Here is someone managing a country very well and you don’t even know her name. So I immediately googled Jacinda Ardern and began learning about her. And wow, if I had a wall of heroes she certainly would be there.
I learned that she is just 39 years old. Uri Friedman wrote in The Atlantic, April 2020:
Her leadership style is one of empathy in a crisis…. Her messages are clear, consistent, and somehow simultaneously sobering and soothing.
During a session conducted in late March, just as New Zealand prepared to go on lockdown, she appeared in a well-worn sweatshirt at her home (she had just put her toddler daughter to bed, she explained) to offer guidance “as we all prepare to hunker down.”
She introduced helpful concepts, such as thinking of “the people [who] will be in your life consistently over this period of time” as your “bubble.”
On June 9th when she learned the country was free of COVID she is quoted as saying “I did a little dance.”
Picture of Jacinda Ardern — part of Jimmy’s Hereos’ Wall
I love that my friend has a wall of heroes, but that should not come as a surprise to me because Jimmy is a very unique and special person. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he was my next door neighbor. Through the years we have kept in touch. F. James Levinson, as he is known professionally, has had an outstanding career in Public Health and Nutrition projects throughout the world. Here’s a link to his bio as part of the Board of Directors of his son Noah’s organization, Calcutta Kids. Noah has won awards for his work with Calcutta Kids which is an organization “committed to empowering the poorest children and expecting mothers in the underserved slums in and around Kolkata, India.” I strongly encourage you to check out their website and even consider donating to Calcutta Kids.
I asked Jimmy to send me a photo of his Wall of Heroes and got 6 photos showing a diverse group of individuals, some I recognized and some I didn’t. The idea of a wall of heroes is quite wonderful and I am thinking how I might create that here in Costa Rica. It will not be quite as elegant as my friend’s, where each picture is carefully framed, but I am lucky to have a printer and can print out photos and maybe mount them on another piece of paper, and with my watercolors paint a frame. The first two will be Jacinda Ardern, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I will call it my SHeroes’ Wall. I look forward to thinking about other additions and while I will be focusing on women I will certainly include some men too. If you were to create your wall who would be on it? Certainly the quality of empathy and compassion from a leader will be an essential qualification.
As I think about compassion and empathy and caring about people, I remember how I ended many workshops that I led. It was very important to me that we left caring about each other and wishing each other well as we continued on our journeys. So we ended with blessings in movement. If it was a large group that hadn’t worked together for very long, we would pass blessings around in a circle. One person (usually myself or a member of the faculty, for the purpose of modeling the instructions) would turn to the person to their right and, thinking a warm thought, would express that, through movement, to the person beside them (without touching). Perhaps they would circle their neighbor’s face or place one hand near the person’s heart and the other on their own heart. Or maybe they would encircle the person and then starting at the person’s head, gently move their circled arms down to the person’s feet. That person would then create their own movement blessing for the person next to them.
If it was a small group that had worked together for several days, each person would go individually into the center of the circle and then the other participants, one by one, would go in to offer that person a movement blessing. No matter which format we did, we ended by blessing ourselves.
With the very challenging world we are living in, we need every tool we can find to help us. May we bless each other and bless ourselves. And let us create our own wall of heroes or sheroes so we are reminded of how many caring and compassionate leaders there are, and have been, on our planet.
Avodah began to do week-long summer dance training programs in 1997, but I want to share memories of our final one, at Perry-Mansfield in August 2004. We were very fortunate to have a grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund. This fund, which began in 1989 upon the death of Laura Jane Musser, is devoted to her interests, which included the arts and helping children. One of the areas funded is Intercultural Harmony and we applied for a grant to provide a five-day workshop teaching how to use movement, music and storytelling to create multicultural programs in schools. The grant enabled me to put together a stellar faculty and to help provide scholarships to participants.
This was not the first Avodah workshop at Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Spring, CO. The first one was in 2001 when Amichai Lau Lavie and Libbie Mathes joined me as the faculty with our week focused on Yoga, Dance and Sacred Text. Libbie was my next-door neighbor in Steamboat Springs and we quickly discovered our common interest in dance and sacred text from both a Jewish and a Buddhist perspective. This was a great opportunity for us to work together. Libbie is a highly trained and gifted teacher of Yoga, having studied in India in both Asana (posture) and Pranayama (breath work). Amichai is now a rabbi, but at the time of the workshop he was a student, extremely knowledgeable about Jewish text. Libbie remembers “loving his analysis and insights into the Moses sagas.” The workshop was part of Avodah’s training program for leaders of dance midrash, and at least one person who had done workshops with me in NYC made the trip to Perry-Mansfield in Colorado.
