Tag: JoAnne Tucker

A Comedy Tonight

JoAnne Tucker / / Uncategorized

As Avodah began to get more concert bookings I thought it would be fun to add some humor to our very serious repertory based on liturgy, biblical stories and Holocaust poetry. So in the spring of 1980 I added two new pieces inspired by weddings.  One of those pieces, Three Brides and a Cow, inspired by French Painter Marc Chagall, was short-lived in the repertory.  Both the music by Irving Fleet and my choreography were not up to their usual standards.  The costumes, however, created by Tallahassee artist Stuart Riodan, were outstanding.

The second piece, Mother of the Bride, did work and stayed in the repertory for quite a few years.  Our daughter Julie had had her Bat Mitzvah recently and that had influenced the piece as I saw how much planning can go into an event and how easy it could be to forget about the significance of the moment and in a frenzy just get caught up in all the details.  So in Mother of the Bride I took things to the extreme, focusing on a mother taking on an extremely strong role.  

A review in 1983 in the Montgomery, AL paper describes it wonderfully:

Mother of the Bride was a very funny piece with Ms. Mindlin as the harried mother trying to organize her daughter’s wedding.  The other characters were Ms Behrendt as the bewildered bride standing in roller skates as activity swirled around her and Ms. Rodin as a bridesmaid.  The mother literally rolled the bride off stage to her wedding after she had been dressed in her finery and a bouquet stuffed in her hands.

(Although the bride is on roller skates, she is stuck in one spot throughout the whole piece, unable to move independently, because her mother controls all the action.)  The music was Purcell and the mother’s costume actually came from my own closet.  A long party dress I had worn was altered to fit the various dancers who played the part of the mother! (Kezia, who often played the part of the mother, notes that when she was married and the organist asked if she wanted the familiar Purcell piece played at the ceremony, she shouted, “NO” and then had to explain her unusually strong reaction.)            

A year later I added a piece I called Noshing to fun Klezmer music. It was all about eating and talking.  There are quite a few different definitions for the Yiddish word to nosh.  They range from eating food enthusiastically or greedily to having a snack between meals.   A trio for three dancers, the piece opens with two dancers greeting each other in a rather catty way… looking each other up and down, with one dancer even checking the label in the other dancer’s dress.  A third dancer joins them.  Soon they are at a buffet table filling their plates with food.  One dancer is attempting to resist the temptation of filling her plate with too much food. Three chairs are upstage center. The dancers soon sit down and then alternate between pantomiming eating and talking.  These movements usually amuse the audience quite a bit.As Noshing continues we see two dancers busily having a “conversation” in dance highlighted by fancy footwork and then one dancer does a solo conveying a very gossipy tale. It’s a fun piece filled with more balletic steps than usual for me.  I found two videos in my Avodah collection and it was great fun to watch a performance in Omaha, NE and another outdoor one in Great Neck, NY – two different casts both successfully and playfully

(l to r) Nancy and Muriel Melacon in the chatty duet in Noshing.  Photo by Jim Williams.
My apologies to Nancy – and Anita, below – as I can’t remember their last names and don’t seem to have any reviews or programs which help me.
(l to r) Nancy and Anita in Noshing. Photo by Jim Williams. 

In the fall of 1982, Rick Jacobs suggested doing a piece honoring three Jewish comedians: Woody Allen, Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce.  The choreography was mainly Rick’s, with some suggestions from me. The piece received a preview performance on our January tour to Alabama.  In the Woody Allen section, a beautiful female dancer seated in a chair downstage right totally ignores his attempts to flirt. The dancer leaves and Rick pretends the chair becomes the “beautiful lady” and dances with the chair.  As the section ends he is on the floor as the dancer returns and for the first time takes notice of him – on the floor, much to his dismay.

Abandoning a sweater and putting on a  jacket and nose glasses Rick becomes Groucho.  I particularly enjoyed this section with his bold Groucho strides.  Soon a dancer portraying Mrs. Dumont enters.  They dance together in a sarcastic way and at the end Rick carries her off much like a sack over his shoulder.  

Luckily I had a video of these two sections done in a performance at a JCC in New Jersey which helped to refresh my memory.  Alas I don’t have any video of the Lenny Bruce section and I don’t remember it performed very often.

With the rest of the repertory being so serious these three comedies added a new dimension and gave the audience a chance to laugh.  

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Dance and Art Together

JoAnne Tucker / / Art, Movement Workshops

In 2003 when my husband and I were thinking about moving from the New York area and I was becoming aware that I no longer had new goals for the dance company, I treated myself to classes at The Art Students League on 57thStreet.  Later I’ll write more about my beginning studies in art.  I knew it would be important to keep creative energy going in my life. Today I am excited to share how dance and art came together.  Just a few weeks ago (on Saturday, January 12th), I led a movement workshop at the Community Art Gallery here in Santa Fe.  It came about as a result of having a painting in the show “Exquisite Corpse.”  The show was for the 10thanniversary of the gallery, and to be eligible to participate, you had to have been juried into one of their themed exhibitions.

A floral painting of mine had been in an earlier show so I emailed back the form saying I wanted to participate.  

The painting that I did for “Viva Flores” in 2013 that made me eligible to participate in the 10thAnniversary Show “Exquisite Corpse.”

The program for the 10thanniversary show describes the intent and motivation:

Exquisite Corpse is an historic parlor game in which participants create one of three components of a figure drawing: head, torso and legs.  130 participating artists created one of those distinct sections.  When assembled together, these sections will create an exhibit that unites the disparate parts into singular figures.  Each artist’s section is priced individually at $150, and buyers have the opportunity to create their own combinations. ….. What better way to celebrate ten years of building innovative programming hand-in-hand with the community than to have a decade of artists together build a collective work of art.

When I got the return email in the spring, saying that I had gotten the body part of the “head,” I did a big sigh and was glad that I had all summer to work on it.  The painting wouldn’t be due at the gallery until the beginning of October.  Our instructions were that the piece had to measure 30” wide by 10” high. Well at least that gave me room to put things around the head!  I am not good at portrait drawing even though I did do a 5-month program in Santa Fe with the outstanding teacher Anthony Ryder in 2009.  In fact it was during those 5 months that Murray and I fell in love with Santa Fe and decided that we wanted to move here and make it our permanent year-round home.   

