dance forgiveness project

The Forgiveness Project – Its Beginning

JoAnne Tucker / July 19, 2019 / dance liturgy, New York Company

In 1997 or 1998, sitting with Canon Lloyd Casson in the study at SAMS (The Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, in Wilmington, DE) when the Avodah Dance Ensemble was performing there, I asked if he had any ideas for a new project for the company. Canon Casson suggested I read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness. I don’t remember much else from our conversation but I do know I went out and bought the book and indeed, it did lead to a new piece of choreography and teaching opportunities for Avodah that ended up changing the direction of the dance company for me.

Before I get into how just a paragraph in No Future Without Forgiveness set me in motion, this week’s blog and next week’s blog share what I would say were the preliminary seeds that enabled this project to develop so powerfully. This week’s blog is about an earlier piece on forgiveness, Selichot Suite, and next week’s blog, featuring a piece that Kezia Gleckman Hayman wrote for the Avodah Newsletter in 1997, will focus on Canon Casson and the depth of thought he brought to us.

Selichot Suite was commissioned by Temple Beth El in Jersey City to be included in the Selichot Service that year, 1987, ten years before my conversation with Canon Casson. At the time, Murray and I were living in Jersey City and were members of the congregation. In Jewish Reform congregations, a Selichot service is held the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, usually late in the evening. The word “selichot” means forgiveness and the prayers are the same as those recited on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Rabbi Bruce Block and Cantor Peter Halpern collaborated with us and we danced to Cantor Halpern’s chanting of the prayers.

We set four parts of the service to dance, integrating them at the time each prayer was recited in the service. The first one, Hanshamah Lakh (“The Soul is Yours”), used very slow, meditative, rocking and lilting walks entering into the sacred space. The piece was beautifully sung by Cantor Halpern. The choreography of the next piece, Hashivenu,didn’t work very well in the first performance except for an ending circle. The ending circle reminded me of a a piece I had choreographed before. It was the last section in a piece called Shevit Ahim Gam Yahad (“Behold how good it is when brothers dwell together”). This was a piece that I had choreographed in the late 70’s to music of Lucas Foss. It didn’t stay in the repertory long but I loved the ending section and realized it would fit beautifully to Hashivenu. I substituted it for the original choreography for Hashivenu in the next performance and loved seeing it as part of Selicot Suite.

The third piece was actually danced to a poem that I must have originally found in the Gates of Forgiveness prayer book. I was so pleased to have found it online as I was beginning to write this blog. It is by Denise Levertov. The dancers recited it as they danced:

Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads ….

Here’s a link to read the entire poem.

https://allpoetry.com/The-Thread

I found this poem so lovely and so representative of feelings related to the search for finding one’s spiritual center or home. Rereading it now I still find it very meaningful.

The last section of the piece was danced to the prayer V’al kulam. There is a traditional gesture of striking one’s chest softly with one’s fist, which accompanies the related Al Chet prayer, and we used variations of this movement in the piece. We also used movements of falling to the floor, and a dancer falling into the arms of others, for this deeply strong forgiveness prayer.

The dance company had just gone through a major change in dancers and I see in the Newsletter of September 1987 that there were seven dancers listed as performing that season. I think several of them were only with the company a short time. The original choreography was for seven dancers but by the next time that we performed the piece, it was revised for four dancers, the usual number of dancers in the company.

Selichot Suite was performed fairly regularly in Selichot services over the next 10 years. While several of the performances were in the NY area (Tenafly and Scarsdale) several bookings were out of town, with one in Bloomfield Hills, MI and another in Houston, TX. Often a concert with some of our other repertory preceded the service.

I have only one video of the piece and it is a wonderful one danced beautifully by Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Elizabeth McPherson, Beth Millstein, and Carla Norwood. They are so elegantly ensembled that it was a true example of what I hoped would happen when I named the company Avodah Dance ENSEMBLE. The video is from a program we did at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion on dance as part of liturgy. Rabbi Rick Jacobs spoke and Cantor Benji Ellen Schiller beautifully accompanied the dancers. Here’s a link to watch it.

These three pictures were snapshots taken from the video, and in a photo editing program I chose to do them in black and white.

From the opening of *Hashivenu*
Dancer standing – Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Dancer sitting – Elizabeth McPherson
Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller is standing in back in black

From the closing of *Hashivenu*
Dancers from l to r, Kezia, Elizabeth, Carla Norwood and Beth Millstein (with her back to us) and Cantor Schiller.

