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.
The grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation underwrote four one-week residencies at four contrasting sites. Our first residency was held from February 25 through March 3 in Wilmington, Delaware. Plans called for us to work with the community on many levels. Workshops were held for schoolchildren as well as adults, and community members participated in two performances – one at Temple Beth Emeth (as part of the Friday night Sabbath service) and the other at the Episcopal Church of Saint Andrews and Matthew (SAMS). (As mentioned in previous blogs, Canon Lloyd Casson of SAMS, a longtime supporter of Avodah, was instrumental in the development of the Forgiveness Project.)
One of the requirements of the grant was to have good documentation of the residencies. A budget had been built into the grant to cover the cost of having two former members of the Avodah Dance Ensemble observe and take notes of what they saw. Kezia Gleckman Hayman and Beth Millstein were super at doing this and I was thrilled when Kezia mentioned that she still had her notes about how we integrated community members into the performance.
The following description is from Kezia’s report about Congregation Beth Emeth, Wilmington, DE (March 1, 2002):
I first observed the community members in a 6 p.m. rehearsal for the 8 p.m. temple service that evening. All four participants had attended at least one workshop with the company during the preceding days. Now the participants were to be incorporated into the performance piece with the company, using movement phrases they were about to create, themselves, based on workshop activities.
JoAnne began by brainstorming responses to ”Forgiveness is… “ The group chose three images it wanted to use in this performance: “liberating a closed heart,” “transformation,” and “letting go.” The ideas were translated into movement through sculpting. (One participant assumed a position expressing the given idea, and then other participants, one at a time, added to the sculpture.) This became the opening of the piece, before the entry of the company dancers.
One of the participants mentioned that she had particularly liked a workshop movement exercise in which Tucker had two lines of participants approaching each other . . . Tucker built the next section on variations of “approaching,” assigning participants to interact with the company dancers. Again drawing on images that had emerged during the workshops, one group approached as if to say “sorry,” another with the idea of returning, and the third incorporating a gesture of one’s face buried in one’s hands. This segued into the set choreography performed by the company.
At a subsequent place in the piece, the participants re-entered, interacting with the dancers in “sharing a hurt” through movement, and at the conclusion of the piece the participants joined the company by mirroring the professional dancers’ movements of comforting each other and “opening their hearts.”
I am so grateful to Kezia for saving these notes as it gives a very clear example of how we integrated the community with the professional dancers for the actual performance of the Forgiveness Piece. I wish I had performance photos with community members but alas we don’t. I do have photographs from workshops.
In three of the four residencies, members of the community did perform with the dancers onstage as part of the piece, usually at similar places in the choreography but with different improvisations, based on what had been particularly meaningful to the workshop participants.
Once the structure for the community members’ improvisations was set, then the next stage was coaching. From Kezia’s notes:
Tucker coached the participants to refine their original movements to the highest possible level in terms of expressiveness, clarity of movement, dynamics, use of space and interaction with fellow dancers. With each urging, the participants’ movements improved, and their confidence grew, as evidenced by their lack of hesitation, the fullness of their movements, the development of their movements beyond the most obvious gestural representation of an idea, and the initiative they began to take . . . .
At all times, movement came from the participants themselves, as they continually re-examined their impressions of the forgiveness process. At one point, Tucker coached a participant moving from one place to another, “Transformation is not easy – it needs more tension,” and the participant reacted, “Right. I would have to WORK to get over there,” revising her movement accordingly. At another point, Tucker coached, “Make sure ‘transformation’ and ‘letting go’ are not the same.” The participant appealed, “Help me,” to which Tucker responded, “It has to come from you. Let your energy change.’’ It did, with a visibly expanded movement.
In one-and-a-half hours, the participants had been incorporated into the piece with movement both appropriate to their levels of technical ability and expressive of their individual explorations of forgiveness. The piece was performed with unified commitment and fluidity, and extremely well received by the congregation, many of whom noted the community participants with particular praise.
The time in Delaware continued with different community members joining the company when the Forgiveness Piece was performed at SAMS.
