Avodah Dance Ensemble - Mostly Dance

Surprise Awakening!!

JoAnne Tucker / June 1, 2018November 20, 2018 / "Let My People Go"

This January, 2018, I had one of those milestone birthdays. Even writing this finds me in a state of disbelief. I have lots of energy, am eagerly starting new projects and don’t feel or view myself as a “senior” in “retirement.” This past November I also had my first health scare, which required a minor outpatient procedure under anesthesia. Both having a milestone birthday and facing the health scare have reminded me not to put off things that have been long on my mind. My life, particularly with dance as its thread, has been very rich and rewarding, shared with many wonderful collaborators. In the back of my mind has been the intention to find a way to share that story.

To deal with the health scare, by January I had found an excellent doctor and hospital, and the procedure had been scheduled for February. But I wouldn’t have any contact with the anesthesiologist until just before the procedure. The thing that scared me most was being “put under.” It had been over 40 years since I’d had anesthesia, and I remembered being groggy afterwards, for quite a few days.

When I shared my wish not to be overly drugged, the physician suggested I ask the anesthesiologist not to give me a narcotic. I did so on the phone when the anesthesiologist contacted me the night before the procedure, but I did not get any agreement. The next morning I repeated my request, again with no agreement – only the response that he wanted to make sure I didn’t experience much pain. I replied that if I woke up to pain I would request something. Still no agreement. Finally I said, “Look, I come from a dance background, and we are used to dealing with pain all the time.”

“What kind of dance did you do?” he asked.

“Mainly Graham technique, and I directed and was the main choreographer for a dance company for 30-plus years,” I replied.

“My wife was a dancer . . . mainly ballet, and OK no narcotics.”

When I woke up, I was bright eyed and in almost no pain. Yeah! I had not had any narcotics and the procedure had been short and successful. I asked for my bed to be put into an upright sitting position. A few minutes later the anesthesiologist came bounding in with a big smile on his face, holding his IPad. “I found you,” he said cheerfully, as he showed me a picture of myself with Louis Johnson, a prominent choreographer I had collaborated with. Before I could respond, he was gone.

Later I learned that he had also shown the picture to my husband, along with a picture of his wife on pointe.

For the next two days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the picture of Louis and me. First, where did it come from? That answer I easily found, when I googled myself: “JoAnne Tucker choreographer.” What came up was the history section of The Avodah Dance Ensemble, the company I founded and directed for its first 30-plus years. There, close to the top of the page, was the picture of Louis and me. As I skimmed through the history I realized how incomplete and brief it was, not really telling the story. During the next few days I found myself wanting to share more. To share how dance has been a thread throughout my life – from the time I began loving to dance to my grandmother’s piano playing in the large living room in her house, to today when I have just completed a film on movement and meditation for domestic violence survivors. There are so many rich stories in Avodah’s history, from challenges to get furniture moved so we could dance on the bimah, to unique collaborations with poets, visual artists and other choreographers.

Part of what I have loved about my life in dance is that it has always been about collaborating. Simply writing a book won’t work for me. What I want to do instead is write a blog about “mostly dance” in my life and encourage others to fill in the blanks, via comments or even a guest blog, sharing their thoughts/reflections of similar shared experiences either with me or with others.

While I enjoy writing, I am aware that I need an editor. The person who immediately came to mind was Kezia Gleckman Hayman. Kezia is a good friend and danced with Avodah for 13 years, during which she also edited and wrote for the Avodah Newsletter. We shared many experiences, and she knows the majority of repertory I plan to write about. I am thrilled that she has agreed to join this journey.

Here’s what is planned. We will post a blog once a week. We will welcome your comments and I will regularly reply and acknowledge them. If you would like to write a guest blog, email me and we will explore the possibility.

I will not be blogging material in chronological order but rather covering what interests me most at the time. To start with, I am going to be writing about my collaboration with Louis Johnson, since the picture of Louis and me was the inspiration for “Mostly Dance.” Here’s the picture!

Photo by Tom Scott

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A Chain of Meetings Leads to “Let My People Go”

JoAnne Tucker / June 8, 2018November 20, 2018 / "Let My People Go"

One of the things I am most grateful for is the outstanding Board of The Avodah Dance Ensemble during the time I was Artistic Director. The members were incredibly supportive. Even though they all had very busy lives, and were prominent leaders in their fields, they made themselves available to answer questions and provide advice when asked.

In the spring of 1988, I wanted to take Avodah in a new direction particularly focused on building bridges and understanding between communities, rather than continuing to focus on only the liturgy and text of the Jewish community. I decided to ask some of the Board members for ideas. Living in Westfield, NJ and being a member of Temple Emanu-El’s community, I went to Avodah Board member and Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbi, Charles Kroloff.

Sitting in his office one afternoon, we began brainstorming together. Chuck suggested that maybe there was something Avodah could do to build better relationships with the Black community. He pointed out that feelings were still strained between the two communities due to Jesse Jackson’s remark in 1984 referring to Jews as “Hymie” and New York City as “Hymie-town” when Jackson had made a bid for the Democratic nomination for President. Chuck pointed out that Temple Emanu-El and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Plainfield, a predominately Black congregation, had pursued joint activities for several years. They particularly focused on home improvement and rehabilitation for the Black community in Plainfield. An evening program that focused on dance relevant to both the Black and Jewish community would be a natural project/fundraiser for the two congregations.

So the seed was planted, but I had no idea what the dance project would look like or with whom I would collaborate. When I mentioned the idea to Avodah Board President Stephen Bayer, he suggested I contact Larry Rubin of the Jewish Committee Relations Advisory Council and see if he had any ideas. Larry and I lunched together and discovered that we had both been on the faculty of Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia) during its first two years (1968–1970) when it was struggling to define itself. We had fun remembering the faculty meetings that occasionally became power struggles for points of view and were reported regularly in the two Washington newspapers. I mentioned I was looking for a project that would be of interest to both the Black and Jewish communities and that I hoped to collaborate with a Black choreographer, although I wasn’t sure who that would be.

He suggested that I look at some of the poetry of James Weldon Johnson and mentioned in particular that his family often included Johnson’s poem “Let My People Go” from God’s Trombones as part of their Passover seder. I was vaguely aware of James Weldon Johnson, knowing he was a famous poet (1871-1938) and had also written a poem “The Creation” that Geoffrey Holder had choreographed for his wife Carmen de Lavallade. I thanked him for the suggestion and soon after our lunch I found a copy of Johnson’s God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, which included both “The Creation” and “Let My People Go.” Yes . . . I could see that “Let My People Go” could make an ideal project for Avodah. Now to find a collaborator.

Usually when I had the opportunity to collaborate I strived to find someone I could learn from as well as enjoy working with. Thinking of prominent Black choreographers making a difference, I thought of Louis Johnson.

