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.
l to r: Beth, Elizabeth and Kezia
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!!
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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