The first residency indicated that what we planned was indeed working. If community members participated in a workshop earlier in the week then it was no problem to include them in the performance piece. Since Kezia was there as an evaluator for the grant she asked participants for feedback about effectiveness of the workshops. Here are comments from two of the participants.
Participant 1: “I’m usually intellectual, and movement is not. In the workshop, I chose to explore my relationship with my daughter, and I discovered how angry I really was – I didn’t realize until I moved that it was anger I was feeling.”
Participant 2: “JoAnne had us do a movement exercise about sharing a hurt – it really lessened the hurt!”
Our second residency began just a little over a week later at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institution of Religion in New York City. Workshops were very similar and participants included both rabbinic and cantorial students of HUC-JIR and people living in the neighborhood. I am delighted that we have some pictures from these workshops which were held in the very beautiful HUC-JIR chapel, a place we were very familiar with, as that was our home performing space.
Community members in a workshop at HUC-JIR preparing to join the company in performance
Community members in a workshop at HUC-JIR preparing to join the company in performance
The grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation enabled us to fully realize our plans for The Forgiveness Project. We would have three full weeks of rehearsal time to create the new piece on forgiveness. That would be followed by four five-day residencies in four different places. I will be writing several blogs about these residencies. For right now I want to look at the rehearsal period which began in mid-January, 2002.
My thinking after September 11th was first that it was hard to feel that dance, or the arts, had any significance at all. As time passed I began to realize that the arts are extremely important to our healing as individuals and as a community.
The repertory that I once felt was relevant and appropriate no longer felt congruent. As of a result of those feelings I found it exciting and affirming to be doing new and creative work. Not only would I be choreographing the Forgiveness Project piece, but I planned to do two other pieces.
Newman Taylor Baker was composing the music for the Forgiveness Project piece. He would be playing it live for the performances as well as joining us for each of the residencies, available to accompany workshops.
The four dancers who had begun the work the previous year were not returning and so I was auditioning a totally new company for a season that would go from mid-January to mid-May. Here are the bios of the four dancers I selected (as they appeared in the 2002 Newsletter).
Andrea Eisenstein began her dance training in Houston, Texas at the Jewish Community Center. She graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in 1996 and then continued her training at Sam Houston State University receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Fall of 1999. Moving to New York she started her own company, Ironstone Movement Company, and performed with Bridgeman/Packer, Liz Keen and Teri Weksler. She is also currently studying in the professional program at the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation.
Jessica Sehested was born in New York City and grew up in Atlanta, GA and Memphis, TN. She studied dance professionally at Ballet Memphis, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina in Greensboro and Dancespace Center in New York City. After receiving her B.A. in dance from the University of North Carolina she returned to New York City to pursue certification in the Pilates Method. Involved in liturgical dance for over 13 years, Jessica has taught and performed at conferences and gatherings both nationally and internationally, including Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Canada. (2019 Note: Kezia remembers that Jessica had been a student at Wake Forest when Avodah performed there. As part of that short residency, the company had set “Kaddish” on a small group of students, one of whom was Jessica.) Kezia also remembers that during the Forgiveness Project residencies, Jessica often opened a session by masterfully engaging the participants and/or audiences – without any verbal introduction – in a call-and-response rhythmic clapping game, which immediately focused, charmed, energized, and unified the group.
Danielle Smith grew up in Harrisburg, PA where she began her study of dance and performed with the Cumberland Dance Company. She also performed and trained with the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and at SUNY-Purchase, Conservatory of Dance. Among the summer programs she received scholarships for and attended were The Juilliard Summer Intensive, The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.
Kerri Ann Thoma is a native of Chicago. She has been teaching children and adults for the past 13 years in all levels and styles of dance. She has a BFA in dance performance from Northern Illinois University, and aspires to continue her teaching and choreographic endeavors. She looks forward to founding her own dance company in the future, sharing her enthusiasm and love for dance, and becoming an active part of the dance community in New York.
Putting together the right team has always been important to me, and it continues to be important even today with the non-profit film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories of which I am President and co-Director of Films. I have learned to trust my instinct when considering a person to join the film company, as I did when I auditioned dancers. For dancers, having a strong technique was of course very important to me, but equally important was the kind of energy each person brought into the room. It was a wonderful creative adventure to work with these four dancers and I am very proud of the work we did together and the three pieces that we created.
