JoAnne Tucker shares her experiences in dance from directly a modern dance company to leading movement activities for women in prison and domestic violence survivors.
Over this High Holiday season I received three emails from three friends living in three different places (Boston, Santa Fe, Poughkeepsie) referring me, sometimes with a link, to what was happening at Central Synagogue in New York City. The first one was a link to a beautiful tribute by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I loved watching it for several reasons. First of all I remember Angela when she was Associate Rabbi and Cantor at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, having been ordained as a cantor in 1999 and as a rabbi in 2001. She led services for students in the religious school and I remember one of the last things I did at Westchester Reform Temple was participate with the Avodah Dance Ensemble in a service she was leading. Now she is the Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue, one of only a few women serving as leaders of a major United States synagogue. Even though she has been the Senior Rabbi since 2014, this was the first time that I saw her in action, and I loved the meaningful and beautiful way she honored RBG. Here’s a link to watch it.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl leading a tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsberg on Rosh Hashanah at Central Synagogue (screenshot).
The second email sent me links to where I could watch the High Holiday services. This was from a friend now living in Boston who had once been a member of Central and was so glad that she could stream the services. If you are a regular reader of this blog you know from the recent blog on 9/11 that I have moved away from attending services and find my spiritual life in meditating and exploring Buddhism. I did appreciate my friend sending me the links, and in doing research for this blog I learned that back in 2013 Central Synagogue was streaming their services with over 20,000 viewers from all around the world. This holiday season 49K watched the Kol Nidre service on YouTube!
The third email was from Kezia, editor of this blog. She, too, remembers Angela from Avodah experiences, and through Central’s taped services, Kezia has been appreciating Angela’s extraordinarily insightful, beautiful and moving leadership for some time. She had just streamed the Yizkor service, which included dance! Well that got my attention and so I decided to check it out. I was glad I did. Twenty minutes of dance was woven into the opening “legacy” part of the afternoon service which retells, as described by Rabbi Ari Lorge, the “Jewish story from creation to redemption.” Included in this twenty minutes was reference to the traditional Avodah service of ancient times when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to present an offering. That service has particular meaning for me as that was the name I chose for the dance company I directed for years.
The twenty-five minutes with narrative and song from Central Synagogue’s clerical and musical staff was performed by Jonah Bokaer. Rabbi Lorge mentioned in his introduction that Central was taking advantage of the open space that they had created for the virtual services. And he noted that dance has been a part of Jewish tradition since King David danced before the Ark. Of course there are lots of other references that could have been used. The mood was set and a clearly strong technical dancer weaved through the space, narrative and song. It was a very sincere performance and I particularly liked the moments when he moved boldly through space. Unfortunately Jonah was dressed in black and we often lost a lot of the movement as he blended into the shadows and poor lighting in various areas.
Jonah’s background is quite interesting as he combined being a member of the Merce Cunningham Company from 2000 to 2007 with a degree in Visual and Media Studies at the New School. He has won numerous awards and grants and is a frequent choreographer for Robert Wilson. I watched a few videos of Jonah on YouTube and was struck by how much more interesting the movement was than what I saw in the service at Central Synagogue. I hope he will continue to explore using his talent as part of services and will bring his strongest creative talent to that setting. Here’s a link that is currently on line to watch three minutes of Jonah’s dancing at Central.
Always fun to open emails and get some surprises, as I did in the past few days.
Jonah Bokaer in the Yizkor Service at Central Synagogue (screenshot).
I had planned to write this week about Avodah’s international tours, and workshops I led outside of the U.S. But as I was thinking about that I became curious about how many U.S. states Avodah had performed in, and what I remember about touring in the U.S. So for this blog and the next I am going to write about our domestic touring, in general terms, and include a few fun pictures, before turning my attention to international trips.
First of all, the Avodah Dance Ensemble visited 29 of the 50 United States, either performing or giving workshops — usually doing both. Some states we visited on just one tour and others with multiple tours. For me touring was one of the fun parts of directing the company and I kept in mind several things related to touring as I directed the company.
I made sure we continued always as a small company that could fit into one car or at least a minivan. I owned a minivan and we often rented one when we flew on tour. I purposely kept it that way for two main reasons: economic in that we would only need to rent one vehicle when necessary, and my own personal minivan would work when possible; and personal/professional in that having only 5 to 7 personalities to work with (that included me) made sense to me. I also made sure we were never gone more than about 10 to 12 days. Even when we toured to the West Coast we left, for example, on a Thursday, had two weekends away and returned on a Monday! On our long tours to places like California and Florida we often had several full days off when we could sightsee and relax.
So what was it like. When it was a one-day tour and I was using my own car we had a meeting place. That place depended on where we were off to. If I had to drive through NYC (from New Jersey) then the meeting place was often in the West Village by the Washington Square Subway stop so that it was easy for the dancers to get to. If I wasn’t going through the city and we were heading west or into South Jersey then we most often met close to where I lived, particularly when I lived in Jersey City. I don’t remember any incidents where anyone was more than a little late. That is in sharp contrast to some times when we were taking an airplane.
Two particular times stand out when we boarded a plane and not all the dancers had arrived in a timely fashion at the airport. For one flight to Sarasota, Florida one of the dancers simply wasn’t there when they started boarding the flight. So I left her ticket with an airline agent! We boarded and clearly other passengers became aware that we were missing someone because when the dancer arrived at the last moment just before they were getting ready to close the doors, most of the plane applauded her. I don’t remember why she was late.