Libbie and I did another workshop the following year focusing on Meditation, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg joining us. And then in 2004 we had a faculty of five, all people that I had a long history of working with. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we focused on training teachers to use multicultural programs in the schools. Libbie continued providing the Yoga section and insights from her explorations of India and Yoga’s traditions. Regina Ress, an international storyteller, had a huge number of relevant stories to share and had taught in schools at all levels. Kezia had both an education degree and a dance degree, and had danced and taught with Avodah for 13 years. She and I had led many workshops related to dance midrash and multicultural work that grew out of our piece Let My People Go. Newman Taylor Baker is a percussionist I had worked with since 1989 as part of Let My People Go and then in other teaching situations along with our prison programs. He had years of experience presenting school programs and had the most amazing collection of percussion instruments from all over the world. In addition we invited Julie Gayer to join us, as she was taking on the role of director of The Avodah Dance Ensemble in the fall of 2004, since I was no longer living in New York City and was retiring from heading the dance company.
Our 2004 faculty from l. to r. Libbie, Kezia, Julie, JoAnne, Newman and Regina sitting on the edge of the Louis Horst Dance Studio at Perry-Mansfield.
We not only had participants from throughout the United States, but two members of the Steamboat Springs community, as well. Libbie remembers a chemistry teacher and also an administrator. We were thrilled that we could offer scholarships to participants. Having all worked together before, this was a sheer teaching joy where we could just easily flow from one leader to another. As Libbie and I were next-door neighbors and luckily the townhouse on the other side of mine was vacant, we rented it for the week, and everyone had fun hanging out together after teaching. I remember that Newman introduced me to quinoa and showed me how to rinse it first before cooking it. And then the weekend following the workshop, we had a wonderful time hiking two of my favorite trails.
Storytelling, movement, and music are all ways to connect to others and learn about different cultures, finding common threads and celebrating differences. For me on a personal note it was a wonderful way to complete my work with the Avodah Dance Ensemble as its founding director. Avodah had begun with my exploration of my own Jewish roots and my relationship to Jewish text. Now over thirty years later, I had changed and my focus was on building bridges between people and seeing intercultural harmony (the beautiful phrase used by the Laura Jane Musser Fund). And how wonderful to be able to hold this workshop at Perry-Mansfield in the Louis Horst Studio. It was like so many pieces of my life coming together…nature, spirituality, dance history, personal history, deep friendships and artistic collaborations.
Regina hugging a tree on one of our hikes.
Resting on a hike and totally enjoying being together.
In 2003 when my husband and I were thinking about moving from the New York area and I was becoming aware that I no longer had new goals for the dance company, I treated myself to classes at The Art Students League on 57thStreet. Later I’ll write more about my beginning studies in art. I knew it would be important to keep creative energy going in my life. Today I am excited to share how dance and art came together. Just a few weeks ago (on Saturday, January 12th), I led a movement workshop at the Community Art Gallery here in Santa Fe. It came about as a result of having a painting in the show “Exquisite Corpse.” The show was for the 10thanniversary of the gallery, and to be eligible to participate, you had to have been juried into one of their themed exhibitions.
A floral painting of mine had been in an earlier show so I emailed back the form saying I wanted to participate.
The painting that I did for “Viva Flores” in 2013 that made me eligible to participate in the 10thAnniversary Show “Exquisite Corpse.”
The program for the 10thanniversary show describes the intent and motivation:
Exquisite Corpse is an historic parlor game in which participants create one of three components of a figure drawing: head, torso and legs. 130 participating artists created one of those distinct sections. When assembled together, these sections will create an exhibit that unites the disparate parts into singular figures. Each artist’s section is priced individually at $150, and buyers have the opportunity to create their own combinations. ….. What better way to celebrate ten years of building innovative programming hand-in-hand with the community than to have a decade of artists together build a collective work of art.
