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.
When we were living in Tallahassee back in the 1980’s with young children, Maggie helped to take care of Julie and Rachel after school while I was busy at The Creative Dance Center. Later she would dance in The Avodah Dance Ensemble. We lost touch with each other for a number of years. Then a few years ago she moved to Santa Fe and we reconnected. She and her husband Bill were helping us as we got ready to leave for Costa Rica. Maggie had bought some of my art and was enthusiastic about both my art and Murray’s photography. Over the years Murray and I had created quite a lot, and after making it available for sale in Santa Fe, we weren’t sure what to do with what was left . In some discussions with Maggie and Bill the idea emerged that she and Bill would take the remaining collection with the instructions “to use it to benefit The Peaceful Project,” a non-profit organization whose mission is meaningful to us.
The Peaceful Project’s mission is “to inspire individuals to foster peaceful relationships based on personal responsibility, collaboration, and leadership.” Here’s a link to their website. (https://www.thepeacefulproject.org)
The original plans were to do a special fundraiser where our art would be available for sale. Instead, it is being done virtually! Here what Maggie has sent out:
You may have received an email asking you to save a date in April for a special fundraiser for The Peaceful Project, The Art of Peace. Instead – with our current world of social distancing – we are going to get the ball rolling right now and do a part of it virtually! This will open up the event to an even wider audience than those who could attend a live event in Santa Fe. Instead of distancing, connect with art!
This all began when friends JoAnne and Murray Tucker generously
gifted me with a delightful collection of JoAnne’s art and Murray’s
photography. Their instructions were “to use it to benefit The
Peaceful Project”. So we are!
It was late fall and I was 14 ½, nearly 15 years old and browsing through Dance Magazine. I had continued to be very focused on dance, having progressed from the creative dance classes of Genevieve Jones to more structured modern dance classes with Jeanne Beaman. Jeanne’s classes were a nice blend of a variety of modern dance techniques, definitely including some Graham technique sprinkled in.
Hungry for lots more technique and intensive training, I was determined to find a program to attend in the summer. Dance Magazine was an excellent source and I came across an ad for Perry-Mansfield’s Camp/Performing Arts Program which said Helen Tamiris would be teaching there for the first three weeks. I looked up Tamiris and found that she was not only a pioneering modern dancer but was also the choreographer of several Broadway shows. Wow, that would be a perfect person to study with! The challenge was that the camp was located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and that was pretty far from Pittsburgh. When I approached my parents they said they would pay for the tuition but I had to pay for my transportation. I found that one could take the train from Pittsburgh, change in Chicago to Denver and then take a trainfrom Denver to Steamboat Springs. I seem to remember that the round trip fare was around $75 (this was 1958). Another friend, JoAnn Fried, was also interested in going. She would focus on drama while I would be a dance major.
Now how to raise the necessary money. Definitely babysitting would be one way. Then in brainstorming with JoAnn Fried we came up with the idea of teaching classes in my basement. We could charge 25 cents per class, and have a culminating creative type recital like Genevieve Jones did. My Mom was very enthusiastic and said we could use the finished room in our basement, which even had its own bathroom. Luckily there wasn’t too much furniture and we could easily move it to the side, giving us plenty of room to dance. Finding students wasn’t hard either, between younger kids in the neighborhood, my sisters’ friends,and daughters of my Mom’s friends. The word quickly got around and we had a nice group of kids to work with.
Picture of JoAnn Fried and myself working with two of our students. I’m holding the arm of my sister Suzanne (of blessed memory). This picture is from a Pittsburgh newspaper, May 1958, which I recently found in a saved file.
Once my parents realized that I would indeed be able to make the transportation costs, they agreed that I could attend camp and allowed me to apply. They made the deposit for the summer and agreed they would pay the rest of the tuition. JoAnn Fried and I called ourselves Jo-Jo Inc. and had fun putting together a production we called Westward Ho as a culminating event. We needed a place to perform and Mom helped us to rent the local grade school auditorium for an evening.