From *V’al kulam*
Dancers from l to r: Elizabeth, Kezia, Carla, Beth
Cantor Schiller is in the back.

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The Forgiveness Project Begins: A Movement Presentation on Lines from Biblical Psalms

JoAnne Tucker / August 2, 2019 / dance liturgy, Forgiveness Project, Holocaust Repertory

Fortunately, I don’t have to rack my memory to figure out the beginning steps for The Forgiveness Project, as they are well documented in the February 2001 Avodah Dance Ensemble Newsletter. Much of what I am sharing in this blog comes from the Newsletter’s opening article.

I did indeed read Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness which Canon Lloyd Casson had suggested. Towards the end of the book Tutu has a paragraph related to the need for Israel to wrestle with forgiveness for Germany. He is not the only one to point this out. In January 2000, Elie Wiesel spoke of forgiveness in a speech he made on the German Day of Remembrance when he addressed the Bundestag. Simon Wiesenthal addressed this important question in his book The Sunflower. Certainly the question of forgiveness related to post-Holocaust German/Jewish relationships is one of the most challenging. My plan was for the dance company to wrestle with this difficult question in a new way through movement. There was no goal to come up with any one definitive answer, just to wrestle with the question.

We would also look at forgiveness from a variety of perspectives – forgiveness of oneself, forgiveness within a relationship, forgiveness as it relates to God and forgiveness between communities. We officially began our work on forgiveness for the project in the fall of 2000 when we presented a lecture demonstration on Yom Kippur afternoon at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s High Holiday Services for College and Graduate Students. For this presentation I decided to focus on forgiveness between self and God. To prepare I read the Book of Psalms and jotted down any lines that related to forgiveness. After much pondering I came up with four stages in the process of asking forgiveness of God: being aware of needing to ask for forgiveness; accepting the responsibility to do so; asking for forgiveness; and feeling certain expectations upon being forgiven by God. Three dancers, including Beth Millstein who had worked with Avodah for over seven years, joined me, and we explored the four stages with related lines of text from Psalms.

Much to my delight I have notes from this demonstration and I share them now. Readers who are interested in leading workshops on forgiveness are very welcome to use the text and ideas presented here.

Here are the stages of Forgiveness with supporting Psalm references

1. Reflect or ponder our actions

“So tremble, and sin no more;
Ponder it on your bed, and be silent (Psalm 4:5)

2. Take Responsibility

“For my iniquities have overwhelmed me:
  They are like a heavy burden, more that I can bear.”  (Psalm 38:4)

   “I recognize my transgressions
    And am ever conscious of my sins.” (Psalm 51:3)

   “I have considered my ways,
    And have turned back to your decrees.” (Psalm 119:59)

3. Take Action

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you;
I did not cover up my guilt;” (Psalm 32)

4. Express how we feel/or anticipate how we will feel after taking action

“Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven,
  Whose sin is covered over.” (Psalm 32:1)

  “You are my shelter:
   You preserve me from distress:
   You surround me with the joyous shouts of deliverance.” (Psalm 32:7)

    “God redeems your life from the Pit,
    Surrounds you with steadfast love and mercy.” (Psalm 103:4)

    “Yours is the power to forgive
     So that You may be held in awe.” (Psalm 130:3-4)

We used some of these lines of text in our demonstration as part of the Yom Kippur afternoon service at HUC-JIR and I am most grateful for Rabbi Larry Raphael (of blessed memory) for inviting us to present. In the formal presentation at HUC-JIR the dancers improvised to the lines of text while members of the congregation watched.

As the Forgiveness Project continued we wove these lines from The Book of Psalms into future workshops guiding groups of various ages to explore them. Usually I started with the first stage, read the line of text and then asked each person to respond in movement to the imagery being expressed – for example, to imagine he/she is pondering on “his/her sins” and express what that would be like in movement.

We added other texts into the Forgiveness Project, including biblical texts, writings of Moses Maimonides, lines from the New Testament, a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh and a passage from Wally Lamb’s novel I Know this Much is True. I will be sharing more about these texts and how they fit into the Forgiveness Project in the next few blogs.

JoAnne, on tour in Florida in the fall of 2000, sharing text from the Book of Psalms
with a group of religious school students.