Louis has an amazing list of credits, including an early performance in Jerome Robbins’ Ballade after studying at the School of American Ballet on scholarship. In the 50’s when ballet opportunities were scarce for Black dancers, he found his way to Broadway, appearing in Damn Yankees. Soon he was choreographing for Broadway and movies. In 1970 he choreographed and received a Tony nomination for the show Purlie. In 1978 he choreographed the movie The Wiz. His pieces have been in the repertories of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and Dance Theatre of Harlem, to name a few. In 1986 he was appointed head of dance at Henry Street Settlement and would continue there until 2003.

Avodah also had a history with Henry Street Settlement, having performed there in the fall of 1979 for three weekends. While Henry Street had begun in 1893 focused on a wide range of social services, the arts had played an important role from at least 1915, when early modern dancers such as Martha Graham and later Agnes de Mille shared their choreography in the small theatre playhouse. Avodah’s performances were part of the American Jewish Theater’s program, but more about that in a later blog.

Hmm . . . I wondered if any of my contacts from nearly 10 years earlier could introduce me to Louis. Barbara Tate, the Director of the Henry Street’s Arts for Living Center (now called the Abrons Art Center) had been there in 1979 when we performed, and I remembered meeting her. She was still there and in fact was playing an increasingly larger role in the program, with her title changing from Administrative Director to Director. Before she died in 2002, the summer camp program was renamed the Barbara L. Tate Summer Arts Camp, reflecting “Ms. Tate’s lifelong commitment to bringing the arts to the community, to encouraging new talent, and providing employment for artists” (Fall 2002, News from Henry Street Settlement).

A phone call to Barbara Tate and then a visit soon after – and Louis and I were on our way out to lunch.

While I can’t remember exactly where we ate on the lower East Side, I can remember so clearly the smile on Louis’s face and sparkle in his eye when he proclaimed that the James Weldon Johnson poem “Let My People Go” would be an ideal thing for collaboration. He could hear the traditional chanting of Biblical text juxtaposed with the singing of the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” And thus was born our collaboration and the seed of “Let My People Go.”

Resource: God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by James Weldon Johnson; drawings by Aaron Douglas; lettering by C.B. Falls. Penguin Books. (First published in the U.S. by Viking Press 1927. Published in Penguin Books 1976 and reprinted 1978, 1980.)

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Funding and Casting “Let My People Go”

JoAnne Tucker / June 15, 2018November 20, 2018 / "Let My People Go"

As Louis and I finished lunch, we had agreed that we would be setting James Weldon Johnson’s poem with a combined company: two dancers and a drummer from Louis’s company and two dancers and a cantor from the Avodah Dance Ensemble. I would work on funding. I would have plenty of time since it was May, and we were not planning to tour the piece until the winter of 1989, mainly for Black History Month. I suggested that what would make it easiest would be if neither of us took a fee up front but rather if we were paid royalties from booking fees. Thankfully Louis said “YES!!”

I left feeling excited knowing that this project was going to happen. Now all I needed to do was get enough bookings with a deposit to cover the performers’ rehearsal pay. While the Avodah Dance Ensemble didn’t have rehearsal pay during the first few years, once I relocated to the New York area in 1984 I always made it a practice to pay dancers for both rehearsals and performances even if it was just a small amount.

Once home, I began to create information to send to potential bookers for “Let My People Go.” The Board and I had decided that what would make this project unique, fulfilling our mission of bringing communities together, was that two communities needed to sponsor the program jointly, preferably representing both the Jewish and Black communities. A mailing was designed, phone calls made, and letters of agreement were signed, with 12 different performances planned! While a few performances would be in the New York area, tours were booked to Ohio, Massachusetts, and Virginia. We were pleased that some sites planned workshops, or were including a Question and Answer session as part of the program. In one case we would be doing not only a public performance, but also a performance for a high school. All rehearsal costs would be covered from the deposit fees from the bookings.

It was exciting to see how communities were working together to plan the event. I’ll go into more detail about that in later blogs when I describe some of the unique events of touring.

Next job was to cast the Avodah part of the project. Since there were four regular dancers (Beth Bardin, Kezia Gleckman, Susan Freeman Graubart, and Deborah Hanna) in the ensemble, and I totally adored and valued each of them, I gave much thought to which dancers to select for “Let My People Go.” Since Susan was in rabbinic school at the time, recently married, and serving a congregation as Student Rabbi, I decided this would not be the ideal project for her at this time. Beth Bardin was quite a lovely dancer but didn’t have as much experience with Avodah’s dramatic repertory as Kezia and Deborah had. So Kezia and Deborah (who were also the senior members of the company) would be the two Avodah dancers to help develop “Let My People Go” and to perform in it the first year.

Kezia and Deborah practicing the Avodah piece “M’Chamocha” outdoors, summer 1988

(Photo: JoAnne Tucker)

Let me introduce you to them. The most fun way to do that is to share Kezia’s descriptions from the November 1988 Avodah Dance Ensemble Newsletter. Kezia, as she explained, had recently “been designated editor of the Avodah Newsletter, by virtue of her well-known inability to refrain from commenting on everything she sees.”

Kezia Gleckman. Loves to point out that Avodah is exactly the kind of sane, intelligent, teamworking, joyful company she was repeatedly told she would never find. Originally from Poughkeepsie, NY, counts as her greatest fortune that her parents love dance and have never said, “Why don’t you look for a real job instead?” The most balletically trained of the modern-minded company, confesses that she cries when she hears “Swan Lake” on the radio and suffers from visions of Sugar Plums. Certified and hoping to teach high school English someday, in the meantime reads children’s books to the company on tour and composes detailed limericks for nearly any occasion. Detests yogurt (dancer’s staple); loves dessert for breakfast. Holds a Phi Beta Kappa English B.A. from Vassar College and a fine arts degree in Dance from Adelphi University. Looked to by the company to discern counts or set timing in nearly any piece of music, her sense of direction is nearly hopeless, and she has been known to find herself momentarily lost in a building.

Deborah Hanna. Only quiet if meditating. Our wandering explorer; invokes perennial company sigh, “Where’s Deborah?” Perhaps the company’s most natural diplomat, possesses an inimitable ability to wave at truck drivers and gain us entry to any highway lane. Grinning eyes, mischievous mind, radiant smile. Holds B.A. in Liberal Studies from Stetson University in Florida and exaggerates her Southern accent when hospitably convenient. Trained by the Martha Graham School, performed with Pearl Lang and recently completed her second season with the Graham Company Ensemble at City Center. Originally from West Virginia, wishes there were horses and farms in Manhattan; stares instead at glow-in-the-dark moon and stars on her wall, gifts from Avodah friends, of course.

