Tag: Jeannine Otis

Bravo’s in California!!

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go"

It’s 1997 and “Let My People Go” is in its 9th year of touring.  We are preparing for a tour to Northern California and the cantor who has been singing with us is not able to continue so I need to find someone new.  The voice I keep hearing in my head chanting the Hebrew text belongs not to a cantor, but to Jeannine Otis.  Hum… that would be different– having an African American artist do the cantor’s role.  Why not!!

As mentioned in a previous blog, we first knew Jeannine both from her performance in Faith Journey, and from her work as an evaluator with the Cultural Arts Program that gave us a grant to run a program for children living in NYC temporary housing.  After that first grant, Jeannine accompanied one of our performances of Negro Spirituals, and we danced — with her accompaniment — as part of an AIDS memorial service at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, where she was (and is still) the Musical Director.  As Kezia noted in a 1997 Avodah Newsletter, “the whole company had fallen in love with Jeannine’s voice, her poise, her sincerity, her soul and her striking lack of ego.”

I asked Jeannine how her Hebrew was and if she was interested in joining the “Let My People Go” cast.  She said she was good at learning different languages for singing and that she would be willing to be tutored.  The first tutor didn’t work out but the second one did and Henry Resnick did a super job coaching Jeannine with the Hebrew text.  As rehearsal got underway I couldn’t have been more thrilled with Jeannine as part of the cast.

Our first performance was in Santa Rosa on a Sunday afternoon in February co-sponsored by Congregation Beth Ami and Community Baptist Church.  Either the day before or that morning we went over to Community Baptist Church to lead a workshop with teens from both congregations.  The leaders of the two congregations couldn’t have been more different.  One preached boldly in a vibrant African America Baptist style while the Rabbi from Congregation Beth Ami was quiet and reserved.  They got along beautifully and we noticed that later in the day when the Rabbi spoke before our concert he was bolder and livelier.  Fun to see how we can learn from each other.

A packed audience from both congregations watched with intensity and enthusiasm and rapidly rose to its feet as soon as “Let My People Go” ended.  The six-member cast was superb.  Newman Baker, Kezia Gleckman Hayman, Carla Norwood, Jeannine Otis, Mark Walcott, and Lisa Danette Watson blended beautifully with each other, and the bravo’s and cheers they received were well deserved.

The Full Cast. Photo by Tom Scott.

We had a few days off before our next performance so we toured the wine country and then a few of us did mud baths at Calistoga.  Carla, in a memory of that Avodah tour, wrote of “sitting on the cliffs above the Pacific Coast at Point Reyes National Park, a detour from the nerve-wracking drive along California’s Highway 1.” (Kezia also remembers that she and Carla decided to explore some of San Francisco on foot, armed with a simple local street map.  They were proud of themselves, until they discovered that the map failed to indicate that some of their chosen streets were so steep they had staircases built into the sidewalks!)

Jeannine and Carla at Point Reyes National Park. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.

Lisa doing an attitude on the path at Point Reyes. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.

Other performances on the tour included Hillel sponsored programs at Berkeley and Stanford,and then Friday night at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, with the Jones Memorial Church presenting traditional music of South Africa and the African Diaspora.  I remember the spacing at Sherith Israel was challenging as the “bema” was narrow and yet with just an afternoon rehearsal the company made it their own. Cantor Martin Feldman and Jeannine sang together at one point adding another dimension.

Cantor Martin Feldman and Jeannine in rehearsal. Photo by Tom Scott.

I could (but won’t) go on and on about all the amazing performances and talented dancers and cantors who shared their gifts in this piece, and the communities that chose to come together to sponsor a performance, often with accompanying workshops or Question and Answer sessions.  I will mention that Jeannine continued to perform this piece with us after the California tour.  She had learned the Hebrew so well, and performed so beautifully, that an audience member once asked whether African American cantors are common.

Newman at the San Francisco airport before we headed home.

Photo: Kezia Gleckman Hayman.

Here are links to some excerpts of Jeannine in the Cantor’s role from a performance she did with us at a church outside of Chicago.

Excerpt 1: Moses you are standing on Holy Ground

Excerpt 2: “M’Chamocha” and “Hallelujah”

Excerpt 3:  End of the piece: Spiritual, “Go Down Moses”

To learn more about Jeannine visit her website.

 

Print This Post Print This Post

 

Recent Blogs

 

Make a Change: Collaboration with Community Members

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go"

Louis and I wanted to do another collaboration together and this time create a piece that would have space for community members to participate in both the choreographic process and the performance.  As we toured with Let My People Go throughout the United States and saw the enthusiasm with which communities were collaborating in presenting a performance we began to wonder what it would be like if they became part of the performance, creating a piece that engaged both the company and community members.