Dancers improvising for the students, on lines of text from the Book of Psalms.

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Invitation to Take The Forgiveness Project to a Women’s Prison

JoAnne Tucker / August 16, 2019September 6, 2019 / Dance Programs in Prison, Forgiveness Project, New York Company

I don’t remember how we got the booking at Hartford Seminary or the exact date that we were there. I hunch it was in April of 2001. Hartford Seminary was doing an all-day program on forgiveness and asked us to do a lecture-demonstration as part of the day. The Seminary is a non-denominational graduate school for religious and theological studies. We were honored to be a part of the program which also included someone from South Africa who had firsthand experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which Desmond Tutu had written about in his book No Future Without Forgiveness. The four company members – Stacy, Becca, Julia and Candice – joined me and we put together a lecture-demonstration which might have also had some audience participation. I remember being in a large room with about 50 to 75 people sitting around the edge on all four sides of the room.

The Seminary did excellent publicity all around town with flyers listing the participants, including The Avodah Dance Ensemble. As a result of the publicity, the week after we were in Hartford I got an email from Joe Lea, then a teacher at York Correctional Institution, the only women’s facility in the state of Connecticut. He asked if I would be interested in bringing the program we did at the Seminary to York. Well I was a bit taken aback and surprised by the email, and I had never thought of taking the dance company to a prison. Then I began to think, “Why not?!”

So I emailed Joe back and said that I would consider it but that I had never been in a jail or a prison and wondered if it was the right environment to bring the company into and how it would work. Where would we perform? I had lots of questions. Joe suggested I come up, tour the prison and discuss it in person. I agreed. Of course the next thing I had to do was to fill out forms and get clearance to go into the prison. I did that and then we agreed on a date. I took the train to New Haven and Joe picked me up and we drove 45 more minutes to the prison.

The whole experience was very new to me. Leaving my purse in the car, I took nothing in with me. It was easy being with Joe since he guided me through all the steps and of course everyone knew him. Signing in, going through the metal detectors and then being in a small room with no windows where one door locks first before the door on the other side opens is a very sobering experience.

As we walked through the prison hallway Joe explained that York housed both a minimum and a maximum security side and that the school was located in the maximum side. Women in the minimum side were permitted to attend. While the prison housed up to 1400 women there were only 400 slots in the school. I seem to remember that women under 18 who hadn’t graduated from high school were required to work on a GED. Women over 18 who hadn’t graduated were also welcome to attend. And in fact Joe was going to teach a GED class that afternoon and I was welcome to join him and speak with the women.

Joe showed me around and introduced me to some of the other teachers. He showed me where they usually did programs in the school section. It was in a long hallway which, in the center, had hallways leading off to each side. While this was not ideal I could see how it would work.

When it came time for Joe to meet his class, I joined him and did kind of a Q and A with the students, sharing information about the dance company and the kind of programs that we did. I realized that this was no different than any other teaching situation and in fact found the students more attentive than many other groups that I had worked with. I told Joe that I would indeed be willing to bring the company to York.

Shortly after my visit to York I decided to apply for a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and called Joe to discuss the idea. I suggested that instead of the dance company just coming up for one day, I was thinking of writing the grant for 4 different 5-day residencies where the company worked with each site giving participants an opportunity to dance with the company and even perform with them. What did he think of Avodah coming to York for five days, working with a group of the women for four of the days and on the fifth day the women joining the company in performance? He loved the idea.

So I wrote a grant that involved bringing The Forgiveness Project to four different sites including the prison and mailed it off!

The entrance to York Correctional Institution
(from the Connecticut Correctional website)

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Residency at York Correctional Institution for Women – Part I

JoAnne Tucker / September 27, 2019 / Dance Programs in Prison, Forgiveness Project, New York Company

Just a few weeks after our residency at the Jewish congregation in Westchester we were off to Niantic, Connecticut for our final residency in a women’s prison. I was still wrestling with an uncertainty of my own beliefs as well as what I saw as the future direction of the dance company, when we arrived on Sunday evening and gathered at a local church to meet our host families for the five nights we would be in Niantic.

Monday morning, 8:30 a.m. the dancers, Newman and I gathered in the waiting room of the prison. I am pretty sure that Joe Lea, who was handling all the details of the residency and had invited us, met us and guided us through the process of entering the facility. Following a brief orientation we were guided to the school which was in the maximum security side and entered the large classroom that had been cleared of most furniture except chairs along one side. While not an ideal space it was certainly large enough and even had its own private bathroom.

