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.
When I saw that the National Dance Education Organization was having a panel discussion entitled “Celebrating Jewish American Contributions to the Field of Dance,” I marked the date (May 24th) on my calendar to make sure to zoom in! I missed the actual time, but it was recorded, so I watched a day later. I was half listening when one of the panel members, Danny Lewis, mentioned being a part of the Yiddish Theatre and said how much he enjoyed working with Felix Fibich! Wow… I had worked with Fibich too and hadn’t thought about that experience in years!
In the fall of 1961, a friend from Juilliard, Margaret Gettleman, recommended me to Fibich because she was participating in a children’s theatre production he was choreographing, and he needed another dancer. That’s how I became a wood sprite named Yok Tan in the Jewish Theatre for Children’s production of “To Wake the King.” Each Sunday from November to April we performed for a large audience of nearly 1,000 children between the ages of 8 to 14 at a theater on the Upper East Side.
The Jewish Theatre for Children was founded and directed by Samuel J. Citron. I have a vague memory of his role as director of “To Wake the King” and found it interesting to Google and learn a little bit about him. Born in Poland in 1908, he immigrated to the United States when he was thirteen. He became a lawyer in New York and then earned a Hebrew Teacher’s License and transitioned into Jewish Education full time. Employed by the Jewish Education Committee, he directed its School Dramatics Department and was chair of the Audio-Visual Materials Committee. For twenty years the theatre he founded presented programs for children each Sunday. He was also often the author of the plays, as was the case with “To Wake the King” which was based on an old legend that says King David is really not dead but asleep in a cave!
I must admit I don’t remember much about Felix Fibich’s choreography other than an emphasis on how we used our arms and hands as wood sprites, and I think some of it might have been improvised. I do remember it was great fun to put on the makeup and costume each Sunday and to receive payment for the performance! I seem to remember that we received $25 for each performance. That was pretty good considering it was 1961-62. We also received reviews in New York City papers.
Program that I saved in my scrapbook!Photo from my scrapbook taken by the photographer of the Jewish Theatre for Children, November 1961. Can you find me in the picture??
In my next blog I will share more about Felix Fibich. Danny’s presentation as part of the panel “Celebrating Jewish Americans Contributions to the Field of Dance” is motivation to learn more about the person I worked with 60 years ago.
I knew very little about Felix Fibich when I worked with him in the Children’s Theatre production I mentioned in my last blog. It has been great fun to learn about him now and to realize that he is a good role model for me as I am nearing my 80th birthday! In fact, it was when he was 83 that he had national visibility.
Marsha Leon describes this beautifully in an article she wrote shortly after his death in 2014 at the age of 96.
But it was in 2001, with the widely aired sidesplitting Cingular TV commercial, that Fibich got national visibility. Looking like a bald leprechaun in a black body-fitting leotard, he attempts to teach a group of 300 lb. football players how to perform plies (elegant balletic squats) and entrechats (a balletic feat that involves twice crossing your legs at the ankle in mid-air). He exhorts these gravity-bound Sumo size athletes “to strut- trut-strut like a peacock” to “walk like a camel in the desert” and “sway like a Redwood tree.” https://forward.com/schmooze/195544/remembering-felix-fibich-yiddish-choreographer-dan/
But that is not all that Fibich accomplished in his 80’s. In an essay which was based on a February 1997 interviewconducted by Judith Brin Ingber for the Oral History Project, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, New York City), Ingber wrote:
In the 1990s, by then in his middle eighties, Fibich experienced a renaissance as both a dancer and choreographer. He performed a lead role in the musical Planet Lulu [directed by the Belgian Michel Laub]7 which toured extensively throughout Europe in 1998 and 1999; and because of his acting skills and facility with French, Yiddish, Polish and English he acted simultaneously in all those languages in the 1998 full length French feature film, XXL. His homecoming to Poland as a dancer/teacher at the famed Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival in July 1996 resulted in a Polish television special about him and requests for him to appear again in Poland. He has also taught for the last decade under the auspices of KlezKamp at their annual New York Yiddish Folk Arts Program, their master teacher for “Interpreting Jewish Dance,” as part of their “Living Tradition Meetings with Our Masters.” http://www.jbriningber.com/Fibich_Apr_18_07.pdf
I highly recommend using the link to the full essay and interview if you are interested in learning more about Fibich!