OK… since I was good at flowers I would do a self-portrait surrounding my head with tulips.  I had just returned from a spring trip to New York City and had been admiring all the beautiful displays of tulips, particularly in lower Manhattan near where the ferry from Jersey City arrived. Since I was staying in Jersey City and taking the ferry in daily I had lots of opportunity to wander through the display and take photographs.  

Slowly over the summer I developed the oil painting, particularly challenged with the self-portrait and loving doing the tulips.  I dropped it off at the gallery thinking, “Well at least I completed the assignment even if it wasn’t very good.” They had rescheduled the opening and Murray and I had reservations at Monument Valley, a place we had long wanted to visit, and so we missed the opening.

The view from our room in Monument Valley.


A week later, after returning from Monument Valley, I got an email from the gallery saying my painting had sold.   Wow… I was totally surprised.   Murray was busy in his office and I went bounding in asking if he wanted to go see the show and go to lunch afterwards. We agreed and I had an hour or so before we would leave.  For fun I googled the phrase “Exquisite Corpse” and the most amazing dance interpretation consisting of 42 choreographers, most of whom I was familiar with, came up.  (One of the choreographers was former Avodah dancer Sidra Bell.)  Each choreographer creates a phrase of about 10 seconds and the next choreographer opens his/her phrase with the last movement of the previous choreographer’s work.  The video on You Tube was great fun and extremely well made. 

When I got to the gallery I was thrilled with how Rod Lambert, the Community Gallery Manager, had put together the show.  He was the one who selected which heads would go with which torsos, and with which feet, and he had done an amazing job.  I was thrilled with how my head was arranged with two other pieces.  

My self-portrait and how it was arranged with two other pieces in
the Exquisite Corpse show.

When I congratulated him on how well the show was displayed, he shared how well the opening had gone, with enthusiasm from both the artists and other attendees.  He told us that more paintings were sold at the opening than for any other show.  At some point I talked about the video I had seen where 42 choreographers did their version of Exquisite Corpse.  Immediately Rod asked me about my background and whether I would be interested in doing a dance workshop related to the show.  He always arranged various kinds of workshops around the show and it would be fun to do a dance one since they rarely if ever had done dance.  There was a small honorarium for leading the workshop.  Of course I said yes and over the next several weeks, via email, we selected a date and I sent in my bio and a brief description of the workshop.

The workshop ended up being quite wonderful.  While it was small,with only five participants, each person was totally engaged and brought something special to the group.  My friend Regina (a professional storyteller)was one of the participants and she had brought a friend of hers who was also a professional storyteller. Of course at one point in the workshop Regina and I just laughed remembering that we started doing such things together when we were about six years old in her living room.  (That’s another blog sometime down the road.) One of the participants was totally deaf.  She read lips very well and when she didn’t understand something we wrote on a large piece of paper we had placed on the wall. She had a lovely quality of movement. Two other women came in a few minutes late, one a writer and the other a therapist who had a dance background.  They quickly became a part of the group.  

We used some warm up improvisational work to lead to the centerpiece of each person creating their own solo. (Since it was a small group and each person was very capable I changed the original plan of small groups creating a dance and instead asked each person to create a solo.  That would have been risky with most small groups but not with this one.)  I asked them to select a head, a torso and feet from any of the works; the parts did not need to be from the same arrangement.  By the way, some of the works were sculptures, like the torso in the piece I was a part of, while others were photographs or paintings in any medium.  The choreographers were then to imagine how the head, torso and feet would move with at least 2 movement phrases for each part of the body.

While they were creating their pieces, I put a blanket of percussion instruments out, bringing the energy of my favorite accompanist Newman Taylor Baker into the room.  When we gathered back together, each person shared their solo and I accompanied.  Then after exploring the instruments, one person selected the instruments they wanted for their solo and another person in the group accompanied them. Each workshop participant also took us to the pieces that had inspired their movements.

The results were super.  Before ending we linked the solos together as the 42 choreographers had done, and then we all watched the video I had seen, and which I highly recommend.  Here again is the link to watch it.

I left feeling a sense of completeness.  Dance and art together shared with five totally present and creative participants!                

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From Dance Midrash Improvisations to Co-Authoring A Book

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance Midrash

In 1986, with Rick no longer guiding us in the improvisational sections of M’Vakshei Or, I knew that I needed to get up to speed in providing leadership in this area.  I found myself studying the weekly Torah portion more seriously, whether we had a performance that week or not. I would also make it a point to attend Saturday morning Torah study groups at Temple Emanuel, the congregation we belonged to in Westfield, NJ where we then lived.  I went as often as I could and found the discussion quite lively and stimulating.  Slowly I began increasing my library of Jewish books.  

I also asked Rabbi Norman Cohen, Professor of Modern Midrash and Dean of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion if he could meet with the dancers and me and give us some guidelines.  He agreed and we had an excellent private seminar with him where he explained the process he uses in developing Midrash.

About this time I received a letter from A.R.E. (Alternatives in Religious Education) Publishing asking if I was interested in doing a book on the role that dance could play in Jewish education.  While that triggered my imagination a bit I knew I wasn’t ready and didn’t have a real direction on what to do.  I think I wrote back that I was interested but didn’t have any specific ideas at that time.

The company successfully continued performing M’Vakshei Or regularly in Friday evening Reform Sabbath services over the next two years.  Then in the winter of 1988, another rabbinic student, Susan Freeman, joined Avodah and added a new level of enthusiasm to the process of creating dance midrash improvisations.  I shared with Susan that A.R.E. had inquired about my doing a book and I asked if she would she be interested in co-authoring it with me.  Susan had grown up in Denver where A.R.E. was based and in fact her mother was good friends with Audrey Friedman Marcus who along with Rabbi Raymond Zwerin  owned A.R.E.

We got back in touch with Audrey and began to formalize ideas for the book.  The preface of Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash describes how Susan and I “began pushing the improvisations further with the enthusiastic cooperation of Avodah dancers Kezia Gleckman, Deborah Hanna, and Beth Bardin who, in turn, also played an active role in developing ideas from which this book began to take form.”

Together we came up with an outline that could work for each of the different dance midrash exercises in the book.  First we shared the line of text we were exploring, followed by a brief description of its context. Next we provided ways to motivate movement, followed by ways to connect the text to real life experiences.  The instructions for the actual dance midrash followed, and an additional challenge concluded the exercise.  There are a total of 104 lines of text explored.  While some weekly portions have only one lesson, some have three or four.  