Twenty-four women and one of the staff teachers soon joined us. To be part of our program the women had to be enrolled in school, have permission from a teacher and have successfully taken two dance classes led by a teacher on staff who had a dance background. Joyce, the teacher who had led the classes, explained that the criterion for the women’s participation in our residency was that they could follow directions and make it through an elementary jazz-like dance class. Women of all sizes and ages, with or without any dance background, were welcomed.

Once everyone was in the room I asked them to make a large circle, and the four company members and I spread out joining the circle. Newman was busy setting up his instruments at the far end of the room. Usually I begin with a warm up led by one of the company members and that was what I had planned to do… but looking around the room I turned to Joyce and asked her to start the class and we would follow along. She did and we followed her warm up for about 10 minutes. Then she said they had created a dance and asked if I wanted to see it. Indeed I did. The company members joined me as we watched a short jazz-style dance of about a minute. Then I asked Joyce and the women to teach it to the four Avodah company members. They did and everyone was enjoying having the company members dancing with them. I asked if I might coach it a bit and was greeted with enthusiasm. They quickly responded to the few suggestions I gave.

Then I asked the women to sit on one side of the room and said that I would share a little about the style of dance we did. Accompanied by Newman we shared some of the elements of modern dance focusing on different qualities of movement, floor patterns, and changing dynamics. I then asked the group to give us a theme to dance about. One woman raised her hand and I called on her. She said the feelings of a sad baby crying. Kerri, Andrea, Jessica and Danielle responded beautifully, creating a heartfelt movement improvisation. You could have heard a pin drop in the room and the women were so clearly with the dancers. I knew we were off to a very good start and that the women in the room and the four Avodah dancers would have no problem working together. They had become a company of 28 women who would work on The Forgiveness Piece together to perform for other women at the facility on Friday. Joe was also inviting some outside guests to the join the audience and we had scheduled two performances, one in the morning and one in the early afternoon.

As the week continued each of the company dancers had a small group of women that they worked with developing dances on different stages of forgiveness. We also taught them some ensemble sections and I remember coaching them on the ending movement of the piece where I suggested that as each person brought their arms down they lift their sternum at the same time thinking of their hearts opening. When I asked them to do that section again I was stunned to see the change and that each person in the room had taken that instruction to heart. I remember looking over at Newman and we nodded at each other. The women had gotten it and the result was very powerful.

We did not know any of the reasons the women were incarcerated. That is something one doesn’t ask. We were taken by how attentive they were and incredibly responsive to suggestions. It was a very diverse group of all ages and sizes. There was even a mother and daughter who were working together and really expressing how much they were glad to have this time together. Sometimes we would watch teachers observing through a small glass window at the door, and occasionally they would have tears in their eyes.

It was a pretty exhausting week as in addition to the daily work for two-and-a-half hours in the morning we were doing other afternoon workshops and a regular Avodah Dance Ensemble concert one evening in the minimum security side for women who wouldn’t be able to attend the Friday performances.

I seem to remember meeting with the women who would be performing with the company on Thursday afternoon as well as the morning so they would have a chance to run through The Forgiveness Piece from beginning to end. I also staged curtain calls at that time. Very rarely do I do individual curtain calls but this time I did and the women had great fun figuring out their unique way to enter, take a bow, and exit.

In next week’s blog I’ll share some memories of the actual performance. Before I close this blog, I want to mention that earlier that year York formed a Forgiveness Project Committee made up mainly of teachers in the school and put together a full program of guest speakers related to the week’s theme. It included a child of a Holocaust Survivor, a discussion about the “plight of the Native Americans as it relates to trust and forgiveness” and meditation related to Tibetan nuns and how the Tibetan people pray for their captors and continue “good works” in the hope that life will get better.

The School Committee also offered afternoon workshops that women could sign up for. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we led workshops. There were also other workshops with topics such as “Building Bridges,” “Is Forgiveness Possible?” and “Oral Storytelling.”

The Committee designed an excellent 8-sided brochure describing Avodah’s role and the goals for participants. In addition, the brochure gave the 400 women who were enrolled in the school program a chance to sign up for the guest speakers and the workshops. I am so glad that I saved the brochure, and below is the cover.

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