And while I am quoting Kezia from the November ’88 newsletter I can’t resist including the paragraph she wrote about me!!

JoAnne Tucker. Avodah Founder, Director, Choreographer. The company is constantly amused by references to “Dr.” Tucker. Despite her Ph.D., Juilliard background, Graham training, choreographic vision and 16 years of directing Avodah, JoAnne can only be described as delightfully unpretentious and the worst giggler of all. Requires her dancers to be technically adept, intelligent, imaginative and nontemperamental and knows, just as successfully as how to direct, when not to direct. Rarely misses a detail of company arrangements but on tour invariably forgets her own jewelry, stockings or shoes. Quilts and embroiders impressively; speaks fluent computer. Claims that extensive association with us sometimes makes it difficult for her to identify with people her own age. In light of our incredible maturity, we can’t imagine what she means.

OK, so now my challenge was to find a Cantor or Cantorial Student to help develop the piece and to tour with us. By “Cantor” I mean a person who is part of the clergy team of a Reform Jewish congregation and particularly known for providing and leading the music in a service. Having grown up in the Reform Movement — and with the company’s having an official residency at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion’s New York Campus with its School of Sacred Music (“HUC”) — I knew just the person to ask. Rabbi Larry Raphael, faculty member and Dean at HUC, as well as an Avodah Board member, had helped me before and even suggested to rabbinic and cantorial students that they seek me out when he knew they had an interest in dance. Popping into his office on the 4^thfloor, I asked if he had anyone to recommend for the project, and sure enough he did. He recommended Mark Childs, then a cantorial student with another year to go. And indeed Mark was perfect for the role. While he didn’t have a particular interest in dance he had a wonderfully strong and powerful voice and a good sense of drama. Already I could imagine him chanting sections of Exodus. So now it was time to get back to Louis and let him know I had cast Avodah’s half of “Let My People Go.”

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Bringing Groups Together: Two-Month Tour of “Let My People Go”

JoAnne Tucker / July 13, 2018November 20, 2018 / "Let My People Go"

The next two performances were in the New York area. Rodeph Sholom on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Memorial Baptist Church of Harlem jointly featured “Let My People Go” as part of their tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. The congregations had an ongoing cooperative relationship. The Friday night Sabbath Service found Memorial’s Pastor Preston Washington joining the Rabbis of Rodeph Sholom in leading the service, followed by the combined choirs of the Baptist Church. “Let My People Go” concluded the evening.

A week later on Saturday evening the choir of Brooklyn Heights Synagogue along with the choir of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church of Ft. Greene opened a program at St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Church, organized by Brooklyn Heights Synagogue (of which I was a member) under the leadership of Rabbi Richard Jacobs, a former Avodah dancer. We are fortunate that this performance of “Let My People Go” was videotaped by Randy Hayman; here is the link to watch it. When I watch the video it reminds me of the dedication of the performers and their incredible passion as they leaped, sang, and spoke James Weldon Johnson’s words.

The season included three college performances. The first was sponsored by Brandeis’s Hillel Foundation and the University itself, for Black History Month. The second was part of a Jewish Arts Festival with Black History Month in Bowker Auditorium on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. The third was sponsored by Hillel and Eracism, an anti-racism student group at the University of Pennsylvania. Two students were quoted as saying the program was part of Black History Month and that the show was aimed at improving race relations on campus. The Pennsylvania Gospel Choir performed after “Let My People Go.”

A unique collaboration in Norfolk, Virginia brought the Urban League and the Jewish Community Center together to sponsor a performance on Sunday night in the Chrysler Museum Theater. It was the first time but not the last that we performed in a Museum where security is heightened and one enters through special doors. The philosophy behind this sharing was well expressed by Mary Redd: “One of the things the Urban League is about is building bridges. So I think ofLet My People Go in terms of letting all people be free.” She went on to share in an interview published by the Virginia Pilot and Ledger Star, “The performance, which comes in the middle of Black History Month, coincides with Urban League Sunday. That’s an annual awareness day commemorating the founding of the National Urban League in 1910.” The following Monday morning the company performed at a local high school in a lively morning assembly (see the following poem by Kezia for more about the morning).

The last two performances were back in the NY area. On Saturday night in Plainfield, New Jersey, the performance was sponsored by the Association for Rehabilitation with Kindness, a joint organization of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and Temple Emanu-El of Westfield,NJ. The organization focuses on the rehabilitation of housing. This performance was especially meaningful for me, as Rabbi Kroloff, an Avodah Board Member, was the leader of Temple Emanu-El and it was in his office that the idea to develop a program like “Let My People Go” was first discussed (See Blog 2). We were thrilled to get excellent press in the New Jersey section of The New York Times, where Barbara Gilford, having seen the performance earlier at Rodeph Sholom wrote, “The work has both substance and texture with eloquence and emotional forces suffusing spoken and movement sequences. Images and bodies seamlessly melt into one another. A vision of the Israelites in Egyptian bondage becomes a tableau of black slavery as black and Jewish voices become one cry for deliverance”(February 19, 1989).

Additional press in Newark’s Star-Ledger by Valerie Sudol included a quote by Louis Johnson: “’This was a wonderful project,’ he said of his work with Tucker. ‘The piece deals with issues that are right in front of us every day. It’s about life as it’s lived here and now, not in some remote time or place’” (February 12, 1989).

From L to R: Loretta Abbott, Deborah Hanna, and Mark Childs

Photo by Tom Brazil

The last performance of the season was on Sunday, February 26^th, at the Henry Street Settlement in their wonderful old theater. Deborah Hanna wrote of that last performance:

There was a very modest Sunday afternoon audience as I recall, but our performance was breathtaking. After this intense tour, we had arrived to such a free, creative and connected place between all of the performers that we were actually improvising new things, anticipating and working together with that magical harmony that performers live for… That priceless, beyond time and space experience that unfortunately happens so rarely in a performing career. In the end, it didn’t matter where we were or who was in front of us… that last performance was all ours. (From Avodah Memory, February 29, 2004 by Deborah Hanna).

Deborah Hanna (foreground) and Loretta Abbott

Photo by Tom Brazil

The drummer who had first begun the piece was not available and so we had two subs during the season: Eli Fontaine and Newman Taylor Baker. While Eli would occasionally join us again over the next several years, Newman became a regular Avodah touring member and incredible collaborator. More to come about Newman.

Kezia, in the March 1989 Avodah Newsletter, playfully and elegantly summarized the season and I end this Blog with her poem:

And About That Black-Jewish History Project….
IN the beginning, were doubts, we admit;
Would visions and methods and temperaments fit?
Soon the group’s gathered, and quickly we’re friends.
Just into rehearsal, surprises descend:

We’re told we must sing. “We’re just dancers,” we rant,
Cantor Mark, told to dance, cries, “I can’t; I just cant.”
(If Louis said “Fly!” he’d want wings to unfold);
Rumpelstiltskin, we need, to turn straw into gold.