Audrey provided guidance with our outline and encouraged us to complete all the lessons before writing the introductory chapter. The introduction was the hardest for us to write and Audrey wonderfully edited for us.  The conclusion of the introduction shared our vision for the book and approach to exploring text:

Dance Midrash is a new and exciting way to approach the Bible.  As movement is merged with the structure and style of Midrash, participants will wrest new meaning from the biblical text.

By drawing on the material in this book, a leader can engage people of every age in an exciting and satisfying process.  Imaginations will be triggered and, in a playful and fun filled manner, participants will discover new insights into the Torah.  It won’t be long before such comments as the following are heard, “I never would have thought about the passage this way unless I danced it!” (Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash, p. xxii)

Rabbi Norman Cohen wrote a meaningful Foreword to the book, explaining the importance of the process of Midrash in finding meaning in the Bible related to contemporary life.  He continued by pointing out that many artistic forms – “writing, music, drama, visual art and dance” – can be and are being used to “bring life to the biblical text in new and creative Midrashic ways.” 

Audrey and Ray knew the importance of photographs for the book and we were given a budget to get photos that showed participants of all ages and levels of dance engaging in different Dance Midrash activities.  We asked Tom Brazil, who had regularly photographed The Avodah Dance Ensemble since 1985, to do the photographs for the book.  In the preface to Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash we thank and acknowledge the help we got with photographing:

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Brooklyn Heights Synagogue provided space for the photographic sessions.  The teachers and students in the preschool, Grade 5, Grade 8 and Senior Adult group from the synagogue contributed their time and energy through their participation in the photography sessions.  Ellen Robbins, an outstanding modern dance teacher, generously entrusted her talented students to us, helping us to illustrate a variety of Dance Midrashim.  Deborah Marcus (no relation to Audrey Friedman Marcus) brought several senior adults to one of the photography sessions.  A special thank you to all of these individuals.

I remember how thrilled I was when I saw the completed book.  The format, photos and overall look were done elegantly by Rabbi Raymond Zwerin and Audrey Friedman Marcus. I am so grateful for the care they took in guiding us through the process of writing it, formatting it and publishing it.  In the next blog I’ll write about a book signing and performance sponsored by A.R.E. at a Jewish education conference, reviews of the book and opportunities that grew out of the book.  While A.R.E. Publishing Company no longer exists, the book is still available as an ebook and here is a link to order it.

The cover of the book.  The photo features Ellen Robbins’ students exploring weaving movements inspired by Exodus 27:16:  “And for the gate of the enclosure[of the Tabernacle], a screen of twenty cubits, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and fine twisted linen, done in embroidery.”  Photo by Tom Brazil.
Avodah Company members (l-r) Deborah Hanna, Susan Freeman (co-author) and
 Kezia Gleckman exploring Genesis 22:1, 22:7 and 22:11 as 
Abraham said, “Here I am.” Photo by Tom Brazil.
Susan Freeman leading a group of 5thgraders from Brooklyn Heights Synagogue exploring Genesis 12:1 when God said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land…”
Photo by Tom Brazil.
JoAnne and Susan, co-authors of Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash, had a chance to catch up in person, December 1, 2018. 

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Avodah Posts Audition Notice for a Tall Male Dancer

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, Dance Midrash, New York Company

Performances – whether in services or as concerts – were growing for both the New York and Florida companies now that bookings were arranged by the Jewish Welfare Board’s Lecture Bureau.  In Tallahassee, Michael Bush consistently danced with the company but in New York it seemed like every few months we were auditioning for a new male dancer.  In the fall of 1980 the company’s female dancers (Lynn Elliott, Beatrice Bogorad, Barbara Finder, and Nanette Josyln) were all tall.  So when I posted an audition notice I indicated that I was looking for a tall male dancer.

Continuing our relationship with Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) we were now rehearsing and working out of their new campus on West 4thStreet. The recently constructed five-story building took up the entire block from Mercer to Broadway. The chapel offered a lot of flexibility in how it could be set up and would prove to be an excellent performing space. In the lower level were several large rooms that worked for rehearsals (although as the repertory grew with more leaps and falls, we later rented rehearsal space in Chinatown that had beautiful, safer floors for dancers).  

I made several attempts to see how I might blend the two companies together.  For one tour in upstate New York, two Tallahassee dancers, Judith Blumberg and Michael Bush, joined Bea Bogorad, Barbara Finder, and Lynn Elliot for several performances.  At another time Lynn Elliott came to Tallahassee to rehearse and then perform in Savannah. Blending the companies didn’t really achieve the ensemble feeling that each group had independently and which I valued, so I chose to have the two companies operate separately but with similar repertory.

The New York company had a booking on a Friday night in the fall of 1980 as part of the Shabbat service, at a reform congregation on Long Island.  I had arrived in New York a week before and posted audition notices for a tall male dancer. Several men showed up but Rick Jacobs was the obvious choice. Rick is 6’4” and was then a fourth-year rabbinic student at the New York Campus.  In an article in The Chronicle  (a publication of HUC-JIR) two years later, Rick told the writer about this time in his life:

Rick was living what he described as a “very schizophrenic” life without much hope that he could integrate his commitment to the rabbinate and his love of dance.  It had been a constant struggle to continue the dance training he had begun as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  He managed to find sympathetic dance instructors in Jerusalem and Los Angeles, and had taught dance in the Reform movement’s summer camps……

Rick auditioned on Tuesday and danced with the company on Friday.  He quickly learned the two pieces for Friday’s service, Sabbath Woman and In Praise.  

Three photos of Rick Jacobs and
Nanette Joslyn in the “Barechu” duet
from  In Praise
Lynn Elliott in the “May the Words” solo from  In Praise

While Rick only had to learn those two pieces for the Friday night service, Avodah’s repertory had grown to five regularly performed pieces and Rick soon learned two more pieces of the repertory, I Never Saw Another Butterfly and the part of Abraham in Sarah.  

With Rick joining the company, new ideas began to fly and it wasn’t long before Rick and I were collaborating on a new piece based on rituals of the Torah service.  Earlier that year I had met David Finko, a composer and recent immigrant from the Soviet Union. David had written symphonies and other major works that were performed in the Soviet Union and Europe.  I suggested to Rick that David might be a good choice to compose music for our new piece.  So one day we drove down to Philadelphia to meet with David and talk to him about our idea for the new piece.  I remember it as an inspiring day with very warm hospitality provided by David’s lovely wife who cooked a special meal for us.  We shared our ideas about a piece in five parts opening with a meditation section based on ritual movement.  I don’t remember much about three of the sections as they ended up being cut about a year later.