Then there was another trip when the percussionist (not our regular Newman who was always very prompt) did not make the plane at all. Again I left his ticket and he did arrive on a later flight. There was also a time when there was a blackout in NYC and there was an element of suspense about whether everyone would get to the airport on time, but if my memory serves me correctly we all did.
Need I say these situations cause a certain level of anxiety, and I am so glad to report that over a nearly thirty-year period of touring those are the only incidents I have to share.
Now, once on tour, what is it like! Well for short day trips we generally spent the day in the facility rehearsing, with one food trip out unless we had requested food be provided for us. Grocery stories were a favorite for those day trips because we could each find something there to our liking to take back. The rest of the day was spent adjusting the dance pieces to the performance space. Often it was easy for spacing when we were performing in a theatre because the surface was flat and it was just determining which wings to go in and out. The challenge there was often setting lighting. Since Avodah didn’t have a stage manager, it was up to me to work with the lighting technician or crew in the theatre both determining what lighting was available and setting it for each piece. My guideline was to keep it as simple as possible yet have it be effective for setting the moods of the pieces. The most memorable lighting situation I ever had was in an outdoor festival in Long Island when it rained fairly hard and I was sitting under an umbrella in the rain in a lighting booth out in a field, calling the cues for the performance. Maybe we had one or two people in the audience and the dancers luckily were on a protected stage. (Kezia says it was one man, there were puddles on stage, and the dancers were terrified I would be electrocuted.)
For both theater performances and when we integrated dance into the Friday night service I usually ran the sound.
Picture taken at CAJE conference (Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education) where I am running the sound and the dancers are performing on a stage.
Beth Millstein ironing a costume for a Friday night service while on tour. Avodah was an ensemble onstage and off; everyone ironed, mended, hauled and helped as needed.
A great deal of the time on a Friday afternoon we were preparing to integrate three pieces into the Friday night Shabbat service. That meant spacing the three pieces on the bema (raised platform where the service is led). Now that could be a real challenge for several reasons: first of all, the bema usually was not just one level – often there were steps that led to different levels; second, its shape was not at all like the rehearsal studio we were used to; and third, it often took a lot of persuading to get most of the furniture off the bema so we would have maximum space for dancing.
Kezia (left) and Deborah Hanna on a break on tour. We were rehearsing for a Friday night service and the preschool playground provided a perfect place for a break.
Each of these three reasons presented its own unique challenge and each had memorable moments for me. First of all, levels. I was always amazed at how the dancers could quickly adjust to so many different levels and manage literally to dance up and down the stairs. One challenging bema was in South Orange, New Jersey and the dancers in the company in the early 80’s did a most amazing job with the many steps. While most of the company had gone back to the city after the Friday night service, Rick Jacobs (then in rabbinic school) and I stayed to lead a workshop with some teenagers. We were no longer in the main sanctuary but rather in a smaller chapel. As I was talking and demonstrating I managed to slip and fall down the maybe two steps. The next thing I knew, Rick was falling down the steps, because he said as he fell, if the director falls then the dancer follows suit. The kids laughed and I felt like a total idiot having watched the way the dancers negotiated the steps the night before!!
Irregular shapes were more common than not, and particularly challenging were long skinny bema’s where the dancers had to figure out how to negotiate in 6 feet what was designed to be done in 18 ft. They did an amazing job. Sometimes they made different adjustments in performance than were planned in rehearsal. I never got upset because they consistently found clever ways to adjust to each other. I was the only person aware and loved to see how they solved these last-minute, new, on-the-spot choreographic changes.
Ah… getting the rabbis to move the furniture for a Friday night service could be challenging. Sometimes, especially on return visits, it was easy but the first time could be difficult. Unfortunately, I had lots of experience with that, starting with the very first performance of In Praise before there was even a formal dance company. It took major negotiations to get most of the furniture moved and the Rabbi’s podium was never moved. A few years later when a Rabbi announced that the podium was not moveable, Rick Jacobs (still in Rabbinic school) and I simply showed the Rabbi how the podium could easily be moved over to the side and the wires adjusted so the mic worked from there. The Rabbi wrote, in an evaluation to the Jewish Welfare Board that had arranged the booking, that the director, JoAnne Tucker, was quite professional but aggressive, in seeing that the company got what they needed. I laughed when the evaluation was shared, knowing exactly what was being referred to. The Rabbi and that congregation did become a regular booker of Avodah and we returned to participate in a Friday night service for nine years and never had a problem getting the furniture moved again.
Toward the end of the time I was touring, in around 2002, we had the most challenging Rabbi situation. The Rabbi felt sure the best place for us to perform was in the back of the sanctuary, with the congregation looking over their shoulders to see us, because it was a level, large space. Well that was totally ridiculous as it was clear no one would see any of the dancing. I must have spent over an hour negotiating with him, and it was only when I quoted scripture to him and promised that we would not go up to the most sacred space where the Torahs were, that he relented and I was able to stage the repertory on the other part of the bema so that the congregation could see us. It amused me quite a bit that here it was thirty years after the earliest performance and I was still negotiating with Rabbis to be able to dance on the bema. It’s no wonder that I began to feel it was easier to work in prisons!!
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