En route to our premiere, we can’t help but fret;
We realize we’ve not done one full run-through yet!
They love all our dancing, the music, the text.
They don’t know we still whisper, “Help!” Which part comes next?”

For two months we travel, most weekends and more;
The dust in our homes slowly covers the floor.
Our friends rarely see us; we don’t get much rest,
But the piece grows with each show, from better to best.

We’re scheduled with choirs or questions and answers;
New groups come together in sponsoring dancers!
We hope that such links grow as fast as our piece;
(Next year, how ‘bout soul food with matzoh ball feasts?!)

A high school performance – a morning assembly –
That audience still makes us smile, remembering;
We run and we roll and we moan and we scream;
It’s the funniest thing that they ever have seen!

They not only enjoy, but they do understand,
And perhaps they see clearest the point right at hand:
If the world were just like the small crew of our show,
No one would need cry, “Let My People Go.”

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“Let My People Go” Meets “Let It Snow”

JoAnne Tucker / August 3, 2018November 20, 2018 / "Let My People Go"

“Let My People Go” toured throughout the United States for 11 years, with performances in high schools, colleges, community centers, churches and synagogues! While I’m not sure of the exact number of performances, it was certainly over 50. The original cast made a tremendous impact on the creation of the piece. New cast members each brought their own personality and talent to their role. Each performance had its own story. However, as I continue this series of blogs related to “Let My People Go,” I will focus on the more unusual events as well as programs that grew out of the work. I continue with two different concerts that were strongly impacted by snowstorms.

On Friday night, February 2, 1990, we performed “Let My People Go” at Beth Israel Synagogue outside of Atlantic City in a joint event they had organized with members of the Salem United Methodist Church. Part of the company returned to New York City right away because of commitments they had on Saturday. The next morning, Kezia, Deborah and I began our drive from Atlantic City to Hamilton, New York to be joined on Sunday by the rest of the cast for a performance at Colgate University. Hamilton is located in a rural part of upstate New York. The ride was uneventful until late afternoon, when we were on a small country road not far from Hamilton and it began to snow. A deer came flying out of nowhere and we hit it. Luckily the car did not spin and we easily brought it to a stop. We got out to see the condition of the deer. It didn’t survive the hit. We were devastated by this, and Deborah spent a few prayerful moments by the deer. Since it was a fairly large deer, the front of the car was quite damaged. I can’t remember the next detailed sequence of events,but soon there was a highway patrolman helping us. After he did his paperwork, he said, “Well, the deer’s yours; do you want it?” Kezia was astounded by this request, as if we had been engaged in no-frills hunting of the animal we were mourning. We offered the deer to either him or the tow truck driver, and it was accepted appreciatively. The tow truck driver graciously took us to his cozy home where we waited for a ride to our Colgate hosts. Finally we arrived at an elegant farm-house and enjoyed our lovely hosts’ warm hospitality and their view of the snow beautifully highlighting the trees and surrounding landscape.

The next morning, after awakening again to the magnificent expansive view and silence of snow, we heard from the four other performers that they had rented a car as planned and begun the drive, but the roads were simply too bad and they were turning around and heading back. Hum… here we were with a program planned as a joint celebration of African and Jewish culture in recognition of Black History Month with only two “White” dancers and one “White” choreographer to represent our multicultural piece. Our contact, Moshe Gresser, who was an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy and Religion department as well as faculty advisor of the Jewish Student Group, was supportive and cooperative in helping us to redesign the program the best we could, including involving the audience at points to provide and experience some of the vocal accompaniment. In my scrapbook is a review of the event, published two days later in The Colgate Maroon, which is very kind to our efforts. But we certainly remember some displeased comments made to us, such as, “They couldn’t make it because of the snow??!!??” accompanied by disbelieving faces. We definitely felt self conscious about not representing our piece well. The program also included the wonderfully energetic Sojourners Chorus and the Dean of the College quoting from Dr. King and setting the mood for the event.

Krista Pilot wrote in the review:

Moshe Gresser then introduced the Avodah Dance Ensemble by explaining both its name and its goal in producing the program entitled “Let My People Go.”…. After the introduction, two out of five dancers took the stage and began what the audience assumed was the performance. A few minutes later, however, JoAnne Tucker, the choreographer, interrupted the dance to explain that three of the dancers were stranded in (surprise!) the snowstorm and could not make the performance. The program did continue with an abbreviated version of the entire piece with Ms. Tucker and Moshe Gresser narrating and the audience joining in to provide chanting and background noise. Despite the missing half of their ensemble the remaining members managed to give the Colgate audience a good representation of the complete program.

I am glad I saved the review because our memory was more of a disappointing, strange performance and I am delighted to know that we managed to pull off something respectable. The next morning, after a phone discussion with my husband Murray,and evaluation of the condition of the car, we decided to leave the car in upstate NY since it wasn’t worth repairing, and we all returned to NYC via bus, the weather no longer a problem.

Kezia, in a moment that was easy to perform for the Colgate event.

Photo by Tom Brazil.

Fast forward to 1994. It’s four years after Colgate, and we are scheduled to perform on Saturday, February 12 in Detroit, and then drive to Toledo, Ohio for a performance on Sunday night. Our cantor for these performances is to be Ida Rae Cahana, who performed the role with us in NYC and on tour after Mark finished cantorial school and left the cast.

Ida had graduated in 1993, and it had been almost a year since she had worked with us. Her last performance had been at Metropolitan Synagogue in NYC, where she had a placement as student cantor. It was an excellent, memorable performance, reviewed by Back Stage, but Kezia remembers it particularly well for an additional reason. With her notoriously poor sense of direction, Kezia had left the “dressing room” in the synagogue and gone through a door that she thought was taking her to the performance space, only to find herself locked outdoors (on a cold day), in costume, having to race around the outside of the building and enter through the bustling front-door crowd and audience to get “backstage” for the start of the piece.

But back to Detroit. We were looking forward to a good long rehearsal on Saturday afternoon to refresh Ida Rae’s memory and practice together. I can’t remember whether we were scheduled to fly out on Friday or first thing Saturday morning but our flight was cancelled due to major snow in the New York area. We were due to leave from Newark airport, which was not going to reopen until maybe late on Saturday, and so the airline recommended we fly out of JFK where they could get us on an early afternoon flight. OK, that could work and we would still have time for a rehearsal.