My scrapbook provides some useful information. The Temple Bulletin from Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, where the piece would receive its premiere having been commissioned by the 125thAnniversary Fund of the congregation, describes the new work, M’Vakshei Or (“Seekers of Light”) as blending words, dance and music “together to encourage modern Jews to search Torah for its wisdom.”  It continues describing the piece: “Establishing a prayerful mood, the dance cantata presents the ‘sacred weaving of tales’ and ‘laws that guide our lives.’”  

Helping to create M’Vakshei Or and dancing in the first performances of the piece were other company members.  Lynn Elliott, who was in the first New York City performances, continued working with the company, bringing her background from Interlocken Arts Academy, college training at SUNY at Purchase, studies with Alfredo Corvino and performing experience with the Dance Circle Company.  Joining her was Nanette Joslyn from Los Angeles where she performed at Disneyland and with the Santa Barbara Ballet.  Barbara Finder had an MFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and also studied dance at the Martha Graham Studio, and with both the Jose Limon Company and Anna Sokolow.  Dina McDermott grew up in New Jersey and had recently completed her BFA from Juilliard.  

Beatrice Bogorad was no longer working with the company, having begun work with Charlie Moulton, and then later with Susan Marshall. Luckily a few years later her schedule made it possible for her to again work with Avodah. 

Barbara Finder moved on and by the time the piece was performed in New York City  at the Emanu-El Midtown Y on 14thStreet, Roberta Behrendt had joined the company.  Roberta had attended the Alabama School of the Arts and had a BA in dance from Florida State University and I was of course aware of Florida State’s fine dance department.  I was thrilled to have so many excellent dancers to work with.

M’Vakshei Or,  performed at the 14thSt. Y. Dancers from L to R: Rick Jacobs, Lynn Elliott, Roberta Behrendt, and Nanette Joslyn. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

Repertory performed on May 1 – 2, 1982 at the 14thStreet Y was Sabbath Woman, Sarah, Mother of the Bride, Noshing,and Kaddish.  I’ll have more to say about the two comic pieces Mother of the Bride and Noshing in later blogs, and Kaddish when I talk about more repertory created for Holocaust Programs.  But my thread for the next several blogs will relate to what we learned from M’Vakshei Or.

From L to R: Nanette Joslyn, Dina McDermott, and Lynn Elliott in Sabbath Woman. A favorite picture of mine from the 14thSt. concert.  Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

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Exploring Biblical Sarah

JoAnne Tucker / / Dances on Biblical Women, New York Company, Tallahassee

The third piece that Irving Fleet and I collaborated on was called Sarah. I mentioned it in the blog about the beginning of the New York company and want to go into more detail about the piece in this blog. Irving is quoted in an article in the Tallahassee Democrat as saying, “JoAnne was always intrigued with the character of Sarah” (March 2, 1979).  And I hunch that was probably what motivated us to begin exploring her story.  We honed in on that part of her life centered on first being unable to bear a child for her husband, then offering her handmaiden, Hagar, to bear a child for her and finally, when she becomes pregnant, Abraham celebrating the news.  For me this was the beginning of my own journey creating “dance midrash.” Midrash refers to both the early interpretations and commentaries on Torah as well as modern ones.  At the time I didn’t know this word. Later I would create a number of dance pieces that I considered midrash, co-author a book on dance midrash (Torah in Motion: Creating Dance Midrash, with Rabbi Susan Freeman), and teach many workshops involving dance midrash. 

While telling the story was somewhat important, it was exploring Sarah’s emotions that we focused on the most: Sarah’s anguish at not becoming pregnant; her jealousy and anger at Hagar when Hagar does bear a child for Abraham, which results in Sarah banishing Hagar; and then her joy when she becomes pregnant in her old age.  

Ritual movement again played an important choreographic role in the piece.  When Abraham renews his covenant with God following news of Sarah’s pregnancy, Sarah, in our midrash, takes off the rope from her gown and gives it to Abraham.  He then uses it for tefillin (ritual leather boxes with straps, which contain Torah text). Tefillin are traditionally only worn by men during the weekday morning service. They wrap one set around the arm, hand and fingers, and wrap the other set above the forehead. As Abraham is often referred to as the father of the morning prayer this ritual seemed an appropriate one to draw on.  In the same article in the Tallahassee Democrat that I referred to earlier I am quoted as saying, “Dance composition should go back to everyday gestures, take them, enlarge and manipulate them.”  And that is exactly what I did with the ritual of wrapping tefillin. I thought it worked very well.  However, not everyone agreed with me.  In fact, we had received some funding that year from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and when the piece was later performed in New York City, the Executive Director from the NFJC made a very strong point of letting me know that I clearly didn’t understand what wrapping tefillin was, as it was entirely inappropriate for Sarah to hand Abraham the rope from her gown to use.  Indeed I did very much understand and part of my feminist statement was purposefully to have Sarah hand it to him.

On Saturday March 3, 1979, the first performance of Sarah was held as part of a concert at Temple Israel in Tallahassee along with Sabbath Woman, In Praise and I Never Saw Another Butterfly.   The piece was created on the Tallahassee company with Ellen Ashdown as Sarah, Michael Bush as Abraham, Judith Lyons as Hagar and  two handmaidens, Donna Campbell and Trish Whidden. 

From my scrapbook. Photograph that was part of the Tallahassee Democrat article,
March 2, 1979.

Six weeks later I recreated the piece for the New York company with Lynn Elliott dancing the role of Sarah in a performance at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion’s West 68thStreet Campus.  

In the fall of 1979, we did a three-week season at Henry St. Settlement House on the Lower East Side of New York City as part of the American Jewish Theater.  This was an excellent experience for us and I will write a full blog about it.  For right now I want to share part of a review from Dance Magazine (by Marilyn Hunt) of  the performance of Sarah  at Henry St. 

             Sarah, a Grahamesque drama of a woman of large-scale passions is portrayed concisely and lucidly. Sarah vents her despair at being childless by lashing one leg around, pacing, and whipping her hair in a circle.  In contrast, her handmaiden, young Hagar, whom Sarah gives to her husband, Abraham, to bear him a child, carries her imaginary water jar with chest thrust proudly forward and has a formal ritual-like mating with Abraham.  Only the ending, God’s promise that Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s belatedly-born son, would father the tribes of Israel, failed to come across in dance terms.  The two women’s roles were especially well filled by Lynn Elliott and Peggy Evans.  Dance Magazine, February 1980.   