And so rehearsal began and it was a very satisfying creative journey. The dancers enthusiastically risked both their emotional expression and technical skills as we wrestled with the complicated questions related to forgiveness. These four dancers with very different backgrounds quickly became a company. As we rehearsed in Chinatown at the Mulberry St. studio of Chen and Dancers each day from 10 to 4 with a short break for lunch, the piece slowly began to develop, as did two other pieces we were working on. Because of 9/11 and attending quite a few Buddhist workshops over the previous several months my approach was changing and I found this impacting the collaborative way I was working with the dancers. We were designing the Forgiveness Piece so it could be performed either by the four dancers alone, or by the dancers joined by community members who would be incorporated into key parts of the piece. My favorite part was the ending we planned, where community members joined the company members on stage doing a very simple movement of lifting the sternum as their arms traced down their upper body, representing the idea of opening one’s heart to each other and to community.
Danielle Smith leaping, Jessica Sehesed kneeling and holding onto Andrea Eisenstein. Newman is in the corner of the photo, accompanying the piece. Photo by Tom BrazilFrom l to r: Jessica, Andrea, Kerri and Danielle in The Forgiveness Piece close to the end. Photograph by Tom Brazil
I don’t remember how we got the booking at Hartford Seminary or the exact date that we were there. I hunch it was in April of 2001. Hartford Seminary was doing an all-day program on forgiveness and asked us to do a lecture-demonstration as part of the day. The Seminary is a non-denominational graduate school for religious and theological studies. We were honored to be a part of the program which also included someone from South Africa who had firsthand experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which Desmond Tutu had written about in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. The four company members – Stacy, Becca, Julia and Candice – joined me and we put together a lecture-demonstration which might have also had some audience participation. I remember being in a large room with about 50 to 75 people sitting around the edge on all four sides of the room.
The Seminary did excellent publicity all around town with flyers listing the participants, including The Avodah Dance Ensemble. As a result of the publicity, the week after we were in Hartford I got an email from Joe Lea, then a teacher at York Correctional Institution, the only women’s facility in the state of Connecticut. He asked if I would be interested in bringing the program we did at the Seminary to York. Well I was a bit taken aback and surprised by the email, and I had never thought of taking the dance company to a prison. Then I began to think, “Why not?!”
So I emailed Joe back and said that I would consider it but that I had never been in a jail or a prison and wondered if it was the right environment to bring the company into and how it would work. Where would we perform? I had lots of questions. Joe suggested I come up, tour the prison and discuss it in person. I agreed. Of course the next thing I had to do was to fill out forms and get clearance to go into the prison. I did that and then we agreed on a date. I took the train to New Haven and Joe picked me up and we drove 45 more minutes to the prison.
The whole experience was very new to me. Leaving my purse in the car, I took nothing in with me. It was easy being with Joe since he guided me through all the steps and of course everyone knew him. Signing in, going through the metal detectors and then being in a small room with no windows where one door locks first before the door on the other side opens is a very sobering experience.
As we walked through the prison hallway Joe explained that York housed both a minimum and a maximum security side and that the school was located in the maximum side. Women in the minimum side were permitted to attend. While the prison housed up to 1400 women there were only 400 slots in the school. I seem to remember that women under 18 who hadn’t graduated from high school were required to work on a GED. Women over 18 who hadn’t graduated were also welcome to attend. And in fact Joe was going to teach a GED class that afternoon and I was welcome to join him and speak with the women.
Joe showed me around and introduced me to some of the other teachers. He showed me where they usually did programs in the school section. It was in a long hallway which, in the center, had hallways leading off to each side. While this was not ideal I could see how it would work.
When it came time for Joe to meet his class, I joined him and did kind of a Q and A with the students, sharing information about the dance company and the kind of programs that we did. I realized that this was no different than any other teaching situation and in fact found the students more attentive than many other groups that I had worked with. I told Joe that I would indeed be willing to bring the company to York.