We all managed to make it to JFK, finding various ways to get there. I was on the phone with Cantor Harold Orback (1931-2014), a much loved member of the clergy of Temple Israel. I told him I would keep him posted as to our progress as it already looked like the early afternoon flight was delayed. The program was scheduled to begin at 7 and included a dinner, so most likely we wouldn’t perform until 8 or 8:30. Delay after delay. Finally around 5 we boarded the flight. More delays getting off the ground but at last we took off and I figured we might just get there in time to perform, probably just going over a few cues first for Ida Rae.

We landed in Detroit at 8 p.m. in fairly bad weather. The pilot came on the speaker to inform us that we had slid off the runway and had to wait to be towed in. That added another half hour. I called Cantor Orback. “No problem,” he said, “just come when you can.”

Thankfully, Newman offered to drive the rental minivan, as it was snowing and he had experience driving in snow. As he carefully drove us there, I observed several cars that had slid off the road. We made it to Temple Israel at about 10 and expected that everyone would have gone home. To our surprise, there was a large group that greeted us enthusiastically and appeared to be having an enjoyable evening. I think Cantor Orback, an outstanding performer, and maybe Ida Rae, had been doing an impromptu performance. Kezia thinks the crowd may have been singing, as well as conversing happily. The mood was very energetic and welcoming.

The dancers changed into costumes. We practiced a lift with Ida Rae that Louis had added to the piece. The dancers did a few warm up pliés, and “Let My People Go” began to an attentive audience. Ida Rae remembered all of her part wonderfully, except one cue, when she forgot to come in. Newman kept ringing a bell to get her attention. I was on the side trying very hard to wish her in and struggling not to laugh at Newman’s efforts. After what seemed like a long time to me but was probably just a few seconds, Newman’s prompting worked and in she came, never missing another cue. What a nice ending to a very stressful travel day. The next day we continued on to Toledo for a performance at Ida Rae’s congregation.

Ida Rae on an earlier tour to Denver and Boulder. Pictured from L to R: Loretta Abbott, Newman Taylor Baker, JoAnne Tucker, Deborah Hanna and Ida Rae Cahana. The picture was taken by Kezia on a rare day off when we went sightseeing. Note the snow on the mountains in the background, which was beautiful to look at, while we enjoyed good weather where we were.

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How the Avodah Dance Ensemble Got Its Name

JoAnne Tucker / September 28, 2018October 2, 2018 / Avodah's Early History, Tallahassee

It’s late summer 1974 and the events of the past two years are serving as motivation to find a structure to expand and formalize what clearly feels like the right direction for my dance talents at this time. I think I want to start a non-profit organization with the mission of expressing Jewish liturgy, text and history through dance and music. Several people, among them my musical collaborator Irving Fleet, have agreed to be on the board and we already have a lawyer who is donating his services to get us going. Now we need a name.

For two years Irving and I had been studying the Jewish Siddur (prayer book) as explained by the very prominent Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, who had also been my childhood rabbi. His book The Small Sanctuary had been a wonderful introduction for us. Also helpful were discussions with Rabbi Stanley Garfein, of the Temple in Tallahassee, Florida where both of our families were members at the time. One section of the Yom Kippur High Holiday service intrigued me because it was a retelling of Jewish history from creation to the sacred rituals done on Yom Kippur by the High Priest before the destruction of the Second Temple. It is called the Avodah Service and the word Avodah means “work” in modern Hebrew and “sacred work” in Biblical Hebrew. In a meeting with Stanley he shared that the word was often used in a phrase: Avodah Sh’Balev meaning work of the heart! All uses of the word Avodah fit for me. Being a dancer and running a dance company is indeed WORK. And in the context of what we had been doing for the previous year it felt like sacred work and work of the heart. So the new organization would be called Avodah and the dance company The Avodah Dance Ensemble. Adding the word Ensemble was especially important to me. Kezia just reminded me that I wrote about this in a 1989 Avodah Newsletter:

Back in 1974, when wrestling with a name for a dance company, I especially chose to include the word “ensemble” with Avodah. Ensemble—“a group of complementary parts that contribute to a single effect” – was the goal I had in mind, where the members of the dance company would balance each other and contribute dynamically to creating unity.

And indeed this proved to be very true over the years with an amazing group of dancers, musicians, writers, visual artists and storytellers sharing their talents.

But back to the beginning. My husband Murray and I moved to Tallahassee, Florida from Washington, DC in the summer of 1970. Murray taught at Florida State University while I focused on settling the kids (then 1 ½ and 3 ½ years old) and writing my dissertation. It was good fortune that my major professor from the University of Wisconsin, where I had done all my course work and taken exams, had also relocated to Tallahassee accepting an appointment in the Theatre Department. Writing the dissertation was lonely and required all my perseverance skills and I was very glad that Joe Karioth was able to still work with me even though he was no longer on the Wisconsin faculty. A year later I returned to Madison, to defend my dissertation entitled “The Use of Creative Dramatics as an Aid in Developing Reading Readiness with Kindergarten Children.” Perhaps I will write more about Wisconsin and the work I did in Creative Dramatics, which naturally included a lot of creative movement, at a later time. Once the dissertation was done it became clear that there weren’t many academic teaching opportunities in Tallahassee and I would need to forge my own path.

Loving to teach and work with children in creative dramatics and movement, I focused on how I could build upon those interests. With the encouragement and support of a friend, Carolyn Davis, I approached Temple Israel about whether I could direct dance and drama activities as part of their religious education program, and also use space in their building to teach regular modern dance and creative dramatics classes. And that is what I did and how I was asked by the sisterhood to be director of a mini-musical they wanted to do based on Fiddler on the Roof.

I agreed as long as I had a good musical director. They had someone in mind right away. I have saved the program from the mini-musical named “Tradition” and here is Irving Fleet’s bio:

Irving Fleet, our musical director, is an orthodontist who has always had a big interest in music. He played the piano frequently as a student in Tallahassee schools and in college as a soloist and recitalist. He was the first organist of Temple Israel and started playing for the congregation even before the present synagogue was built. He last appeared in Tallahassee as piano soloist with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra in 1963-64. Presently, his biggest area of interest is composing, and he has written a number of songs for voice and piano pieces.

“Fiddler on the Roof” has always been a favorite show of mine, ever since I saw it on Broadway during its original run. I have also always felt close to the production because I knew two original cast members. Sammy Bayes, a townsperson who later played the fiddler, was at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp the same summer I was there and we had both been in a piece choreographed by Helen Tamiris. Sue Babel, who played Grandma Tzeitel, had been at Connecticut College Summer Program in Dance the same summer I was there.

With the script having been adapted to run about half of the time of the original show, Irving and I faced our first task: casting the production. Lots of members of the community showed up and I was particularly taken with Rueben Capelouto’s audition for Tevye. Irving agreed that his audition was great but was worried about the fact Rueben stuttered. I was shocked … I didn’t know him outside of just meeting him for the audition and he never stuttered in auditioning for Tevye. Others also kept cautioning me that he would be a poor choice. My instincts kept saying that he would be perfect and so he was cast and indeed he was quite wonderful.