A year later when Rick Jacobs, who was then a rabbinic student at HUC-JIR, joined the company and learned the part of Abraham, the ending blessing took on a whole new dimension, as the prayer and actual movement were already deeply meaningful to him, and he performed the section in a uniquely heartfelt way. 

Rick Jacobs as Abraham, 1981.  Photo by Amanda Kreglow
Rick Jacobs and Lynn Elliott in Sarah. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.

Sarah continued to be beautifully performed regularly by the New York company during the next several years with Rick dancing the part of Abraham, and Lynn Elliott dancing the part of Sarah.  For me Sarah was the first of a series of pieces focusing on Biblical women.  And I would revisit Sarah, more than once. 

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Beginning of the New York Company

JoAnne Tucker / / New York Company

While I am fuzzy on dates and exactly how I started a second company of Avodah in New York City I am clear on what motivated me.  A modern dance company based on Jewish liturgy, rituals, text and history needed to be located in a place where there would be lots of opportunities for bookings and performances.  Tallahassee was not that place.  Yes, we had done a bit of touring in Savannah, Pittsburgh, Tampa and even one performance in Closter, NJ but somehow that wasn’t enough for me.  While I found Tallahassee a wonderful place to experiment, to develop repertory, I longed for more opportunities to tour and share the repertory.  The idea of having a second company based in New York City and making regular trips to New York really appealed to me.

By this time, I had stopped performing myself, stepping into the role of choreographing, directing and managing the business side of the company and non-profit.  Around the same time, my father was spending a lot of time in the New York office of the sportswear company he worked for, and my sister, Peggy, had decided to make a transition to working in New York. My father and Peggy found a lovely apartment on the East side near the UN and so I had a place to stay. Peggy and I recently brainstormed exactly when that was and we think it was in May 1978.  As best as I can tell from programs in my scrapbook, it was the summer of 1978 when I formed a company of 5 dancers and did an evening performance at Temple Israel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

How did I find the dancers?  Well what is coming to mind is that I returned to take some classes from a favorite teacher of mine from Juilliard, Alfredo Corvino, who had a studio called Dance Circle on 8thAvenue between 46thand 47thStreet.  That is where I found Lynn Elliott who would dance with the company for quite a few years.  A dancer from Tallahassee that I had worked with, Peggy Evans, had moved to New York City and so I reached out to her to join the company. Three other dancers, Kathy McDonald, Yael, and Benjamin Greenberg, I may have found through an audition notice or perhaps I also found them at Alfredo Corvino’s studio. 

Rabbi Walter Jacob, by then an Avodah Board member, reached out to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, located at that time on West 68thStreet, and arranged for us to have rehearsal space at the school.  That was the beginning of a long-term relationship with HUC-JIR.  I hoped to invite people to the concert at Temple Israel who could help with bookings for the New York company.  I have pictures that clearly show the repertory we did and that Irving Fleet joined us for the performance working with a choir for In Praise.  Other pieces performed in the afternoon concert were Sabbath Woman and a newly created piece, I Never Saw Another Butterfly.  The bema of the Temple provided a beautiful setting for the concert and one major contact was made for the company that had a profound impact on our development both in increased bookings for the New York company and in Florida for the Tallahassee company.

Kathy McDonald as the bride in Sabbath Woman.
Yael in front, Kathy behind in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

Stephan Bayer, head of the Lecture Bureau for the Jewish Welfare Board (now called the Association of Jewish Community Centers), attended the concert and asked if he could add us to the roster of people they represented.  Furthermore, Stephan also agreed to welcome me into the Lecture Bureau office and teach me how to book performances and put a tour together.  I am forever grateful to Stephan for the role he played in helping us develop as a company.  Later Stephan joined our board and served as an outstanding President for a number of years. Our next New York performance was in the spring of 1979 as part of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion’s Sunday Afternoon at the College Series.  Lynne Elliott, Peggy Evans and Kathy McDonald continued to dance with the company and two new dancers, Holly Kaplan and a male dancer whose name I can’t recall, joined us.  The three pieces done in the summer were included along with a new piece Sarah which I had created in Tallahassee with the help of a grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.  The piece received its first performance in Tallahassee at Temple Israel on March 3 and six weeks later I restaged it with the New York company.  

Lynn Elliott in Sarah at HUC-JIR.

While the area the dancers had to work on was small, I remember being so proud of the performance they gave and I love this picture which was taken of us outside of HUC-JIR after the performance.

From Left to Right: JoAnne Tucker, Irving Fleet, unknown male dancer, Kathy McDonald, Peggy Evans, Lynn Elliott and Holly Kaplan.

I feel so very grateful to have had long-term relationships with dancers in the company.  Each relationship has taken on its own special character.  Lynn Elliott worked with the company for a number of years and many years later her daughter Justine performed with us.  I will be writing more about Lynn in later blogs.  While Kathy McDonald only danced with us in New York for that first year, she has kept in touch with the company and myself through the years. Each year she has sent a contribution first during Avodah’s fundraising campaign and now Healing Voices – Personal Stories. I always feel a wonderful glow as I open the envelope and remember her beautiful lyrical quality portraying the bride in Sabbath Woman.  Many years later, Kezia, looking for a place to take adult ballet classes in Poughkeepsie,  found a wonderful class taught by Kathy, who had opened a studio there specifically for adult dancers.  Besides realizing they had both been in Avodah, they discovered they had performed the same solo in I Never Saw Another Butterfly.   

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Gratitude for Early Influences

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood

Whether it is building a dance studio, keeping a dance company running for over 30 years, starting a film company that has now has completed 7 films, or selling our art-work on ETSY, I realize a certain pattern in my life and work.  It is with deep gratitude I acknowledge two qualities that were wonderfully reinforced for me: creativity from my Mom and a sense of (and joy in) business from my father.

I am a war baby, meaning that shortly after my birth my father was drafted and went off to fight in WWII.  My Mom and I lived at his mother and stepfather’s house, a large three-story house in Pittsburgh that was filled with all kinds of energy. His stepfather was a family physician and his office was in the home with the waiting room at the front of the house.  My grandmother loved people and music. Their youngest child Bill was at that time a student at Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon) and lots of his friends from the music and drama department filled the house.  As a young toddler I got lots of attention from them.  A cousin a year younger would visit and we were a bundle of energy.

I enjoyed pretending I was a Doctor.  When I finally became one, it was of a different kind!