Shortly after my visit to York I decided to apply for a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and called Joe to discuss the idea. I suggested that instead of the dance company just coming up for one day, I was thinking of writing the grant for 4 different 5-day residencies where the company worked with each site giving participants an opportunity to dance with the company and even perform with them. What did he think of Avodah coming to York for five days, working with a group of the women for four of the days and on the fifth day the women joining the company in performance? He loved the idea.
So I wrote a grant that involved bringing The Forgiveness Project to four different sites including the prison and mailed it off!
The entrance to York Correctional Institution (from the Connecticut Correctional website)
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.
In 1997 or
1998, sitting with Canon Lloyd Casson in the study at SAMS (The Episcopal
Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, in Wilmington, DE) when the Avodah Dance
Ensemble was performing there, I asked if he had any ideas for a new project
for the company. Canon Casson suggested
I read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future
Without Forgiveness. I don’t
remember much else from our conversation but I do know I went out and bought
the book and indeed, it did lead to a new piece of choreography and teaching
opportunities for Avodah that ended up changing the direction of the dance
company for me.
Before I get
into how just a paragraph in No Future
Without Forgiveness set me in motion, this week’s blog and next week’s blog
share what I would say were the preliminary seeds that enabled this project to
develop so powerfully. This week’s blog is
about an earlier piece on forgiveness, Selichot
Suite, and next week’s blog,
featuring a piece that Kezia Gleckman Hayman wrote for the Avodah Newsletter in
1997, will focus on Canon Casson and the depth of thought he brought to us.
Selichot Suite was commissioned by Temple Beth El in
Jersey City to be included in the Selichot Service that year, 1987, ten years
before my conversation with Canon Casson.
At the time, Murray and I were living in Jersey City and were members of
the congregation. In Jewish Reform congregations,
a Selichot service is held the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, usually
late in the evening. The word “selichot”
means forgiveness and the prayers are the same as those recited on Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement. Rabbi Bruce Block
and Cantor Peter Halpern collaborated with us and we danced to Cantor Halpern’s
chanting of the prayers.
We set four parts of the service to dance, integrating them at the time each prayer was recited in the service. The first one, Hanshamah Lakh (“The Soul is Yours”), used very slow, meditative, rocking and lilting walks entering into the sacred space. The piece was beautifully sung by Cantor Halpern. The choreography of the next piece, Hashivenu,didn’t work very well in the first performance except for an ending circle. The ending circle reminded me of a a piece I had choreographed before. It was the last section in a piece called Shevit Ahim Gam Yahad (“Behold how good it is when brothers dwell together”). This was a piece that I had choreographed in the late 70’s to music of Lucas Foss. It didn’t stay in the repertory long but I loved the ending section and realized it would fit beautifully to Hashivenu. I substituted it for the original choreography for Hashivenu in the next performance and loved seeing it as part of Selicot Suite.
The third
piece was actually danced to a poem that I must have originally found in the Gates
of Forgiveness prayer book. I was so
pleased to have found it online as I was beginning to write this blog. It is by Denise Levertov. The dancers recited it as they danced:
Something
is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads ….
I found this
poem so lovely and so representative of feelings related to the search for
finding one’s spiritual center or home. Rereading it now I still find it very
meaningful.
The last
section of the piece was danced to the prayer V’al kulam. There is a traditional
gesture of striking one’s chest softly with one’s fist, which accompanies the
related Al Chet prayer, and we used
variations of this movement in the piece.
We also used movements of falling to the floor, and a dancer falling
into the arms of others, for this deeply strong forgiveness prayer.
The dance
company had just gone through a major change in dancers and I see in the Newsletter
of September 1987 that there were seven dancers listed as performing that
season. I think several of them were
only with the company a short time. The original choreography was for seven
dancers but by the next time that we performed the piece, it was revised for four
dancers, the usual number of dancers in the company.
Selichot Suite was performed fairly regularly in
Selichot services over the next 10 years.
While several of the performances were in the NY area (Tenafly and
Scarsdale) several bookings were out of town, with one in Bloomfield Hills, MI
and another in Houston, TX. Often a
concert with some of our other repertory preceded the service.