To add to Judith’s article about things Fibich did in his 80’s, there were several other theatre performances, and appearances in Law and Order on television.
In learning about Fibich’s early life, several themes became apparent! He loved Jewish culture and Yiddish theatre, where he found ways to express himself. He also was consistently challenged by changes in the world happening around him, fleeing and escaping, often leaving everything behind!
He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, Poland. He began participating in theater in the 1930’s. He grew up with Polish as his main language, so in order to audition for the theater company he wanted to join, he learned Yiddish. It was in the theater company that he met Judith Berg, who was choreographing for the company and would later become his wife.
After Poland was invaded by the Germans, Mr. Fibich and his parents were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1940, Mr. Fibich escaped and traveled to Soviet-controlled Bialystok. It was there he reconnected with Judith Berg who was working in a Yiddish revue. They toured with the troupe and were married before returning to Poland when the war was over. His parents died in the Holocaust.
Once back in Poland, Fibich and Berg developed a dance program for orphaned children, before fleeing again — this time to Paris in 1949 when the Communists took over Poland. A year later they came to America where they toured, taught and choreographed, becoming an important part of Yiddish Theater in the U.S. over the next several decades.
In Daniel Lewis’ book A Life in Choreography and the Art of Dance, Danny describes working with Felix beginning when he was in High School in 1961. He continued working for him until 1967, both in the actual Yiddish Theater on the Lower East Side and also in classical concert performances as part of the Fibich Dance Company. Danny relates how Felix always went to the High School of Performing Arts and Juilliard to find and recruit dancers. Danny goes on to say that Fibich had a huge effect on many young dancers and actors, giving them employment and a salary in the early part of their careers.
It is indeed fun to see how one thing can lead to another. An email letting me know that the National Dance Education Association was doing a panel discussion on Jewish contributions to dance in the United States led me to hear Danny Lewis speak about Felix Fibich. Not only did it bring back recollections of time spent in a Children’s Theatre production but it led me to do research about him. I have a lot of respect for how Fibich conducted his life, and he is now a role model for me, reminding me of all the possibilities in the coming years! Thank you, Danny, for your presentation and your book, and thank you Felix Fibich for your passion and determination!
Felix Fibich being lifted by a football player in the Commercial he made for the Super Bowl!Print This Post
Front cover image, Daniel Lewis in La Malinche, choreography by Jose Limon, photograph by Eddie Effron, courtesy Daniel Lewis archives.
I found this book particularly fascinating and fun to read because it enriched and filled in gaps in my knowledge of modern dance from 1962 to 2011. I was active in the New York City dance scene some of the time from 1958 to 2004, and I knew, or knew of, or saw perform, many of the people that are a part of this book.
The format of the book is unique. It is jointly written by Daniel Lewis and Donna Krasnow. Each chapter begins with a paragraph written by Lewis, followed by information about that period in Danny’s life in a biography format drawing on “60 archival boxes of photos, programs, letters, newspaper articles, reviews, posters. And even old airline tickets.” Danny also gave Krasnow a list of people to contact and interview. Included in the book are sections called “Through His Friends Eyes.” Krasnow identifies the friend and how he/she knew Danny and then provides a direct passage from the friend.