Uncle Billy letting me play his cello.

Mom and I spending a few special moments with Dad when he was on leave.

My mom had lots of time on her hands so she encouraged my creative endeavors.  This continued throughout my childhood.  Although my grandmother took me to see my first touring Broadway show, Peter Pan with Veronica Lake, it was my Mom who took me to see Moira Shearer in Swan Lake when I was five or six and the Saddler Wells (now the Royal Ballet) came to town.  Mom continued to encourage me by enrolling me in dance classes and responding positively, as I got older, to ideas and projects I wanted to pursue.  When I wanted to teach dance classes in our basement to earn money she easily made it happen.  I always felt her support even as an adult. She enthusiastically came to performances, entertained the dance company members when we toured to where she lived and was always a good listener when I wanted to talk and talk about a creative project.

Mom (Dr. Janet Klineman) got her Ph.D. after we were grown up and had a career in Special Education.  She was very devoted to the complex children she worked with, and compassionate to their parents, showing them ways to help their challenging child.  It was only after she retired that she rediscovered her artistic talents. Her father had painted and she had done some painting when she was younger but nothing had come of it. She started taking classes in watercolor painting in Sarasota when she was close to 80 and continued painting until three weeks before she died at age 90.  In fact the last picture she did of her dog, Mickey, hangs in our house in a prominent place where I see it every day.  It is a daily reminder to me that nurturing and expressing my creativity is essential!!

Mom’s painting of Mickey.

My father was a salesman.  When he returned from the war he joined the company that his father (who died in the flu epidemic of 1918 or so) and uncles had founded, Majestic Sportswear.  I grew up hearing his enthusiasm for the line of clothes he was selling.  I remember sample sales at the end of the season.  At times I even helped him organize order forms.  So his business talk, including meeting goals and enthusiasm for what he was selling, was also an influence. While at times he didn’t understand “modern dance” and what I might be trying to express he never put it down and usually agreed to support what I was proposing.

As a teenager I joined Mom on a trip or two to New York City where Dad had quarterly sales meetings and I remember his tolerant and patient presence as he and Mom waited at stage doors while I eagerly got autographs from Julie Andrews after My Fair Lady and Susan Strasberg after Diary of Anne Frank.  Then there was another time in Pittsburgh when Mary Martin came to town in a one-woman show… while I waited to get her autograph Dad had a lively conversation with her chauffeur.  Later, after graduating high school and while I was studying dance in NYC and attending Juilliard, I would join him and several of his fellow salesmen for dinner and a night out in the City, often not getting home until 3 AM.

Both Mom and Dad were persistent, each in their own way, and so that quality coming from both of them has served me well.  In fact, Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (recommending an Avodah concert) said, “There are not too many practicing choreographers of dance based on religious themes in these godless days. In her quiet way, JoAnne Tucker is one of the most persistent and one of the best, creating simple, luminous and heartfelt dances based on Jewish tradition” (January 9, 1998).

Of course both parents presented challenges and there are things I didn’t like about growing up in our household.  The older I get,these occasional memories fade further and further away.  Today I am filled only with deep gratitude for lessons learned from my parents.

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Feminism Meets the Bank: Building a Dance Studio

JoAnne Tucker / / Tallahassee

Tallahassee is a wonderful “lab” for me.  By this I mean, since there are no available academic positions — which is what I thought I was preparing for in earning my doctorate — I have to forge my own way.  This means finding opportunities and places to use my talent and add some  income to our household.  In the past blogs I’ve shared how Avodah developed, but I was also involved in other dance activities.  In this blog I’ll share some of my other dance endeavors culminating with designing, financing and building a dance studio.

I found work with the Tallahassee Arts Council particularly satisfying, presenting dance programs at local schools using local adult dancers or students from the dance program at Florida State University.  Among my favorite schools were the very small rural schools.  In the Tallahassee Democrat I’m quoted as saying, “When we went to places like Chaires or Concord (small rural schools), the children would laugh at us at first.  But after we started dancing, they were swept away.”   I also received grants from the Florida Fine Arts Council to take a dance and poetry program to counties surrounding Leon County where Tallahassee was located.  These school tours provided a good education for me that served me well later on.  Among the more humorous learning moments was when the male dancer, a new dance student at FSU, in his first performance on a school tour was not wearing a dance belt.  I’m not sure that many of the young children noticed but the faces of many of the teachers made it clear to me that I needed to speak to him as well as to some of the women about properly covering their anatomy.

One of my favorite collaborations was with a ballet dancer/teacher Carolyn Davis.  We did three projects together.  In the summer of 1974 we ran a three-week dance program for 6 to 16 year olds at the Jr. Museum.  It was a beautiful setting and may have influenced what I would soon look for as a setting for the studio I wanted to build so I could have my very own place to teach, choreograph and rehearse in.

Carolyn and I undertook a major collaboration in creating a ballet for the Tallahassee Civic Ballet. As Board members of the TCB we wanted to see it offer more challenging opportunities to the dancers and more stimulating programs to the audience.  We decided to work together setting our version of Midsummer Night’s Dream to Mendelssohn’s music. On another occasion we did a dance program for mentally retarded adults.

By the summer of 1974, I felt very much rooted in the community and decided that I indeed did want to build my own studio. By the end of the summer I had found and purchased an acre of land across from one of the elementary schools.  Next I found a builder and together we sketched what the studio would look like.  While this was my project, my husband Murray couldn’t have been more supportive and offered excellent advice such as building on only ½ the acre fronting the road so the other half could be sold at a later time if we wanted.  At the time we bought the acre there was little that had been developed in the area.   I also elected to buy at the end of the area zoned for office/residential and where the land went sharply downhill so that the windows of the studio would open to trees.  We also planned a lovely walk from the parking lot to the studio door so that one walked along a natural setting and up to a deck before entering the reception/office area.  The studio would be large, 40 by 50 so that informal showings could be held there.  The wall away from the windows would be the only mirrored wall and of course there would be a sprung dance floor with a good quality wood surface.   Those were the fun things to think about.  There were other things like septic tanks, surface for the parking lot, building permits, etc. that were not.