We had created a piece on one of our tours to the suburbs of Chicago in 1997 when the company worked with youth from New Faith Baptist Church in Matteson, IL and B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, IL, spending the afternoon together.  Using the friendship between Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as motivation, the piece, involving about 15 young dancers from the congregations, was titled Stand Up Take Action.

This experience showed us a beginning path to engage community with the company and so as the tenth anniversary of Let My People Go was nearing in the fall of 1998, we began work on a new collaboration which Louis and I called Make a Change.  Rehearsals got underway with dancers Beth Millstein, Tanya Alexander, Jessica Losinski  and Mark Walcott with original musical accompaniment by Newman Taylor Baker and Jeannine Otis.  We were all used to working together and so things progressed quickly and smoothly as we established set choreography with places where community members would join us.

Our goal was to create a piece about the energy it takes to make a difference – to explore the idea of change, with joy and celebration, and ask participants not what causes they supported, but rather what kind of energy is needed to make a change.

Performances were planned for January of 1999, first in Brooklyn’s Park Slope Jewish Center, then in Staten Island, and the official opening at our home base of Hebrew Union College. In Brooklyn six members of the Brooklyn Brownstone Coalition danced with the company in the piece.  The Staten Island performance was sponsored by Temple Israel and was held at the Music Hall of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, billed as a community celebration in Dance and Song for Dr. Martin Luther King, on Sunday evening, January 10th.  An earlier announcement in the Staten Island Advance invited community members to participate.  They did not need professional training. They just had to be comfortable moving, and willing to improvise.  They also had to be available to attend two workshops earlier that week and the dress rehearsal at 3 p.m. on the performance day.

We were thrilled at the diverse turnout and enthusiasm of the 16 adult participants.  The workshops were great fun to lead and I found myself dancing up a storm too.

Community members at a rehearsal. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.

JoAnne demonstrating hambone. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.

Kezia in the Avodah Newsletter described our process:

First Louis and JoAnne built a structure for the piece, setting choreography on company members and leaving gaps for community participants. The dancers collaborated in creating their movements, and musicians Newman Taylor Baker andJeannine Otis created the entire musical score under Louis’s direction. Short phrases of movement from set choreography were then selected for teaching to community casts.  In a few workshops bringing together volunteers from a variety of groups in a given local community, JoAnne coached participants through guided improvisations to find their own movements expressing their heartfelt desire to “make a change.”

Kezia and Mark teaching a combination to community members. Photo by JoAnne Tucker.

We were also very fortunate to have a grant from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The cultural challenge grant was matched by 90 individual contributors and the official opening of the piece was on January 28that Hebrew Union College.

Additional grants related to the project followed. The Tribune New York Foundation funded our return to Brooklyn’s Midwood High School to work with 11thgraders in a combined English and Social Studies curriculum focusing on ideas related to the new piece.  We also conducted workshops and performed for youth from temporary housing in Pleasantville, New York in a program coordinated by Mara Mills, Director of the Newman Theatre at the YW-YWHA in Pleasantville.

Later in the year we received a grant from The Irving Caesar Lifetime Trust. Lyricist and songwriter Irving Caesar (1895-1996) was known for his lyrics to “Tea for Two,” “Swanee” and the show No, No Nanette.  This grant enabled us to conduct a series of six workshops at two different New York City public high schools, culminating in the students’ joining the company in a performance at their school.

Just before writing this blog I watched a video of the Staten Island performance of Make a Change. Unfortunately the quality is very bad so I won’t be sharing it online. But let me describe a few things that struck me as I watched. First of all for this performance, the piece opens with Louis and me on stage.  We have a brief discussion about the work and then as we shout together, “Change!” the piece begins.  The 16 community dancers are wonderful, showing confidence in their parts, and working sometimes as a complete group and other times in small groups of four. When Newman first enters it is with a bold jump into the center of the stage and he plays “hambone” – usinghis hands on various parts of his body to create rhythms and different sounds.  The community dancers join him at the end.  Later we find Newman participating with the dancers, helping Mark to lift another dancer.

A key movement phrase to show determination to make a change is a series of small weighted jumps in a second position plié (the position shown in the photo led by Kezia and Mark).  The community members later join the company members in this phrase.  Louis set some wonderful balletic moments and even a bit of jazzy Broadway-show style movement.  Jeannine playfully enters and moves around the stage with original music she composed to the phrase “make a change.” In all, it is a fun, lively, interactive 10-minute piece.

Print This Post Print This Post

Recent Blogs