Rueben Capelouto as Tevye. Photo by Evelyn Walborsky

“Tradition” proved to be a wonderful community success and gave me an excellent opportunity to get to know members of the community. Many of them would continue to play a role in Avodah’s history. For example, Marianne Mendelson, a high schooler at the time, played one of Teyve’s younger daughters. Years later, while living in the New York area, she became Avodah’s treasurer for a number of years, a supporter of the dance company and a very good friend.

In going through my files to write this blog I found this poem which I read to the cast and which best describes what this experience meant to me.

When rehearsals first began
There were shouts… cries
Sarcastic utterances
“I can’t do that
I’m not a professional
She’s crazy
I’ll never learn my lines!”
Expression of fears and apprehensions of the task that lay ahead.

We’ve come along way from those first weeks
Lines have been learned
Characters developed
Scenes added
Change after change made
Always our goal clearly in sight “A production to make the congregation proud.”

As director, the bulk of my task is done
Thursday nite, after final dress
I sat down, reflected
And made these notes
No matter what the final outcome, applause great or small,
There are certain thoughts which I have to share with this cast.

Each and everyone, from page turner, technical crew, villagers to Tevye,
Deserves praise for a job well done
Often I’ve been harsh
Critical and outspoken
Free with criticism
But limited with praise
Trying to fulfill my role as director, to push you as far as you can go.

The talent within this group is overwhelming
Beyond expectations
A challenge to work with
And watch develop so far
So.. to my professional crew, a special Equity card for everyone here.

Before reading the inscription on each of these cards
One last thought to share
Building a production
Creating a show
Is learning to live with each other, helping one another to do their very best.

We have each had our moments
Tempers lost
Frustrations and tensions revealed
Perhaps out of such moments, we’ve learned to grow
To know more about ourselves and how we get along with others.

For me, this experience has had many rewards
A creative challenge
A chance to use my skills
But most important of all
I’ve grown to feel at home here, in Tallahassee, to know and respect each one of you.

Irving and I had great fun working together. We seemed to challenge each other to be more creative, complementing each other’s skills. By the end of the two-performance weekend we were talking about writing an original musical theater piece together, for which I could be choreographer and director, and he could be composer and musical director. Next week I’ll write about where we went next!

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Choreographing Based on Ritual and Research

JoAnne Tucker / October 19, 2018October 19, 2018 / Avodah's Early History, Tallahassee

Spring 1974. Excited by the strong response to our first piece “In Praise” I am eager to do another piece with Irving that would fit into the Sabbath Service. Having a limited education in liturgy, I find myself reading and learning as much as I can. I zero in on the Friday night candlelighting gesture of circling the flames and covering the eyes. What does it mean? Where did it come from? I start experimenting, myself, with using the gesture when I light the candles. (Now… to be upfront, I was not very observant and it was as much out of curiosity as any kind of spiritual desire or need that I found myself lighting the candles and saying the blessing on Friday night.)

I soon showed Irving the gesture, with much enthusiasm, one early evening in his backyard. We decided to move forward on creating a piece related to welcoming the Sabbath. Research continued with the help of Rabbi Garfein. In fact, we dedicated the first performance, November 9, 1974 to him. That was also the first official performance of The Avodah Dance Ensemble, a part of the newly formed Avodah, Inc. (See this earlier blog to learn more about this.)

As Irving and I researched the idea of welcoming the Sabbath the piece began to take shape into several sections. Its opening was expressed in a statement we wrote about the piece for the first performance: “The image of Women, be she Mother, Daughter, or Grandmother, with eyes covered, praying over the Sabbath lights, while her family silently gathers around, inspired the dance and music of our new piece.”

I found the gesture of circling the flame and covering the eyes to be a very personal one and I imaged that each person did it in their own way with their own thoughts. The piece opens with three women each doing the gesture in their own way and conveying their emotional response in movement. They come together doing circular movement putting the hand gesture into the whole body and the feet. As I choreographed I realized I was drawing on my composition classes with Louis Horst in making sure each movement related to the theme I had introduced. Helen Tamiris’s use of gesture as a starting point was also a key influence. Long after the piece was no longer a part of the repertory, we often included the movement ritual of circling and covering the eyes as part of workshops. Kezia has said about this, “In all the years I was in the company, I always loved and was intrigued by workshop participants’ explanations of how precisely they did the candlelighting gesture, where they had learned it, and what they thought of when doing it.”

In our research we learned that the Sabbath is often referred to as a bride and that a 16^thcentury hymn still used in most services, “Lecha dodi likras kallah” expresses the notion of embracing the Sabbath as a bride and even of men dressing as a bridegroom going out to welcome the Sabbath. As our piece evolved we introduced a dancer as the bride and a male dancer to embrace her in a duet.

Many years later, living in the New York area, I occasionally enjoyed attending Friday night services at B’nai Jeshurun and there following “Lecha dodi” congregants fill the aisles with joyful dancing. But that was not at all what I grew up with and while some communities have begun to do this it is still pretty rare, at least in the United States.

So on Friday, November 9^ththe Avodah Dance Ensemble gave its first official performance. The company consisted of five dancers. Judith Bloomberg, Hillary Gal and I opened as the three women. Corrine Levy was the bride with Jack Clark representing the bridegroom or man who greets the Sabbath.

Hillary Gal and I rehearsing “Sabbath Woman.” Photo by Tallahassee Democrat.

Living in Tallahassee near Florida State University’s excellent dance department I was able to draw dancers from there and take classes to keep myself in shape. Dr. Nancy Smith, the head of the FSU dance department, was very welcoming and even helped by providing rehearsal space.

Reflecting back on those first few years in Tallahassee I realize I had come a long way from the first year as a faculty wife when I felt alone, unable to find a job. In fact in an article in the Tallahassee Democratdated September 1, 1974 I am quoted as saying “It was really bleak. I couldn’t find a job. Nothing happened for a year, and I was going berserk.”

I did focus on writing my dissertation, and I was lucky that my major professor had moved from the University of Wisconsin to Florida State University’s Drama Department. I was able to return to the University of Wisconsin and defend my dissertation in 1973 officially becoming Dr. Tucker. Now there were two Dr. Tucker’s in our household, Murray with his Ph.D. in Economics and I with mine in Theatre/Speech Communication.

I was also learning how to create my own opportunities and by the fall of 1974 I felt totally a part of the community with various dance projects besides Avodah and plans underway to build my own dance studio.