Looking back I realize that my parents’ asking me to raise the transportation costs was an excellent experience that ended up providing me with tools that have helped me through my life. Maybe it is best summed up by saying I learned that I could envision an idea and carry it through. That kind of skill set enabled me to found the Avodah Dance Ensemble and run the company for 30 years and then later in life develop the film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories.
It has also served me in my personal life. Recently it was put into practice as Murray and I moved to our new home in Costa Rica. Having learned from the time I was a teen that it was OK to attend a summer program halfway across the United States, I didn’t find it so overwhelming to be building a new life in Central America. Knowing that from the age of 14 I was able to collaborate with another person and build a program with a culminating event fueled my confidence that I can envision and make change happen. Early I learned that one needs a certain level of determination and problem-solving ability to make one’s vision happen. I am grateful that I was encouraged from a young age to do this.
Our “Let My People Go” cast members of The Avodah Dance Ensemble are like a family. There is a special closeness, especially among those of us who worked directly with Louis. So it felt quite natural that the way I would hear about Louis’s passing this past Tuesday, March 31, was to get a message from Christopher Hemmans, who danced in “Let My People Go” while a student at Juilliard. He shared this notice, and a little later I got a text message from Freddie Moore, sharing the same link.
I am filled with so many warm memories of my collaboration and friendship with Louis and feel so blessed that he was an important part of my dance history. I have written many blogs about the collaboration, from the first blog of Mostly Dance (on June 1, 2018) to a most meaningful one on September 7, 2018 describing the last meeting I had with Louis. Kezia so beautifully wrote of Louis in 1999, and that is a part of the September 7th blog too. I encourage you to check it out along with all the other blogs from June 1 to September 7, 2018.
We are living in such a strange time with so many deaths that I fear that Louis’s passing will go without the proper honoring that he deserves. When Loretta Abbott passed we had a small but very special meeting together at St. Mark’s church hosted by Jeannine Otis. Now it looks like the way we can gather together is via a ZOOM meeting. So I am suggesting to our Avodah family that we do a ZOOM meeting to share our favorite memories of Louis. How about if we plan on doing that after Passover and Easter… on Tuesday, April 21st, the time to be determined by who wants to participate. Please leave a comment on the blog, or email me directly at jotuc122@gmail.com if you would like to participate.
Preface: Why am I continuing to paint and write this blog at a time when the world is in crisis? An honest answer is because it allows some structure to this time when Murray and I aren’t leaving our home. For part of each day there is an element of peacefulness and joy in my life as I reflect back or create anew. Doing something creative engages me and I invite you along on the journey. I also welcome guest blogs… won’t you share how you are structuring your time to find some peacefulness and joy!
Even though it is nearly 60 years since I ventured to Steamboat Springs and attended Perry-Mansfield, the memories are crystal clear in my mind. The blend of the arts, the Colorado landscape, the rustic setting with horses – all evoke smells, sounds and visual images swirling me back in time. I was lucky to attend at a time when Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield were still very active as the founding directors. According to Wikipedia, “Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp was founded by Charlotte and Portia in 1913 and is the oldest continuously operating dance and theater school in America.”
Perry-Mansfield’s website describes:
…two ladies came to the frontier mountain town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado with a mule named “Tango.” Although the town was populated with people primarily engaged in mining and ranching, it was Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield’s vision to explore and teach “natural dance forms” and “artistic expression close to creatures and mountains and out-of-doors.”
Quickly regarded by the locals as the “mad ladies of Steamboat,” Charlotte and Portia founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in this spectacular mountain setting – a 76-acre campus 7,000 feet above sea level and 150 miles northwest of Denver.
From their humble beginnings in a few rustic cabins and some lean years when the “scenery was the salary,” Charlotte and Portia nurtured Perry-Mansfield into one of the premier performing arts schools and camps for children and youth of all ages.
JoAnn Fried and I arrived at the Steamboat train station which is now the Arts Depot. I don’t have any pictures of our arrival but I do have one of our departure.