As I negotiated the project, the first thing I was asked by the men in charge of permits, or at meetings where I wanted information on building materials, was, “What does your husband do?”  At first, I was puzzled by this but when it kept happening over and over again I was annoyed and disappointed.  So one day, I came home, took my wedding ring off and never wore it again.  Murray understood!  From then on I was never asked what my husband did. However when it came to financing at the bank and filling out all the forms, they insisted that the only way I could get financing was with my husband’s signature.   Disappointing, indeed.  I did not want to abandon the project, so reluctantly I agreed.  Today I think this would have been very different although I wonder?? Ultimately we ended up forming a sub-chapter S corporation with the studio as the key asset.  We couldn’t own shares 50/50 in the corporation so one of us owned 51% and the other 49%.  I’m not sure which one of us had the extra shares.

The builder was easy to work with, that is, until the studio was nearly done, and he began making advances which I had to navigate around and strongly discourage.

Meanwhile all during the fall of 1974, I continued teaching dance classes at the Temple. Enrollment had greatly increased from the September article in the Tallahassee Democrat.  And so that winter with the studio complete, we held a grand opening party for The Creative Dance Center filled with dancing, laughter and joy.  My Mom, on seeing the studio and walking down the path and entering quietly said, “Oh I see, you have created a Perry-Mansfield here.” Perry-Mansfield is a wonderful performing arts camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, that I attended when I was 15 and will be writing more about at a later time.  The blend of nature and dance was so much a part of me, that I don’t think I was totally conscious of what I had done until my Mom noticed.

On the deck showing our setting in the woods.

Getting ready for the opening…

Enrollment continued to increase and soon I was adding other instructors to the faculty.  I also had my own clear philosophy about traditional dance recitals and end-of-the-year programs.  An informal culminating event where the older students danced a story such as The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan creating their own movement was what I planned, with the younger children spontaneously dancing their favorite short stories as an open class.

The studio was very special to me.  As a family we were all involved.  The math talent of Rachel, my youngest daughter, became apparent when I would find her — a 2nd-grader — behind the desk figuring out people’s monthly bills faster than I could.  Both my daughters took dance classes, Rachel especially liking ballet and my older daughter Julie totally excelling in dramatic portrayals in dance as part of culminating events.  Murray joined me in disco dancing in open studio dance nights. Today Rachel, trained as an actuary, is currently a total rewards director and Julie a casting director. Neither of their professions, at which they excel, is a surprise to me.

Rachel (at left) in a culminating performance

Julie as the Witch inWizard of Oz

Ten years later, after we had moved to the New York City area, Murray negotiated and sold both the studio and the ½ acre lot next door. I was glad that I did not have to return for the closing, because as happy as I was to be in New York, I still would have been quite emotional.

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Choreographing Based on Ritual and Research

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, Tallahassee

Spring 1974.  Excited by the strong response to our first piece “In Praise” I am eager to do another piece with Irving that would fit into the Sabbath Service.  Having a limited education in liturgy, I find myself reading and learning as much as I can.  I zero in on the Friday night candlelighting gesture of circling the flames and covering the eyes.  What does it mean? Where did it come from? I start experimenting, myself, with using the gesture when I light the candles.  (Now… to be upfront, I was not very observant and it was as much out of curiosity as any kind of spiritual desire or need that I found myself lighting the candles and saying the blessing on Friday night.)

I soon showed Irving the gesture, with much enthusiasm, one early evening in his backyard.  We decided to move forward on creating a piece related to welcoming the Sabbath. Research continued with the help of Rabbi Garfein. In fact, we dedicated the first performance, November 9, 1974 to him.  That was also the first official performance of The Avodah Dance Ensemble, a part of the newly formed Avodah, Inc. (See this earlier blog to learn more about this.)

As Irving and I researched the idea of welcoming the Sabbath the piece began to take shape into several sections.  Its opening was expressed in a statement we wrote about the piece for the first performance: “The image of Women, be she Mother, Daughter, or Grandmother, with eyes covered, praying over the Sabbath lights, while her family silently gathers around, inspired the dance and music of our new piece.”

I found the gesture of circling the flame and covering the eyes to be a very personal one and I imaged that each person did it in their own way with their own thoughts.  The piece opens with three women each doing the gesture in their own way and conveying their emotional response in movement.  They come together doing circular movement putting the hand gesture into the whole body and the feet. As I choreographed I realized I was drawing on my composition classes with Louis Horst in making sure each movement related to the theme I had introduced. Helen Tamiris’s use of gesture as a starting point was also a key influence. Long after the piece was no longer a part of the repertory, we often included the movement ritual of circling and covering the eyes as part of workshops.  Kezia has said about this, “In all the years I was in the company, I always loved and was intrigued by workshop participants’ explanations of how precisely they did the candlelighting gesture, where they had learned it, and what they thought of when doing it.”

In our research we learned that the Sabbath is often referred to as a bride and that a 16thcentury hymn still used in most services, “Lecha dodi likras kallah” expresses the notion of embracing the Sabbath as a bride and even of men dressing as a bridegroom going out to welcome the Sabbath.  As our piece evolved we introduced a dancer as the bride and a male dancer to embrace her in a duet.

Many years later, living in the New York area, I occasionally enjoyed attending Friday night services at B’nai Jeshurun and there following “Lecha dodi” congregants fill the aisles with joyful dancing.  But that was not at all what I grew up with and while some communities have begun to do this it is still pretty rare, at least in the United States.

So on Friday, November 9ththe Avodah Dance Ensemble gave its first official performance. The company consisted of five dancers. Judith Bloomberg, Hillary Gal and I opened as the three women. Corrine Levy was the bride with Jack Clark representing the bridegroom or man who greets the Sabbath.

Hillary Gal and I rehearsing “Sabbath Woman.” Photo by Tallahassee Democrat.

Living in Tallahassee near Florida State University’s excellent dance department I was able to draw dancers from there and take classes to keep myself in shape.  Dr. Nancy Smith, the head of the FSU dance department, was very welcoming and even helped by providing rehearsal space.

Reflecting back on those first few years in Tallahassee I realize I had come a long way from the first year as a faculty wife when I felt alone, unable to find a job. In fact in an article in the Tallahassee Democratdated September 1, 1974 I am quoted as saying “It was really bleak. I couldn’t find a job.  Nothing happened for a year, and I was going berserk.”

I did focus on writing my dissertation, and I was lucky that my major professor had moved from the University of Wisconsin to Florida State University’s Drama Department.  I was able to return to the University of Wisconsin and defend my dissertation in 1973 officially becoming Dr. Tucker. Now there were two Dr. Tucker’s in our household, Murray with his Ph.D. in Economics and I with mine in Theatre/Speech Communication.

