forgiveness - Mostly Dance

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 performing space was anything but ideal, basically the intersection of two hallways. The longer one provided an area for the audience while the shorter two hallways to the right and left served as places to enter and exit. The women gathered before, all showing up and expressing a typical nervousness that individuals new to performing often have. The fact that all 24 women had shown up and were participating in the culminating event was itself very positive as we had been told that not completing things and dropping out was often a pattern of women in prison.

The lovely program that was made at York indicates that the performance began with an introduction by me, followed by a reading by Wally Lamb. Wally had been leading writing workshops at York for a number years before our residency. He edited and helped to get published two volumes of the women’s writing. The second book he wrote, I Know This Much is True, has an excellent passage on forgiveness that we were using in our workshops and so he read that section before the piece began.

Both performances went extremely well and I am pleased to share some of the following feedback:

From Alice Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Southeastern CT:

[A]s the music began, a transformation occurred and the hours of practice, discipline and determination paid off. They were a precision team, they were proud of themselves and they were beautiful to watch. The audience exploded with appreciation and encouragement… It was a triumph.”

From Steven Slosberg in The Day, a paper serving the New London, CT area, June 2, 2002:

Forgiveness danced its way through the York Correctional Institution in Niantic a few weeks ago, spellbinding those who beheld it and moving those who delivered it to seek a return.

Joe Lea, who had arranged the residency, wrote about an article in Liberation in December of 2003 about various “Art Programs in Prison.” Here is how the Avodah residency was described:

One of our most profound experiences resulting from the incorporation of the arts into the school curriculum was with an artistic residency program offered in 2002 by Avodah Dance Ensemble, a New York City dance company. Avodah’s residency was the first of its kind for York CI and only one of a few in the history of the Connecticut Department of Correction.

The incarcerated population was focused, dedicated and willing to explore the workshops and programs offered by Avodah, our staff and volunteers. One member of the custody staff noted that the week was free of disciplinary incidents at the school. Additionally, the impact of the program was full of life-long lessons in cooperation, commitment, collaboration and accomplishment. (A 65-year-old inmate suffering from lung cancer who participated in the dance program pulled me aside and said “Mr. Lea, I will remember this for the rest of my life, Thank you.”)

A Supervising Psychologist at York sent a Memorandum to Joe Lea in which he shared:

It was a moving experience and a marvelous realization of the theme of the project – forgiveness. The reviews I got from the women who participated and from those I spoke to who had been part of the audience were uniformly glowing. If I may offer a personal observation, it seemed to me as I watched the performance that both audience and performers were transported; it seemed for the time that we were all free and not in a prison.

A handwritten, two-page letter written by an inmate who participated in the program gave us more insight into the impact our residency had:

Being able to work with and later perform with Avodah was truly an honor. It was a privilege and an opportunity that I never dreamed would be available to me, prior to my incarceration, let alone imprisoned in a facility where encouragement of reconciliation, forgiveness and respect for others is not fostered.

You and the ensemble accepted each one of us as we were, never questioning our past, approaching us selflessly, gently guiding us to a deeper place inside of us. It was as if, each one of us were being held and uplifted to whatever place we needed to be at, at that particularly moment in time. I sometimes felt as though we were all blocks of clay, hard and packaged with labeling put on us by members of society that have never taken the time to get to know us. Avodah took each block of clay and nurtured it with warmth, enthusiasm, love and equality.

I know that I found it extremely liberating to be able to “express” myself in an artistic medium that spoke for itself. I wasn’t questioned about the movements I chose to do, none of the women were. We were free to forgive whatever, whomever we wanted to, without any scrutiny from anyone.

The impact the residency had on me was also beyond all expectations. I think it touched all four of the dancers and Newman as well. I wondered if the week had been a unique experience. Would we find a similar reaction if we returned or if we did a residency at another women’s correctional facility? Over the next two years I discovered that we had similar kinds of very positive experiences in two return visits to York and residencies at the Delores J. Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in New Castle, Delaware. In the next blog I will describe more deeply the impact of the week at York.

Cover of a thank you note we received from York. Photo was taken by
one of the women at York who was learning how to do graphics.

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Tag: forgiveness

The Forgiveness Project – Its Beginning

Beyond All Expectations: York – Part II