JoAnn Fried and I at the train station at the end of summer.
The first few days were a whirlwind of activity settling into a rustic cabin (no bathroom) up a fairly steep hill. Down the hill was the bath house with toilets, sinks and showers. I quickly got to know three roommates, one from Denver, another from Wyoming, and I don’t remember where the third was from. I also think our counselor may have slept in our bunk, but I am not sure. I do remember her name was Jo and she was from Minnesota. Auditions and class placement were also an important part of the first few days. I excitedly and boldly auditioned for both Helen Tamiris’s piece that she would be setting on a selected group, along with Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theater production to be staged in the first few weeks of camp.
In an earlier blog I mentioned that I hadn’t prepared anything for an audition and quickly put together favorite phrases from Jeanne Beaman’s class, ending with a fun fall of sliding onto an outstretched arm and then rolling to get up. When I completed my phrase of probably two minutes, Tamiris asked me to please repeat the fall. A day later a list was posted outside the office door listing the selected campers. I remember being thrilled to see my name there. Only two of us under college age were selected, myself and Martha Clarke, a year younger than me.
At that time Perry-Mansfield went from young campers (in a section called The Ranch) all the way to College-age students, each age having its own section at the camp. All ages attended at the same time.
I also auditioned for Midsummer Night’s Dream. I don’t remember the initial audition but I do remember the callback. Three of us were called back to read for Titania. I was stunned. I had never taken an acting class and never thought of myself as anything other than a dancer. I had gone to the initial audition because I wanted to apply myself to as many different opportunities as possible. I didn’t get the part and did get cast in a small role in the production, which I declined, feeling that the rehearsals for Tamaris’s ballet were enough for me. It was exciting to have made the callback and to have had the experience of auditioning for the part of Titania.
Since I was cast in the ballet I was also permitted to take Tamiris’s advanced technique class and Tamiris’s composition class. The composition class was a real eye opener. I don’t have much memory of the technique class other than doing relevés into falls and catching ourselves, in each direction. The composition class left me with two main approaches that in ways are still part of my life. First, that one can start with an ordinary gesture and from that build a whole dance, and second, that one must totally commit to what one is doing!!
The piece Tamiris developed that summer was Dance for Walt Whitman. It was in three sections, each featuring a poem that was read. The middle section was my favorite, inspired by the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” All the women linked arms and moved as one body. My mom surprised me and came out for the performance. As I was packing for the move to Costa Rica I found a letter that she had written my dad. Reading it was very moving to me and I share just a few sentences from it.
JoAnne was an important part of the group. Tamiris added a fall for her… she slid half way down a 3 ft ramp and got up gracefully 10 beats later. The ballet lasted 20 minutes and the effect was magnificent.
I’m getting more convinced that she really has something to express in dance.
Program from Perry-Mansfield’s Evening of Dance
Picture of Tamiris that I took!
Working with Tamiris was a turning point for me in dance. The confirmation of being selected and then the experience of the actual classes, rehearsals and performance cemented my determination to have a career in dance. But the experience at Perry-Mansfield had another major influence on my life. It introduced me to the western Rocky Mountains and confirmed my love of being in nature. During the summer I would hike up from the cabin to the top of the hill, and in a level area do a short dance of thanksgiving for being in such an amazing environment.
Picture taken by one of my friends, of me dancing at the top the hill at Perry-Mansfield.
After the Tamiris ballet experience I had several more weeks of camp and wasn’t particularly impressed with Harriet Anne Gray, who took over for Tamiris. Instead there were two other experiences that stand out in my mind.
On her day off, Ray Faulkner, the head counselor of our Hill unit, invited me to join her on a hike up Fish Creek Falls to a lake at the top. It was breathtaking and awesome and the wildflowers were amazing. Hiking, wildflowers and being in nature have been important parts of life since then.