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Beginning of the New York Company

JoAnne Tucker / December 7, 2018December 15, 2018 / New York Company

While I am fuzzy on dates and exactly how I started a second company of Avodah in New York City I am clear on what motivated me. A modern dance company based on Jewish liturgy, rituals, text and history needed to be located in a place where there would be lots of opportunities for bookings and performances. Tallahassee was not that place. Yes, we had done a bit of touring in Savannah, Pittsburgh, Tampa and even one performance in Closter, NJ but somehow that wasn’t enough for me. While I found Tallahassee a wonderful place to experiment, to develop repertory, I longed for more opportunities to tour and share the repertory. The idea of having a second company based in New York City and making regular trips to New York really appealed to me.

By this time, I had stopped performing myself, stepping into the role of choreographing, directing and managing the business side of the company and non-profit. Around the same time, my father was spending a lot of time in the New York office of the sportswear company he worked for, and my sister, Peggy, had decided to make a transition to working in New York. My father and Peggy found a lovely apartment on the East side near the UN and so I had a place to stay. Peggy and I recently brainstormed exactly when that was and we think it was in May 1978. As best as I can tell from programs in my scrapbook, it was the summer of 1978 when I formed a company of 5 dancers and did an evening performance at Temple Israel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

How did I find the dancers? Well what is coming to mind is that I returned to take some classes from a favorite teacher of mine from Juilliard, Alfredo Corvino, who had a studio called Dance Circle on 8^thAvenue between 46^thand 47^thStreet. That is where I found Lynn Elliott who would dance with the company for quite a few years. A dancer from Tallahassee that I had worked with, Peggy Evans, had moved to New York City and so I reached out to her to join the company. Three other dancers, Kathy McDonald, Yael, and Benjamin Greenberg, I may have found through an audition notice or perhaps I also found them at Alfredo Corvino’s studio.

Rabbi Walter Jacob, by then an Avodah Board member, reached out to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, located at that time on West 68^thStreet, and arranged for us to have rehearsal space at the school. That was the beginning of a long-term relationship with HUC-JIR. I hoped to invite people to the concert at Temple Israel who could help with bookings for the New York company. I have pictures that clearly show the repertory we did and that Irving Fleet joined us for the performance working with a choir for In Praise. Other pieces performed in the afternoon concert were Sabbath Woman and a newly created piece, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The bema of the Temple provided a beautiful setting for the concert and one major contact was made for the company that had a profound impact on our development both in increased bookings for the New York company and in Florida for the Tallahassee company.

Kathy McDonald as the bride in *Sabbath Woman*.

Yael in front, Kathy behind in *I Never Saw Another Butterfly*.

Stephan Bayer, head of the Lecture Bureau for the Jewish Welfare Board (now called the Association of Jewish Community Centers), attended the concert and asked if he could add us to the roster of people they represented. Furthermore, Stephan also agreed to welcome me into the Lecture Bureau office and teach me how to book performances and put a tour together. I am forever grateful to Stephan for the role he played in helping us develop as a company. Later Stephan joined our board and served as an outstanding President for a number of years. Our next New York performance was in the spring of 1979 as part of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion’s Sunday Afternoon at the College Series. Lynne Elliott, Peggy Evans and Kathy McDonald continued to dance with the company and two new dancers, Holly Kaplan and a male dancer whose name I can’t recall, joined us. The three pieces done in the summer were included along with a new piece Sarah which I had created in Tallahassee with the help of a grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. The piece received its first performance in Tallahassee at Temple Israel on March 3 and six weeks later I restaged it with the New York company.

While the area the dancers had to work on was small, I remember being so proud of the performance they gave and I love this picture which was taken of us outside of HUC-JIR after the performance.

From Left to Right: JoAnne Tucker, Irving Fleet, unknown male dancer, Kathy McDonald, Peggy Evans, Lynn Elliott and Holly Kaplan.

I feel so very grateful to have had long-term relationships with dancers in the company. Each relationship has taken on its own special character. Lynn Elliott worked with the company for a number of years and many years later her daughter Justine performed with us. I will be writing more about Lynn in later blogs. While Kathy McDonald only danced with us in New York for that first year, she has kept in touch with the company and myself through the years. Each year she has sent a contribution first during Avodah’s fundraising campaign and now Healing Voices – Personal Stories. I always feel a wonderful glow as I open the envelope and remember her beautiful lyrical quality portraying the bride in Sabbath Woman. Many years later, Kezia, looking for a place to take adult ballet classes in Poughkeepsie, found a wonderful class taught by Kathy, who had opened a studio there specifically for adult dancers. Besides realizing they had both been in Avodah, they discovered they had performed the same solo in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

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Poetry and Art Inspire I Never Saw Another Butterfly

JoAnne Tucker / December 14, 2018December 15, 2018 / New York Company

In the last post I mentioned the piece I Never Saw Another Butterfly. It was actually created in 1977 in Tallahassee, Florida receiving its first New York performance at Temple Israel in 1978. This was the first of four pieces that I created between 1977 and 2002 to remember the Holocaust or as memorial pieces for the Holocaust. The book I Never Saw Another Butterfly first came out in the early 60’s. By 1977 there was a lot of interest in the poems both in music and in dance. In fact, I was not the only choreographer that year to set some of the poems. Pearl Lang created her I Never Saw Another Butterfly in 1977, as did Wendy Osserman collaborating with composer Peter Schlosser.

Pearl Lang was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1942 to 1952. When she left the company to form her own company in 1952, one of the first pieces she did was Song of Deborah, and she continued to often create works related to her Jewish background. In a radio interview in 1977 she referred to the piece I Never Saw Another Butterfly as a memorial to the Holocaust. I did not get to see Lang’s Butterfly but I did see an earlier piece she created in 1960 called Shirah, which I found hauntingly beautiful. I also had the opportunity to study with Pearl in 1960 at the Connecticut College Summer Dance Program. For six weeks in an hour-long composition class a small group of students, maybe four or five of us, worked on studies. I was assigned to do a laughter study and an anger study. Another older member of the class created a piece inspired by the fragile character Laura in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I don’t remember the dancer’s name but the delicate way she wove movement together left a lasting impression.

In dance classes with Louis Horst at Juilliard, particularly his second year class called Modern Forms, he often encouraged us to visit museums and to even develop pieces inspired by the art that we saw. The Museum of Modern Art was one of my favorite places to go and there was one picture that I was strongly drawn to. Titled Hide and Seek, it was painted by Pavel Tchelitchew in 1942. The picture is a tree made up of children. There are arms reaching for each other, faces calling out, hands and toes as roots of the tree. Standing in front of the painting I felt life and death captured in the same moment. The painting seemed to cry out to me just as the poems in I Never Saw Another Butterfly did. In studying the painting I saw five particular parts that stood out and so I decided to limit the piece and only set five of the poems. Each dancer would recite a poem as they moved based on the five images that stood out.