I was also learning how to create my own opportunities and by the fall of 1974 I felt totally a part of the community with various dance projects besides Avodah and plans underway to build my own dance studio.

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First Out of Town Performance: “In Praise” in Pittsburgh

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History

I grew up in the Jewish Reform Temple of Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh when the esteemed scholar Dr. Solomon Freehof was the senior rabbi there.  As I mentioned earlier, his book had influenced the creation of In Praise.  He was a bit intimidating for me and it was the younger Rabbi, Dr. Walter Jacob, that I got to know as a teen at Rodef Shalom and who in fact married Murray and me. Rodef Shalom has had a prominent history in the development of Reform Judaism in the United States and here is a link where you can learn more.  At some point on a visit to Pittsburgh probably in the summer of 1973 I mentioned to Walter what I had been doing in Tallahassee and he suggested bringing In Praise to Pittsburgh.  Hum… that seemed really a neat option as the sanctuary of Rodef Shalom was inspiring and elegant and it would be a challenge to set our piece on the bema as part of a service.

One of Rodef Shalom’s weekly services was on Sunday morning and Walter suggested that as the ideal time to weave In Praise into the service. Since I still had dance contacts in Pittsburgh, I decided that I would use local dancers and Irving could work with the professional choir that sang regularly at Rodef Shalom.  During the summer of 1973 I had also spent time visiting my good friend and former Pittsburgher Lynne Wimmer, who had joined the Repertory Dance Company (RDT) in Salt Lake City, Utah upon her graduation from Juilliard in 1968.  I decided I wanted to take a two-week workshop RDT offered and do some hiking and hanging out with Lynne.

Before I continue with In Praise in Pittsburgh, let me give you a little bit of background on my friendship with Lynne.  Both of our families, along with Murray’s, belonged to a Swim Club in Pittsburgh and we hung at the pool.  Lynne and I got to know each other then and particularly when I had moved back to Pittsburgh to marry Murray following two years at Juilliard. Lynne was then going into her junior year.  She was very serious about her dancing and I suggested that she audition for Juilliard in her junior year and if accepted she could take summer school and skip her senior year. I knew this was possible since a classmate of mine, Martha Clarke, had done exactly that.  Anyway Lynne auditioned, got in and entered Juilliard that fall.  We have kept in contact over the years both as friends and dance collaborators.  There will be other blogs I will be writing in which Lynne plays an important part.

When a date was set with Rodef Shalom I reached out to Lynne to see if she could join me and perform in In Praise.  Since the date was in January when RDT was touring in the Midwest she was able to take a week’s leave of absence and perform with us.  I don’t remember how exactly I got the other five dancers, and I only recognize one other name:  Martha Amper, whom I had worked with quite a few years earlier when she was in high school. (I’ll definitely do a blog on the poetry program I did with her and 6 or 7 other students back in 1965.) Most likely, I reached out to my Pittsburgh modern dance teacher, Jeanne Beaman, and asked her for suggestions.  I had studied seriously with Jeanne all through high school and am deeply grateful to her for the strong training and inspiration I received from her.

It was great fun and challenging to spend the week in Pittsburgh working with the dancers, teaching them sections of In Praise, and making adjustments to the choreography to fit the bema which was long and narrow.  The sanctuary seats a total of 1200 (900 on the first floor and 300 in the balcony) and I was particularly aware of wanting to take in the full congregation during a quiet solo I did to the prayer “May the Words of My Mouth.”  Lynne helped me with the solo, coaching me to fully extend my hands in several key places. That really helped and in a receiving line after the performance (it’s a tradition that the Rabbis form this line and any invited guest speaker join them) a number of people asked to see my hands, remarking how big they looked on the bema.  THANK YOU LYNNE!! IT WORKED!!

JoAnne Tucker and Lynne Wimmer on the bema, in front of the ark at Rodef Shalom. Photo by Morris Berman for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In a recent phone conversation with Lynne I asked her what she remembered about the performance. She shared that she had a funny feeling dancing on the bema, as she had grown up in a conservative congregation and it felt strange to be dancing on the bema as if on a stage.  Her comment did not surprise me at all and over the years the approach I had of integrating dance into the service was both welcomed and questioned.  Martha Graham’s classic comment that “wherever a dancer stands is holy ground” has resonated for me since I was a teenager and so why not dance on the bema.

Irving arrived mid-week and as he worked with the professional choir the piece began to flow together.  Choreographic changes and music timing were polished and in a letter following In Praise Dr. Jacob wrote, “Until I watched you work with the dancers individually in the morning and on Wednesday evening, I had no idea how much detailed preparation was necessary.”

Top picture: Irving playing the piano while we work out a musical coordination.

Bottom picture: Irving working with the professional musicians.

The costumes shown in the above picture of Lynne and me were just too busy for RodefShalom’s elegant sanctuary. Something simpler was needed and so white leotards with matching white skirts and beige tights underneath became the new costumes for the piece.  The male dancer wore a white tank top with brown tights.

Nice publicity in both the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette provided a filled sanctuary for our January 27thservice. I remember very vividly that as the music began for In Praise and we were in place in the aisles, the sun suddenly burst through the long stained glass windows providing the most amazing lighting.

A week later in the Jewish Chronicle, Milton K. Susman wrote about his experience, in his column entitled “As I See It” (February 7, 1974):

In these days when spiritual uplift is as rare as birdsong in January, one savors the experience at Rodef Shalom Temple last week when the Congregation offered a service in the guise of a dance cantata titled “In Praise.” It was a moving and meaningful occasion in that the cantata was a highly religious tableau without resort to religious formalism.

            “In Praise” infused the litanies of the “Shema,” “May the Words…” and “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God…” with the grace and beauty of movement against a musical background that set the mood and etched every emotion.  This innovative approach to prayer has the virtues of perspective and the quickened pulse, for the observer can hardly escape the encompassing effects of sight and sound on those supplications that are as familiar to the worshipper as his living room.

            “In Praise” gives to prayer a whole new dimension of joyfulness and humility and for a lot of days to come the afterglow of Florida-based Dr. Irving Fleet’s music and Dr. JoAnne Tucker’s choreography (she is the daughter-in-law of former Pittsburgh sportscaster Joe Tucker) will remain as a kind of haunting benediction.

            Those who went and witnessed have to be grateful to the Alexander A. and Cecilia Bluestone Music Fund for making the cantata possible and to Dr. Walter Jacob, rabbi of Rodef Shalom, for surrendering his pulpit to a happening that was couched in velvet.

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