Perry-Mansfield also offered special western trips. I had signed up for a three-day trip to the Grand Canyon. It actually wasn’t to the Grand Canyon but rather to Dead Horse Point which is in Utah where the Colorado River cuts through it much like it does at the Grand Canyon. That was another awesome nature experience. We camped out and that night was during the August meteor shower and I remember an amazing night counting shooting stars.
Picture of me at Dead Horse Point!
As the 6-week experience ended and we boarded the train to head for home, I found myself filled with a new energy and a clear direction for my life.
I thought I would be going back to Perry-Mansfield in 1959 but instead I ended up auditioning for and getting into a bicentennial summer stock production that ran most of the summer in Pittsburgh. That will be another later blog. Right now I just want to focus on my history with Perry-Mansfield. Even though I didn’t return, I highly recommended the camp to other dancers and in fact my sister attended in 1965 and Murray and I, along with my mother, visited her while she was at camp. At that point Perry-Mansfield was in transition. The founders, Portia Mansfield and Charlotte Perry, had donated the camp to Stephens College, a women’s school in Columbia, Missouri. Harriet Ann Gray, head of the Stephens Dance Department, had been a regular teacher at Perry-Mansfield. The camp had a four-year transition period and would not be under full control of Stephens until 1967.
The camp became a summer campus for Stephens so that when our two daughters were ready for a summer program I was disappointed that it wouldn’t work for them. I pretty much hadn’t thought about Perry-Mansfield again until I saw a very small notice in Dance Magazine in the fall of 1991 that a group of townspeople had formed Friends of Perry-Mansfield, a non-profit organization to save the camp, as Stephens College was planning to sell it to be developed for condos or such. I think I sent in a $25 donation.
In the summer of 1992, Murray and I took a trip to Rocky Mountain Park and were staying in the western part of the park, about a 2-hour drive from Steamboat Springs where Perry-Mansfield is located. I suggested that we take a drive over to Steamboat and see what the town was like, as I had been pretty impressed that a group of townspeople were making an effort to save the camp. We did drive over and liked the energy in the town. It had grown from when I was there, particularly the ski area, but it still had the feel of a small Western town and none of the pretensions of Aspen or Vail. As we were wandering around town we picked up some brochures of condos that were doing summer rentals and even drove by a few of them. And in fact the next summer we rented a condo for a month and had a great time hiking, swimming and being in Steamboat. Strangely, though we drove by the entrance to the camp quite a few times I never wanted to go in to visit. Somehow I didn’t want to ruin the wonderful memories I had.
Murray and I in Rocky Mountain Park in the summer of 1992.
We continued to rent for a month each summer and then in 1996 we bought a condo and began to increase our time to five weeks. Since we were beginning to feel a bigger commitment to Steamboat and what the community had to offer, I decided I would go to Perry-Mansfield’s “Evening of Dance” concert. It was pretty bad and I didn’t go back for a few years until the summer of 1999.
Once again, I was very disappointed in the evening. There were a few lovely dancers but the choreography of the pieces didn’t appeal to me, seeming weak attempts at being avant-garde and not particularly challenging for the dancers. At intermission I was quietly talking to one of the townspeople that I recognized, sharing my disappointment, when someone interrupted the conversation and asked who I was. I shared that I directed a small modern dance company in NYC and that I had been at P-M the summer of 1958 and had loved studying with Tamiris and being in the piece “Dance for Walt Whitman.” At which point this lovely woman began doing one of the movements from the piece. So I immediately asked who she was. “T Ray Faulkner,” came her answer, and I just hugged her, telling her that I remembered her well from the summer I had been there. We laughed and she said we needed to talk and asked if I would be willing to go out to lunch with her.
I agreed of course, we exchanged contact information and set up a time to meet!
Before I go any further, this seems a fitting time to share more about T Ray and her role with Perry-Mansfield, and honor this beautiful woman who contributed so much to so many lives and to the well being of Perry-Mansfield. I think all of us who attended P-M from 1957 to 2015 have wonderful memories of T Ray. T Ray started as a counselor at P-M but soon was asked to assist the two directors, Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield, doing a wide variety of things that the ladies didn’t have time for. She was also a major help in making the transition to ownership by Stephens College.