In my file on I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a postcard of the painting, sent to me by Nanette Joslyn, a dancer in the NY Company in the early 80’s who also shared that she was dancing at the time with Pearl Lang in a spoof on the Esther–Modecai story.

Postcard of Pavel Tchelitchew’s painting *Hide and Seek* sent to me by Nanette Joslyn.

A description of the book tells us that 15,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the concentration camp of Terezin. Fewer than 100 survived. The poems and also pictures that they drew shared both the daily misery as well as their hopes and fears, their courage and optimism.

There are only a few pieces of my choreography that I could get up and do now or at least set with only limited help of a video, and I Never Saw Another Butterfly is one of them. I also think it had the longest history of performances in the company, being performed through the early 2000’s. It opens with the group of dancers close together doing a random number of steps and stops as if they were bundled in a train car that stopped and started in no particular pattern. 1 hold 2 walk 3, 4, 5, hold 6 walk 7 and so the piece starts. Later they peel off and take shapes related to the poem and it is from these shapes that each dancer emerges to begin his or her poem.

Bea Bogorad and Randy Allen rehearsing *I Never Saw Another Butterfly* at the Creative Dance Center Studio in Tallahassee, Florida. Can you see the arms reaching for each other in Pavel’s painting that inspired this moment?

I was still performing with the company and my poem began:

I'ld like to go away
Where there are other nicer people,
Somewhere in the far unknown
Where no one kills one another.

After the first performance in Tallahassee, a member of the audience that I only knew casually came up to me and said he was very moved by the piece and that he was about to close out a bank account and wanted Avodah to have the balance left of $600. That was a large contribution for our little company back in 1977 and we were most grateful.

The title poem captures both the optimism and the despair:

The last, the very last
So richly, brightly, dazzling yellow
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
Against a white stone.

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly way up high.
It went away I'm sure
Because it wished to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court
Only I never saw another butterfly.

As I write this, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach, aware of the current news where we in this country are separating immigrant children from their parents and putting them in large detention camps behind barbed wire and bars. Maybe this piece needs to be revived and seen again with the backdrop of current day pictures reminding us that we cannot be silent and allow this to continue.

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Exploring Biblical Sarah

JoAnne Tucker / December 21, 2018December 21, 2018 / Dances on Biblical Women, New York Company, Tallahassee

The third piece that Irving Fleet and I collaborated on was called Sarah. I mentioned it in the blog about the beginning of the New York company and want to go into more detail about the piece in this blog. Irving is quoted in an article in the Tallahassee Democrat as saying, “JoAnne was always intrigued with the character of Sarah” (March 2, 1979). And I hunch that was probably what motivated us to begin exploring her story. We honed in on that part of her life centered on first being unable to bear a child for her husband, then offering her handmaiden, Hagar, to bear a child for her and finally, when she becomes pregnant, Abraham celebrating the news. For me this was the beginning of my own journey creating “dance midrash.” Midrash refers to both the early interpretations and commentaries on Torah as well as modern ones. At the time I didn’t know this word. Later I would create a number of dance pieces that I considered midrash, co-author a book on dance midrash (Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash, with Rabbi Susan Freeman), and teach many workshops involving dance midrash.

While telling the story was somewhat important, it was exploring Sarah’s emotions that we focused on the most: Sarah’s anguish at not becoming pregnant; her jealousy and anger at Hagar when Hagar does bear a child for Abraham, which results in Sarah banishing Hagar; and then her joy when she becomes pregnant in her old age.

Ritual movement again played an important choreographic role in the piece. When Abraham renews his covenant with God following news of Sarah’s pregnancy, Sarah, in our midrash, takes off the rope from her gown and gives it to Abraham. He then uses it for tefillin (ritual leather boxes with straps, which contain Torah text). Tefillin are traditionally only worn by men during the weekday morning service. They wrap one set around the arm, hand and fingers, and wrap the other set above the forehead. As Abraham is often referred to as the father of the morning prayer this ritual seemed an appropriate one to draw on. In the same article in the Tallahassee Democrat that I referred to earlier I am quoted as saying, “Dance composition should go back to everyday gestures, take them, enlarge and manipulate them.” And that is exactly what I did with the ritual of wrapping tefillin. I thought it worked very well. However, not everyone agreed with me. In fact, we had received some funding that year from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and when the piece was later performed in New York City, the Executive Director from the NFJC made a very strong point of letting me know that I clearly didn’t understand what wrapping tefillin was, as it was entirely inappropriate for Sarah to hand Abraham the rope from her gown to use. Indeed I did very much understand and part of my feminist statement was purposefully to have Sarah hand it to him.

On Saturday March 3, 1979, the first performance of Sarah was held as part of a concert at Temple Israel in Tallahassee along with Sabbath Woman, In Praise and I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The piece was created on the Tallahassee company with Ellen Ashdown as Sarah, Michael Bush as Abraham, Judith Lyons as Hagar and two handmaidens, Donna Campbell and Trish Whidden.

From my scrapbook. Photograph that was part of the *Tallahassee Democrat* article,
March 2, 1979.

Six weeks later I recreated the piece for the New York company with Lynn Elliott dancing the role of Sarah in a performance at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s West 68^thStreet Campus.

In the fall of 1979, we did a three-week season at Henry St. Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York City as part of the American Jewish Theater. This was an excellent experience for us and I will write a full blog about it. For right now I want to share part of a review from Dance Magazine (by Marilyn Hunt) of the performance of Sarah at Henry St.

Sarah, a Grahamesque drama of a woman of large-scale passions is portrayed concisely and lucidly. Sarah vents her despair at being childless by lashing one leg around, pacing, and whipping her hair in a circle. In contrast, her handmaiden, young Hagar, whom Sarah gives to her husband, Abraham, to bear him a child, carries her imaginary water jar with chest thrust proudly forward and has a formal ritual-like mating with Abraham. Only the ending, God’s promise that Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s belatedly-born son, would father the tribes of Israel, failed to come across in dance terms. The two women’s roles were especially well filled by Lynn Elliott and Peggy Evans. Dance Magazine, February 1980.

A year later when Rick Jacobs, who was then a rabbinic student at HUC-JIR, joined the company and learned the part of Abraham, the ending blessing took on a whole new dimension, as the prayer and actual movement were already deeply meaningful to him, and he performed the section in a uniquely heartfelt way.

Rick Jacobs as Abraham, 1981. *Photo by Amanda Kreglow*

Rick Jacobs and Lynn Elliott in *Sarah. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.*

Sarah continued to be beautifully performed regularly by the New York company during the next several years with Rick dancing the part of Abraham, and Lynn Elliott dancing the part of Sarah. For me Sarah was the first of a series of pieces focusing on Biblical women. And I would revisit Sarah, more than once.

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