dance liturgy – Mostly Dance

Three Emails Related to Central Synagogue

JoAnne Tucker / October 3, 2020 / dance liturgy

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).

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Holding Compassion in our Hearts

JoAnne Tucker / July 10, 2020 / dance liturgy, Dance Midrash, Dances on Biblical Women

It is with mixed feelings that I begin to write this blog because it is about a piece that I was so proud to have in Avodah’s repertory, and yet today I realize, as with many other pieces I choreographed between 1972 and 2000, a lot of my thinking has changed. It is also a strange day outside with no sun and very heavy fog. I am feeling weighed down. A bit of inspiration, much needed at the moment, came earlier today when I listened to a presentation by Christiana Figueres that is part of Awakened Action 2020 Resource Page at Upaya Zen Center. It’s entitled “Transforming Climate and Global Realities” and she shared the program with Jane Fonda. Among the things she spoke of were 6^ththings we can learn from COVID 19 that are very relevant to all the problems we are facing today. One of those is the success of feminine leadership. The countries led by women, with New Zealand being a prime example, are much better off. She contributes this to the fact that women are better listeners, are humble and are guided by collective wisdom. This certainly resonates a lot with me and perhaps in some small way was hovering in my mind back in 1984 when I created a piece for Avodah based on the M’Chamocha prayer. Reflecting back on the piece today, I can see some seeds there that I can relate to.

There are many places on the Internet to learn about the M’Chamocha prayer so I am not going to spend much time writing about that. Instead I want to share that the reason I decided to create this piece (which could be danced both in Shabbat services and in concerts) was that the prophetess Miriam is associated with the prayer and related text, and Exodus 15:20 says Miriam “took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.” I was constantly looking to know more about biblical women at the time, and of course how appealing it was that the word “dance” is connected with Miriam here. But as many people have written, there are elements in the surrounding biblical text that are troubling. Particularly that the Israelites are celebrating while the Egyptians are drowning in the sea. Fortunately there is a midrash that says God told the angels to stop dancing and celebrating, as the Egyptians are “my children” too and they are drowning. This midrash inspired the middle section of the piece, where the women show compassion to each other and for the Egyptians, and that is the section I can still relate to today.

The piece was commissioned by Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, NJ with music composed by Cantor Deborah Bedor, then a cantor on Long Island. It was especially meaningful to be working with a woman composer on this piece. Later she would compose another piece for us based on the wedding ceremony.

What I remember most about this piece was how much I enjoyed the beautiful dancing of the three women. I loved the beautiful interpretation given by the many women who had roles in this trio through the years. For me the heart of the piece is compassion, and through compassion an appropriate kind of appreciation of freedom can come, not a celebration when someone else is dying. More than ever, leadership with compassion is the bottom line. May each of us hold compassion in our hearts as we struggle through our various challenges.

Please continue to scroll down and see some of my favorite pictures of the M’chamocha in rehearsal. One rehearsal outside by a lake and another while on tour in the San Francisco area.

These two pictures were taken when we were “in-residence” for a summer program and had some free time. I thought the lake made a beautiful setting to run the piece.

These two photos of Kezia were taken by Tom Scott in a rehearsal (onstage) of the piece.

Biblical quote that inspired the piece:

“Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing” (Exodus 15:20).

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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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