T Ray [on the right] with another counselor in the summer of 1958. Photo that I took!
T Ray was drawn to modern dance even though she grew up in a religious household where dance was “for whores.” I found this wonderful write up about T Ray on the website of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, honoring alumni, and I share it here as it lets us know about T Ray’s professional life.
In the early 1950s, Thelma Ray Faulkner was told that a college degree could take her anywhere she wanted to go, provided she used it. Forty-five years, four continents and hundreds of souvenirs later, Faulkner proved those words to be true. The 1956 OCW graduate has made her mark in the world of education, earning both her Masters and Ph.D. in dance and related arts from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, in 1965 and 1969, respectively, and has taught on every educational level from kindergarten to post graduate. She taught dance at Indiana University in Bloomington, Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, the University of Oregon in Eugene and Arizona State University in Tempe. During her career in higher education, she did post doctoral work at the Laban Art Movement Center at Goldsmith College, part of the University of London. She was a visiting professor at the University of the Americas in Chalua, Mexico, a guest teacher/artist at two colleges in Brazil and was a judge at Brazil’s major international dance competition. She retired from college teaching in 1982, only to reenter the field of education as an elementary school teacher. For the last six years of her teaching career, she worked with third-fifth grade Native American students on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz. As a Language Arts Specialist, she taught creative writing to children with reading and writing limitations. Still not content to retire at the age of 65, Faulkner elected to work part-time at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her travels have taken her to countries in Europe and South America, the island of Malta, China, Antarctica, Egypt, and around the world.
T Ray, picture found on the Internet, as I remember her around 2010. T-Ray died June 9, 2016.
T Ray and I indeed had lunch together and we talked about how the dance program could be improved and might return to the outstanding status that it once held, of key people in the field of dance having a role at the camp. As we were talking I thought about my good friend Linda Kent, who had danced in Alvin Ailey’s company for seven years upon her graduation from Juilliard and then gone on to perform with Paul Taylor for 14 more years. She was now on the faculty of Juilliard and I knew how diverse and deep her contacts in the dance world were. I also knew that she didn’t have a summer program that she regularly participated in and I thought that maybe she would be interested in heading up the dance program at P-M.
Linda and I had worked together on several projects, she had set two pieces for The Avodah Dance Ensemble, had helped me with casting, been a guest teacher in week-long Avodah summer programs, and on one or two occasions had even danced with the company when a dancer was out sick. I had watched her coach dancers and I thought she was one of the best coaches of dance!! I’ll share more about how Linda Kent and I met and the various projects we did together, in a later blog.
T Ray loved the idea and thought the next steps were to meet with June Lindenmayer, the current director of P-M and Jim Steinberg, the President of the Board of Friends of Perry-Mansfield. She would set up those meetings and in the meantime I was to ask Linda if she would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield.
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.
It has been four months since Murray and I arrived in Costa Rica and closed on our new home. The world has changed a lot during these four months as has our own personal life. I have written before about how the skills I learned directing a dance company have contributed to problem solving day-to-day challenges in life. That certainly has been the case as unexpected events have colored the four months of adjusting to living here. Some have been very mundane and others life threatening. Let’s begin with the mundane.
If you have been following our journey here you know that we came with all of our life belongings in 8 suitcases. While we made some purchases of major furniture such as beds, sofa and a few folding tables and chairs, it is in the kitchen that I have learned to improvise the most. And even more so as COVID 19 limited shopping trips out. It seems I never have enough containers to store leftovers so I am constantly recycling food containers from take-out and jars that contained other food. That’s something I have never done before. Just this week I had made a concoction of chicken, zucchini, tomatoes and onions and had some left over but alas no formal container to put it in. Looking in the cabinet I noticed an empty glass jar from Rego Spaghetti Sauce with Mushrooms and that became a storage container for the chicken dish. Yes I had to carefully spoon it in, but now it is safely in the refrigerator to make a nice lunch in a few days. I have one glass bowl that is great for stirring things in but it was filled with some fresh pineapple so a medium-size pot worked just as well when I needed a bowl to make pancakes. I could go on and on with examples but you get the idea.