I have only one video of the piece and it is a wonderful one danced beautifully by Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Elizabeth McPherson, Beth Millstein, and Carla Norwood. They are so elegantly ensembled that it was a true example of what I hoped would happen when I named the company Avodah Dance ENSEMBLE. The video is from a program we did at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion on dance as part of liturgy. Rabbi Rick Jacobs spoke and Cantor Benji Ellen Schiller beautifully accompanied the dancers. Here’s a link to watch it.
These three pictures were snapshots taken from the video, and in a photo editing program I chose to do them in black and white.
From the opening of Hashivenu Dancer standing – Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Dancer sitting – Elizabeth McPherson Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller is standing in back in black
From the closing of Hashivenu Dancers from l to r, Kezia, Elizabeth, Carla Norwood and Beth Millstein (with her back to us) and Cantor Schiller.
From V’al kulam Dancers from l to r: Elizabeth, Kezia, Carla, Beth Cantor Schiller is in the back.
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.
Last week I wrote about the company’s performance of Kaddish at a Central Synagogue Sabbath service in May 1985. We dedicated that evening’s performance to Ben Sommers, who had been President of Capezio, and who had died that week. I mentioned in the blog that Ben’s wife, Estelle Sommers, had told me afterwards how meaningful the service was. She also told me that we should get together for lunch after things calmed down for her. About a month or so later we had lunch together, and that began a very special friendship that strongly impacted both the Avodah Dance Ensemble and my life personally.
Estelle, like Ben, was a dancewearspecialist and managed Capezio stores:
Sommers made her career in retail dancewear as a designer, business executive, and owner of various ventures. She revolutionized the field of fitness clothing by introducing a new fabric, Antron-Lycra/Spandex, into her innovative designs for Capezio’s bodywear. (https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sommers-estelle-joan)
At some point either before our lunch or after she suggested that I reach out to and meet Linda Kent. She mentioned that Linda (then with The Paul Taylor Dance Company) was also interested in liturgical dance. I knew who Linda was and had great respect for her outstanding professional career, first with the Alvin Ailey Company from 1968–74, and then as a principal dancer with the Taylor Company from 1975. I had often seen her perform. Estelle sent Linda a similar kind of note, giving us information on how to contact each other.
Linda and I did get in touch, resulting in a personal friendship and professional collaboration. Linda created pieces and helped shape Interfaith programs for Avodah, guest taught at our workshops, and at times performed with the company (including filling in for Kezia when she broke her foot performing Let My People Go). Linda also helped us find Avodah dancers by recommending students she knew from her position at Juilliard (where she had graduated in 1968 and joined the faculty in 1984), and she offered generous artistic and Board advice when Julie Gayer took over as Avodah’s Director. Linda and I continue our long friendship today. (See photo in blog on Juilliard homecoming. I will be writing more blogs later about Linda.) Introducing Linda and me was very typical of Estelle, as she was one of the best networkers I have ever known. In the same article I quoted above, Estelle was described as “one of the most enthusiastic advocates and patrons of dance,” sometimes referred to as the “empress of dance.” And I can affirm that indeed she was, for The Avodah Dance Ensemble.
Within a year of our meeting, Estelle suggested having a gathering at her apartment to introduce Avodah dancers and Board members to some of her influential dance friends. One very important contact we made that evening was Ted Bartwink. Ted served as Trustee and Executive Director of The Harkness Foundation for Dance from 1968–2014. The Harkness Foundation made annual contributions to most of the major dance venues in New York City. Following that evening he came to at least one performance that I remember and for a number of years we received funding for our educational programs from the Harkness Foundation.
At Estelle’s request, I often served on honorary committees for benefit events. I was always thrilled to see my name on a list with so many outstanding dance and theatre people. Murray and I enjoyed attending the events and below is the back of an invitation for a 1991 International Committee for The Dance Library of Israel which honored Stephanie French, the Vice President of Corporate Contributions and Cultural Affairs for the Philip Morris Management Corporation, a major supporter of dance in the New York City area.
Back of invitation for the Dance Library of Israel Event
Earlier that same year Estelle Sommers was honored with the 9thAnnual Dance Notation Bureau Award and I was thrilled to be on that Honorary Committee. I end this blog with this lovely picture of Estelle.