As is pointed out in the preface, “[Danny’s] life covered every aspect of the field – dancer, teacher, choreographer, collaborator, artistic director, administrator, mentor and benefactor.” By the time I finished the book I had an inside look at all these facets of his life. While I have only briefly met Danny, I think at a Juilliard alumni event, I do remember watching him in class at Juilliard. I was a second-year student and he was a first-year student. The first year I had to take modern dance technique developed by Jose Limon and technique by Martha Graham, but the second year I did not. I was clearly a Graham person, but one day (and I am not sure why) I was watching the Limon class and was struck with how beautifully Danny moved across the floor in various combinations.
It was really interesting to learn that during his Juilliard student years:
Danny was teaching as a substitute for Jose when he couldn’t be there and demonstrating regularly for his classes, so Danny had a strange kind of in-between role as student and faculty. He was still friends with the students as well as having close ties with Martha Hill and Jose Limon. Finally in 1967, Danny was hired by Martha as a regular faculty member when he was only twenty-three years old.
Krasnow describes in the preface how she took classes with Danny, and the importance of his unique approach to teaching the Limon technique. She describes his gift so clearly, and I quote:
He situated the technique in a larger vision of Limon as the choreographer, the musician, and the artist. We were learning exquisitely gorgeous movement phrases with intricate rhythms, precarious balances, and complex multilimbed coordinations, but all the while, Danny was expressing in analysis and imagery the principles of the work: fall and recovery, suspension, opposition, isolation, and always weight and breath . . . .
After reading about Danny’s style of teaching, I certainly wondered if I wouldn’t have liked Limon technique much more if I had had classes with Danny. How fortunate for Juilliard students who came just a year or so after me, that Martha Hill recognized Danny’s talents and had him teaching!
It was also in his first year at Juilliard that he began touring with the Limon Company. Danny shares that “the experience of touring, performing and having dances created on me by a master artist shaped me not only as a dancer, but as a choreographer and person.” In this section of the book we learn a lot about Jose Limon and the company. I have loved seeing a number of Limon’s works, particularly There is A Time, TheMoor’s Pavone, and Missa Brevis, so I found this section right on target. Danny became Artistic Director of the Limon Company from 1972–1974.
One of the most helpful parts of the book is a chart that gives the timeline of Danny’s life from his birth to the present. Since the book isn’t written in strict chronological order, it is helpful to refer back to this.
From 1987 to 2011 Danny was the Dean of Dance at New World School of the Arts (NWSA). I really loved reading about, and have huge admiration and respect for, the innovative way that Danny developed the dance program at the NWSA. It was very interesting to read how he slowly built the program. He would re-evaluate the curriculum each year and see ways to improve it. One unique aspect was that the school always kept a “broad range of dance styles from various cultures.” The program began first as a high school and then developed into a college program with its first graduating class of ten students in 1992.
Among the students who studied at NWSA is Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Battle’s section on “Through His Friends Eyes” was one of my favorites. Battle reports, “Danny told me that one day I should have my own company.” Indeed Battle did have his own company, and now he leads one of the major dance companies in the United States. Battle also shares:
When I returned to NWSA to set a work … sitting in the office talking with him was like watching a circus act. Danny would be doing multiple things at once – on the phone, solving problems and making things possible. I came to appreciate this quality in my own life, the job of juggling many balls at once . . . .
When Battle spoke at Danny’s retirement ceremony, he said, “I can only quote the words of Patrick Henry, ‘I know of no other way of judging the future but by the past,’ and so I seriously doubt Danny is retiring.”
As a friend of Danny’s on Facebook, I can see this is true. Danny continues to play an active role in the dance community in a variety of different ways.
My goal in this review is to point out a few of the parts of the book that strongly resonated with me and to encourage you to read the book for yourself. I have left out much about the time Daniel directed his own company and many important people in the dance community such as Anna Sokolow that he worked with or the numerous things he did while at NWSA . Learn more by ordering the book and by following some of the links at the bottom of this blog. The book is easily available via Amazon. I enjoyed reading it on my Kindle here in Costa Rica. Thank you, Danny, for your outstanding contribution to dance and for making the documentation of your life work available for the dance community!
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