About six weeks after our arrival during the summer dry season here, there were a lot of fires around our area. Over a long weekend they kept getting closer and closer. Luckily our community has an emergency WhatsApp where we keep in touch with each other and share where fire is and what houses might be threatened. Quite a few homes very nearby were fighting the fire sometimes with the help of the local fire department and sometimes with a neighbor that had a fire truck that could take the water out of swimming pools to use for the fire. (I’ll call that thinking outside the box… as that was totally new for me and sure makes a lot of sense.) When fire began getting close to our house, coming down the hill, I put that on WhatsApp and asked what to do. Someone responded and said take our hose and start using it. Well I indeed did have a hose nearby but upon looking at it and at Murray and myself and contemplating becoming firefighters at age 75-plus, we shook our heads, packed a few essential things, called our driver (as we do not have a car), and asked him to please pick us up. He was at our house in just few minutes and we left, hoping for the best.
A neighbor sent us this picture of a stranger who did grab a hose and helped to prevent the fire from damaging our property. We are very grateful for his help.
Once we got to the central area of our town of Atenas, Manrique asked where we wanted to go. Murray and I looked at each other and said, “We don’t know, do you have any suggestions?”
Manrique made a few calls. Most nearby places were full with other people fleeing the fire but he did find us a place about 30 minutes away. Off we went, grateful to be safe and with a place to sleep for the night. Manrique checked on our house along with our realtor and we were lucky that the fire never came on our property. This was back in early March. Now the hillside that had burned is filled again with lush grass and scrubs.
When I say finding the pulse, I literally mean finding the pulse. Murray arrived with a new pacemaker. Three months in, the pacemaker began to fail. We didn’t know this at first but knew something was wrong. Following a trip to visit his cardiologist, Murray was in the hospital with a procedure called an ablation and now his pacemaker is back working perfectly with an exact pulse rate that we check regularly back at home. We are very pleased with the health care here. The doctors even make house calls. At this point we are experiencing the private health care, as we don’t have residency yet in which case an Expat can qualify for the public health care. We are lucky to have very good health insurance from Murray’s work in the U.S. government which covers most everything. The doctors we have met are very knowledgeable and up-to-date on latest procedures. Nursing care is very good. And the hospital Murray was in had all private rooms with a sofa that turned into a bed so I was able to stay overnight. There are some things we could complain about but overall we are impressed with the medical experiences Murray has had here. And we will keep checking his pulse.
It is now the rainy season in Costa Rica and I am learning that the Ticos have lots of different names for rain. My favorite is pelo de gato (Spanish for “cat’s hair”) and it is a very fine misty rain. The first time I heard the phrase was one afternoon when a Tico friend/helper was here and asked me if I could see the very fine rain that was coming down. I couldn’t at first, but I could feel the gentle mist on my arms. He playfully began “dancing” in the rain. Smiling, I enjoyed the moment and then I began to remember a “rain dance” that I had been a part of years ago.
In 1959, Pittsburgh was celebrating the bicentennial of its incorporation. Among the different activities planned was a musical play, which would run for about 10 weeks during the summer, telling Pittsburgh’s history. In February I saw an audition notice for dancers and went. Much to my surprise I was called back for a second round of auditions and was selected to be one of the twelve dancers (6 women and 6 men). Rehearsals began June 1 and since I was just sixteen and would be missing most of the last 3 weeks of school, I needed a work permit and permission from the Pittsburgh Board of Education. My parents were supportive, so it was no problem to get the permit and permission. Since I was a fairly good student, teachers were flexible and I managed to attend enough classes to finish the semester. In my scrapbook are the letter and contract I had to sign. They asked for my Social Security number and I filled in that I was applying for it!! I received $30 each week for the 3 rehearsal weeks and $60 each week for the 10 weeks of performances.