When I got the return email in the spring, saying that I had gotten the body part of the “head,” I did a big sigh and was glad that I had all summer to work on it. The painting wouldn’t be due at the gallery until the beginning of October. Our instructions were that the piece had to measure 30” wide by 10” high. Well at least that gave me room to put things around the head! I am not good at portrait drawing even though I did do a 5-month program in Santa Fe with the outstanding teacher Anthony Ryder in 2009. In fact it was during those 5 months that Murray and I fell in love with Santa Fe and decided that we wanted to move here and make it our permanent year-round home.
OK… since I was good at flowers I would do a self-portrait surrounding my head with tulips. I had just returned from a spring trip to New York City and had been admiring all the beautiful displays of tulips, particularly in lower Manhattan near where the ferry from Jersey City arrived. Since I was staying in Jersey City and taking the ferry in daily I had lots of opportunity to wander through the display and take photographs.
Slowly over the summer I developed the oil painting, particularly challenged with the self-portrait and loving doing the tulips. I dropped it off at the gallery thinking, “Well at least I completed the assignment even if it wasn’t very good.” They had rescheduled the opening and Murray and I had reservations at Monument Valley, a place we had long wanted to visit, and so we missed the opening.
The view from our room in Monument Valley.
A week later, after returning from Monument Valley, I got an email from the gallery saying my painting had sold. Wow… I was totally surprised. Murray was busy in his office and I went bounding in asking if he wanted to go see the show and go to lunch afterwards. We agreed and I had an hour or so before we would leave. For fun I googled the phrase “Exquisite Corpse” and the most amazing dance interpretation consisting of 42 choreographers, most of whom I was familiar with, came up. (One of the choreographers was former Avodah dancer Sidra Bell.) Each choreographer creates a phrase of about 10 seconds and the next choreographer opens his/her phrase with the last movement of the previous choreographer’s work. The video on You Tube was great fun and extremely well made.
When I got to the gallery I was thrilled with how Rod Lambert, the Community Gallery Manager, had put together the show. He was the one who selected which heads would go with which torsos, and with which feet, and he had done an amazing job. I was thrilled with how my head was arranged with two other pieces.
My self-portrait and how it was arranged with two other pieces in the Exquisite Corpse show.
When I congratulated him on how well the show was displayed, he shared how well the opening had gone, with enthusiasm from both the artists and other attendees. He told us that more paintings were sold at the opening than for any other show. At some point I talked about the video I had seen where 42 choreographers did their version of Exquisite Corpse. Immediately Rod asked me about my background and whether I would be interested in doing a dance workshop related to the show. He always arranged various kinds of workshops around the show and it would be fun to do a dance one since they rarely if ever had done dance. There was a small honorarium for leading the workshop. Of course I said yes and over the next several weeks, via email, we selected a date and I sent in my bio and a brief description of the workshop.
The workshop ended up being quite wonderful. While it was small,with only five participants, each person was totally engaged and brought something special to the group. My friend Regina (a professional storyteller)was one of the participants and she had brought a friend of hers who was also a professional storyteller. Of course at one point in the workshop Regina and I just laughed remembering that we started doing such things together when we were about six years old in her living room. (That’s another blog sometime down the road.) One of the participants was totally deaf. She read lips very well and when she didn’t understand something we wrote on a large piece of paper we had placed on the wall. She had a lovely quality of movement. Two other women came in a few minutes late, one a writer and the other a therapist who had a dance background. They quickly became a part of the group.
We used some warm up improvisational work to lead to the centerpiece of each person creating their own solo. (Since it was a small group and each person was very capable I changed the original plan of small groups creating a dance and instead asked each person to create a solo. That would have been risky with most small groups but not with this one.) I asked them to select a head, a torso and feet from any of the works; the parts did not need to be from the same arrangement. By the way, some of the works were sculptures, like the torso in the piece I was a part of, while others were photographs or paintings in any medium. The choreographers were then to imagine how the head, torso and feet would move with at least 2 movement phrases for each part of the body.
While they were creating their pieces, I put a blanket of percussion instruments out, bringing the energy of my favorite accompanist Newman Taylor Baker into the room. When we gathered back together, each person shared their solo and I accompanied. Then after exploring the instruments, one person selected the instruments they wanted for their solo and another person in the group accompanied them. Each workshop participant also took us to the pieces that had inspired their movements.
The results were super. Before ending we linked the solos together as the 42 choreographers had done, and then we all watched the video I had seen, and which I highly recommend. Here again is the link to watch it.
I left feeling a sense of completeness. Dance and art together shared with five totally present and creative participants!
