Uncategorized – Mostly Dance

Episode 33: The Universal Dancer Podcast – I’m Interviewed by Leslie Zehr

JoAnne Tucker / December 6, 2023December 6, 2023 / Avodah's Early History, Childhood, Dance in Film, Dance Programs in Prison, Movement Workshops, Personal Life, Uncategorized

Leslie Zehr is a wonderful host and interviewer, and even though this was my first podcast, she immediately put me at ease. We had a delightful, fun conversation where I was able to share my journey from dancing as a toddler while my grandmother played the piano, through my dance education at the Graham Studio and The Juilliard School, to the creation of the Avodah Dance Ensemble. Her questions enabled me to discuss the transformative power of dance, as we explored how dance is a method of empowerment and healing in women’s correctional institutions, and how it led to filmmaking and in particular the film Through the Door: Movement and Meditation as Part of Healing with domestic violence survivors.

Each month since January 31, 2021, Leslie has produced a different Podcast, all designed to inspire “a community of like-minded souls seeking to understand the cosmic dance of co-creation through the sacred arts.” She wants to expand minds, ignite creativity and explore something new and something old.

Leslie is a sacred arts teacher, workshop leader, mentor and author of two books, The Alchemy of Dance and The Al-chemia Remedies. While she was born in Peru and educated in the United States, she lives in Egypt, where for more than 30 years she has supported women “to reconnect to the Divine Feminine within through the mysteries of ancient Egypt.”

The Podcast series covers a range of subjects. Some examples are: Let Your Yoga Dance; Sacred Self Care Chakradance; A Roundtable Discussion of the Importance of Movement and Dance in Children’s Lives; and Japanese Butoh.

While the Podcast is not done live, Leslie does no editing, so I knew that I had to be as clear and focused as I could be. When the interview was over, we had a few minutes to check in about how it went. I expressed my gratitude to Leslie for her warmth, and we both agreed we had fun sharing together. The interview is available to listen to as a podcast and to watch on YouTube.

Link to Podcast Platforms:

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leslie-zehr/episodes/JoAnne-Tucker–Author-of-Torah-in-Motion-Creating-Dance-Midrash-and-the-Mostly-Dance-Blog-e2cdonl

Link to YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/7KP8B3mATwU

Screenshot from YouTube. I like this moment because you can see we are both having fun!

Dance and Poetry: An Elegy for Helen Tamiris

JoAnne Tucker / October 27, 2022 / Dance History, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life, Poetry, Uncategorized

Recently I signed up for an Introduction to Poetry class. Several things motivated me. We had begun a writer’s group where I live, and I thought I would like to share poems. I have loved poetry since I was a teenager, and I have choreographed many pieces to poems.

In our very first class the teacher introduced us to the form of elegy and used Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! as an example. After going over the format and purpose of the elegy, he asked us to write one. As I reread O Captain! My Captain! I began reflecting on the experience of being in Helen Tamiris’s Dance for Walt Whitman at Perry-Mansfield during the summer of 1958. That was a defining experience in helping me realize that I wanted a career in dance, and it had provided an excellent example of how poetry can inspire a piece of choreography.

When I look back over my career as a choreographer, I realize how often I turned to poetry as the stimulus for movement. That idea had been introduced to me by Helen Tamiris, so it was no surprise that I decided to do my elegy for her and to use the structure and rhyming pattern of O Captain! My Captain! as my model.

Elegy for Helen Tamiris

By JoAnne Tucker

A frayed program, carefully saved, recalls long ago days

There is still time to remember and sing your praise

You stood, arms outstretched, framed by aspen gently swaying

Directions given, challenges accepted, our energy outpouring,

Alas, a google search

Your name barely marked

Too many years have passed

Still a desire remains in my heart.

Those of us, hold tightly onto each other,

Make a chain, rock endlessly, calling the primal mother

We cannot forget, your teaching remains within us living

We have gone forth, as a curious child goes exploring.

Tamiris, O Tamiris

Fifty years since you departed

Your legacy begins to fade

Memories linger in my heart.

A legacy of movement and poetry continues still,

New writers and dancers passionate with strong will.

So this old crone will continue to sing your praise

Encourage, mentor and celebrate all my days

To dance to the spoken verse

To follow your pioneer art

Words carefully written

Danced from the heart

Helen Tamiris at Perry-Mansfield, July 1958. Photo taken by JoAnne Tucker.