The choreographer was Bill Hooks. I remember three major dance sections. The first was a dance representing Native Americans, and this was the dance we began to nickname our “rain dance.” The pageant-like performance was done in a large amphitheater built for the summer at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Known as The Point, it is the beginning of the Ohio River. The city had erected 3 floating stages on barges, with our dressing rooms underneath.
From my scapebook. Picture from one of the main Pittsburgh papers, showing the building of the amphitheater and the barges.
After the performance the 2500-seat amphitheater was taken apart, and now there is a beautiful fountain in its place. Since “The Golden Crucible” was running all summer long, there simply wasn’t enough interest to fill those 2500 seats regularly. Often we were performing for several hundred people with just the first few rows filled. If it drizzled the performance continued but if there was a good solid rain the show would be cancelled at whatever point we were at. So as the summer wore on, we would jokingly call this opening dance the “rain dance,” hoping it would be an early evening.
I think the low audience turnout and the fact we thought of this opening dance as a rain dance gives you an idea that the quality of “The Golden Crucible” left something to be desired. For me it was a great experience with a few sour moments and I am glad I was a part of a cast of 70. While there were several young children in the show, I was the youngest actual cast member and found myself socially very young compared with the other dancers who were in their 20’s. While there were a few college-aged members of the cast and crew, most of the chorus and actors were adults with many theatre credits to their name. Several actors were also recruited from New York. Everyone played multiple roles in the piece.
Following our Native American opening dance, our next big scene was a Polish polka. I don’t remember the context of the dance – it might have been a wedding scene – but it was to honor the large Polish population of Pittsburgh. Our final dance was in a party scene and had a kind of Charleston feel. It required partnering, something I had never done. I was glad that my partner was Walter Raines, a very kind and caring person who went on to become an important part of Dance Theatre of Harlem. Not only was Walter a charter member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, he went on to be the director of their school. A native of Pittsburgh, he was most likely a student of Carnegie-Mellon University during the time of “The Golden Crucible.” I felt safe and comfortable with Walter, something I didn’t feel with many of the other dancers and chorus members.
From my scapebook. In the costume for the polka dance. What a fun headdress I had to wear.
Often, as we made our way to the dressing room in the lower level of the barge, we had to walk across a backstage crossing, where chorus members and actors hung out. We women dancers were targets for not-so-nice remarks and pinches and “wandering hands.” Some of the other dancers thought this was fun and flirted. I didn’t like it and just wanted to get to the dressing room as quickly as I could. That summer was my first taste of dancers being thought of as “easy women.” A publicity shot in the newspaper (showing the dancers hanging onto a train) printed our names, and then I had rather obnoxious phone calls at our house. Some of the comments that were made to me on the phone were sexual references I didn’t understand and my mother had to explain what they meant and how inappropriate they were for a 16-year-old. Calls soon were screened for me, which I appreciated.
Another memory I have from that summer is of a high school friend coming to see the performance on his day off from his job as a summer counselor at a nearby sleepaway camp. He was so sweet and expressed how fond he was of me and how he loved seeing me dance. Then he wanted me to take his high school ring and be his girlfriend. I think I was totally surprised and shocked and hopefully told him in as nice a way as I could that while I liked him I was not ready to be anyone’s girlfriend. I am not sure he understood, and he had a hard time looking at me after that.
I also got cast as an understudy to one of the actresses, which meant I had to do a short love scene with a mature actor. I learned how to do a theatre kiss where we really didn’t kiss. We would rehearse understudy scenes one night a week. I never got to perform it but it was another experience to add to the summer of seeing dance and theatre in a new professional light. This wasn’t exactly summer stock but it did give me the experience of performing six nights a week and working with seasoned professionals. I liked it and continued to feel very devoted to developing my dance career. And what a surprise to have these memories come flooding back to me after acknowledging a gentle rain, “pelo de gato,” here in Costa Rica.
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.
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!
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