The first set of poems I choreographed was for a school program in Pittsburgh shortly after leaving Juilliard. The dancers were six high school students, and the program toured several elementary schools and won a Carnegie Award. Later I would continue to turn to poetry with the Avodah Dance Ensemble, and during my thirty years as Artist Director of that company, I created dances to a variety of different poems. The ones that stand out the most in my memory are:

I Never Saw Another Butterfly, using poems written by children in the Terezin Concentration Camp
Shema, incorporating poetry of Italian Holocaust survivor Primo Levi
Let My People Go, based on James Weldon Johnson’s poem of the same title
In the Garden, drawn from several poems in the collection Wine, Women and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life, translated by Raymond Scheindlin
Selichot Suite, a section of which uses Denise Levertov’s poem The Thread

I end by welcoming dancers and choreographers to share what poems they have enjoyed dancing to or creating movement for. If you haven’t used poetry and movement together, I strongly encourage you to try it!

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Avodah Dance Ensemble’s First International Tour

JoAnne Tucker / February 1, 2021February 18, 2021 / Dances on Biblical Women, Touring, Uncategorized

While not a very long flight or very far, our first international tour was to Toronto, Canada in October of 1995. I didn’t remember much about it until I mentioned to Kezia that I was planning to do a blog about the tour. She happened to be sorting through lots of old files and found a program from the performance, which she scanned and sent to me. (She also found a photo related to another recent blog, which we’ve included at the end here.) We then emailed about a fun shopping trip we had one afternoon during a break and she said she still had the beautiful barrette she had bought (yes, photo at end of blog). Having the program brought back all kinds of memories for me both about the repertory we did, the cantor we performed with, the company members on the tour and the unique congregation where we performed.

While I am most grateful for Kezia’s editing skills, what makes working on this blog all the better is the fact that she has been a part of so many of the things I am writing about. She was a member of the company for 13 years, and then an Avodah board member, and we have a 34-year friendship. She also saves things. After many years and a series of moves, I no longer have programs and now have only scanned material from scrapbooks and personal files. It is wonderful to read an email or hear in a Zoom or phone call that she has a program or a photo of something I am planning to write about. So a deep bow of gratitude to Kezia for her friendship, her memory and her wonderful editing skills.

Now let me share about this first international tour. First of all since it was prior to 9/11 and before passports were needed for travel to Canada, all we needed was appropriate ID such as a driver’s license. Traveling and going through Customs were very easy for us. The four dancers (Kezia, Beth Millstein Wish, Elizabeth McPherson and Carla Armstrong) worked well together and it was a fun and easy group to travel with. Our booking was at Holy Blossom Temple as part of the 1995-96 “Our Musical Heritage” Series. The booking had been arranged by Cantor Benjamin Maissner and he would be joining us in accompanying two of the pieces.

Holy Blossom Temple is the oldest synagogue in Toronto, dating back to 1856. It is also a very large congregation with 6,500 members. It is affiliated with the Union of Reform Judaism, which serves congregations in Canada and the United States. I don’t remember exactly how we got the booking except that Cantor Maissner might have been at a Cantorial Conference we performed at or heard about us from one of his colleagues. For us it was exciting to be collaborating with the Cantor in the opening piece Hallelu (music composed by Cantor Benji Ellen Schiller) and also in Binding which is a retelling of the Akedah – the biblical story where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. Our usual pattern was to send the music to the cantor several weeks beforehand and then spend an hour or so rehearsing — coordinating cues and tempos. Usually it went very well, as it did with Cantor Maissner. Then we would focus on staging the other four pieces, as concerts generally consisted of six pieces.

Other works in the program included: Shema, a Holocaust piece set to poems by Primo Levi; Kaddish, set to the first 8 minutes of Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony; Noshing, a comic piece about eating and gossiping; and Braided Journey, choreographed by Lynne Wimmer and based on the Ruth and Naomi story. Since I have written in previous blogs about all the other repertory except Hallelu and Braided Journey, let me share with you a little about these two pieces.

Hallelu was inspired by Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller’s beautiful setting of Psalm 150 (“Praise God . . . with the timbrel and dance.”) Our dance piece opens with a dancer circling the space and then calling out “Tekiah” — the first call for the blowing of the Shofar (ram’s horn) on the Jewish high holidays. Other dancers join her, calling out more Shofar calls accompanied by movement, leading into the opening section of the music. A rhythmic section follows in which the floor becomes a virtual drum for patterns beat by the dancers’ feet, leading into the final section of joyful movement to Schiller’s inspiring music. Cantor Schiller is Professor of Cantorial Art at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, and I knew her from our time as dance company in residence at the college. It was a delight to be able to choreograph a company piece to her work. In addition to her role at HUC-JIR she is Cantor at Congregation Bet Am Shalom in Westchester where her husband Rabbi Lester Bronstein is the Rabbi.

From *Hallelu*
l to r: Beth, Elizabeth and Kezia

Braided Journey, choreographed by Lynne Wimmer, tells the story of Naomi and Ruth and is divided into three sections. Section I is titled “Return unto thy people” (Naomi to Ruth). Section II is “Entreat me not to leave thee” (Ruth to Naomi), and Section III is “Thy People will be my people.” The piece is set to music by The Bulgarian Women’s Choir. Lynne and I have known each other for years and it is always an honor when I can collaborate with her. Lynne has a long dance history, including joining Utah Repertory Company full-time immediately after graduating from Juilliard. She has had her own company and been a professor of dance at University of South Florida. The tour to Toronto was shortly after Braided Journey joined Avodah’s repertory, and in this program it was performed by Elizabeth and Carla.

While this was not my first trip to Canada, as Murray and I had gone to the Canadian Rockies, it was my first trip to Toronto, as I believe it was for the four dancers. We were glad to have a leisurely afternoon to wander through one of the neighborhoods which reminded me of the East Village in NYC. Kezia and I hung out together and had great fun going in and out of shops, including one that kind of reminded me of a vampire type funky store and actually had some unique velvet hairpieces, which we both bought. Amazingly Kezia still has hers!!

Kezia’s barrette that she bought on tour in Toronto in 1995 and still wears!

In the Blog published on January 4, 2021, “Touring in the United States, Part I” I wrote about the challenging adjustments the dancers had to make in each unique performance space, particularly on temple bemas. Kezia kept this picture of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (Short Hills, NJ). She had also made a note that when performing the piece Gimmel there (choreography with a lot of wave-like movement, including rolling on the ground), the dancers rolled down the stairs!

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Another Holocaust Piece, Based on the Writings of Primo Levi

JoAnne Tucker / June 28, 2019July 5, 2019 / Holocaust Repertory, New York Company, Uncategorized

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.

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.

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A Comedy Tonight

JoAnne Tucker / February 22, 2019March 1, 2019 / Uncategorized

As Avodah began to get more concert bookings I thought it would be fun to add some humor to our very serious repertory based on liturgy, biblical stories and Holocaust poetry. So in the spring of 1980 I added two new pieces inspired by weddings. One of those pieces, Three Brides and a Cow, inspired by French Painter Marc Chagall, was short-lived in the repertory. Both the music by Irving Fleet and my choreography were not up to their usual standards. The costumes, however, created by Tallahassee artist Stuart Riodan, were outstanding.

The second piece, Mother of the Bride, did work and stayed in the repertory for quite a few years. Our daughter Julie had had her Bat Mitzvah recently and that had influenced the piece as I saw how much planning can go into an event and how easy it could be to forget about the significance of the moment and in a frenzy just get caught up in all the details. So in Mother of the Bride I took things to the extreme, focusing on a mother taking on an extremely strong role.

A review in 1983 in the Montgomery, AL paper describes it wonderfully:

Mother of the Bride was a very funny piece with Ms. Mindlin as the harried mother trying to organize her daughter’s wedding. The other characters were Ms Behrendt as the bewildered bride standing in roller skates as activity swirled around her and Ms. Rodin as a bridesmaid. The mother literally rolled the bride off stage to her wedding after she had been dressed in her finery and a bouquet stuffed in her hands.

(Although the bride is on roller skates, she is stuck in one spot throughout the whole piece, unable to move independently, because her mother controls all the action.) The music was Purcell and the mother’s costume actually came from my own closet. A long party dress I had worn was altered to fit the various dancers who played the part of the mother! (Kezia, who often played the part of the mother, notes that when she was married and the organist asked if she wanted the familiar Purcell piece played at the ceremony, she shouted, “NO” and then had to explain her unusually strong reaction.)

A year later I added a piece I called Noshing to fun Klezmer music. It was all about eating and talking. There are quite a few different definitions for the Yiddish word to nosh. They range from eating food enthusiastically or greedily to having a snack between meals. A trio for three dancers, the piece opens with two dancers greeting each other in a rather catty way… looking each other up and down, with one dancer even checking the label in the other dancer’s dress. A third dancer joins them. Soon they are at a buffet table filling their plates with food. One dancer is attempting to resist the temptation of filling her plate with too much food. Three chairs are upstage center. The dancers soon sit down and then alternate between pantomiming eating and talking. These movements usually amuse the audience quite a bit.As Noshing continues we see two dancers busily having a “conversation” in dance highlighted by fancy footwork and then one dancer does a solo conveying a very gossipy tale. It’s a fun piece filled with more balletic steps than usual for me. I found two videos in my Avodah collection and it was great fun to watch a performance in Omaha, NE and another outdoor one in Great Neck, NY – two different casts both successfully and playfully

(l to r) Nancy and Muriel Melacon in the chatty duet in *Noshing.* Photo by Jim Williams.
My apologies to Nancy – and Anita, below – as I can’t remember their last names and don’t seem to have any reviews or programs which help me.

(l to r) Nancy and Anita in *Noshing*. Photo by Jim Williams.

In the fall of 1982, Rick Jacobs suggested doing a piece honoring three Jewish comedians: Woody Allen, Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce. The choreography was mainly Rick’s, with some suggestions from me. The piece received a preview performance on our January tour to Alabama. In the Woody Allen section, a beautiful female dancer seated in a chair downstage right totally ignores his attempts to flirt. The dancer leaves and Rick pretends the chair becomes the “beautiful lady” and dances with the chair. As the section ends he is on the floor as the dancer returns and for the first time takes notice of him – on the floor, much to his dismay.

Abandoning a sweater and putting on a jacket and nose glasses Rick becomes Groucho. I particularly enjoyed this section with his bold Groucho strides. Soon a dancer portraying Mrs. Dumont enters. They dance together in a sarcastic way and at the end Rick carries her off much like a sack over his shoulder.

Luckily I had a video of these two sections done in a performance at a JCC in New Jersey which helped to refresh my memory. Alas I don’t have any video of the Lenny Bruce section and I don’t remember it performed very often.

With the rest of the repertory being so serious these three comedies added a new dimension and gave the audience a chance to laugh.

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Things you Learn from Touring

JoAnne Tucker / February 15, 2019February 15, 2019 / Uncategorized

This evening as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, Murray said, “Oh by the way the back door of our Rav SUV isn’t closing.” OK, I thought, let me take a look at it.

So… I opened the back door which looked normal except it wasn’t closing tightly and I immediately saw that the latch wasn’t hanging right. Since it was evening and dark… I got out my iPhone, put on the flashlight and saw that one screw had come out of the latch and so it was hanging downward. Murray joined me and we soon found the missing screw. Murray got a screwdriver and in just a few minutes it was back to working perfectly.

Now Murray was a bit surprised, because he’d figured he would have to take it into a repair shop. While I usually am not solving car problems, this was a no brainer… and Murray was very happy that I had just saved us $85 or more. All I could think was that one benefit of touring and running a dance company is that you learn to quickly problem solve.

Tonight I am remembering those moments of touring which required quick problem solving, and the last-minute challenges of directing a dance company. One example I have already shared — the snow storm that left two dancers performing “Let My People Go” when there should have been a full company of six. In a few hours that day we figured out how to make something work for the evening performance. (See “Let My People Go Meets Let it Snow”.)

Last minute casting changes sometimes happened. Like the time that Beth Millstein got the chicken pox two days before we were due to perform in Boston. Well… I called my good friend Linda Kent and asked if she could recommend one of her students or past students from Juilliard who might fill in and she said SHE was available. Wow that was pretty awesome to have a former member of Alvin Ailey Company and Paul Taylor Company subbing for us.

And then there was the time in the airport when one of the dancers hadn’t arrived at our meeting place and it was getting very close to the time that the plane was due to take off. Hmmm…. Not wanting to have the rest of us miss the flight, I left her ticket with a ticket agent and we all boarded the plane. Just as they were about to close the door, the dancer appeared to a round of applause from us and those sitting near us.

When performing in services, we always worked to get furniture moved from the bema so the dancers could have as much space as possible to move. One day when one rabbi was determinedly saying that a podium couldn’t be moved, Rick and I gently tilted it back, disconnected the wires and moved it over to the side, giving the dancers their needed space. The rabbi wrote a lovely review back to the Jewish Welfare Lecture Bureau that had booked us, saying that “JoAnne Tucker was very pleasant to work with in spite of being persistent.”

At one Friday Sabbath service in Connecticut, the rabbi was certain the best place for us to perform was in an area in the back of the sanctuary and everyone could just look over his or her shoulders to see us. Now that was by far the oddest suggestion I had ever heard and there was no way I could agree to that. For several hours we went back and forth… meanwhile I simply told the dancers to work on their spacing on the bema. Finally I quoted scripture – Exodus 40:30-32 about levels of sacred space and remembered something we had written in Torah in Motion. I convinced him that it would be all right for the dancers to be on the bema because they would not be going up to the ark where the Torah scrolls were kept. That space was just for him! Success! We danced on the bema!

So many times, I entered a space in the early afternoon and had to make decisions of where I would run the sound, set it up, and make sure it worked. How many times dancers had to quickly adapt to a new space, making it their own and performing brilliantly. And then when we were in a theatre, I had to quickly learn the lighting system. Larger companies carried tech people. We didn’t. While I rarely ran the lights, I had to learn how to communicate with the light person and sometimes a sound person to be able to call the cues. Then I would call my own cue and walk into the spotlight to narrate between pieces.

So… what I learned from running a dance company was to be flexible. Problems can be solved by stopping, taking in the situation, and then seeing the possible solutions. This training has served me very well in life and fixing our car door tonight was a small example.

Murray and I, happy that the car is repaired.

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