Tag: JoAnne Tucker

Adding Kaddish to Avodah’s Repertory

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, Holocaust Repertory, New York Company

 It’s February 5, 1981, and we are premiering a new piece in Avodah’s repertory for a Holocaust Memorial Program at The Savannah College of Art and Design. It is part of a program entitled “Light Through The Darkness,” which has been organized and planned by Congregation Mickve Israel for February 5ththrough 12th.  It is part of a three-part program which includes a dance performance, an art exhibit, and a lecture by a prominent collector.  We have decided to create a new piece for the program, to the first eight minutes of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony.  

Poster from the performance

This was not our first performance in Savannah.  This was our third. An article on February 4,1981, in the Georgia Gazettesums up our special relationship with Savannah very well: 

The company has performed on several occasions to standing-room-only crowds in Savannah, and Tucker credits Rabbi Rubin (Saul Rubin) with encouraging her efforts during the company’s early years.

The first time we performed in Savannah was in March 1976 using female dancers from the congregation and bringing a male dancer from Tallahassee. I went in a week before and totally enjoyed my time there working with the dancers, who were lovely. Temple Mickve Israel is an old congregation with an historic sanctuary.  It is located on a beautiful square, and a March 17, 1976 article in City Beat mentions that “while traffic circled about the verdant oasis, the dancers kicked off their shoes, and in leotards and jeans ran through their paces, barefoot in the park.” The publicity, with several articles and pictures of myself and composer Irving Fleet, was excellent for the Friday night service.  In fact, when Irving joined me to rehearse the musicians and we had some time off to stroll along the river walkway and wandered in a shop, the owner recognized us from the newspaper. The Friday night service was indeed packed and standing-room-only.  We performed Sabbath Woman and In Praise as part of a creative service that Rabbi Saul Rubin wrote.

Photograph of the Temple on stationery

We returned to Savannah in the fall of 1976 to repeat the two pieces as part of a regional Biennial Convention of the Southeast Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called Union of Reform Judaism).  That helped us become better known with congregations in the Southeastern part of the country.  (My favorite memory from the performance in the Shabbat service is that I met a cousin and his wife that I hadn’t seen in years.)

We had a special relationship with Rabbi Saul Rubin and Temple Mickve Israel and I was really pleased to have an opportunity to be part of the Light Through The Darkness Holocaust Program.  I also liked the fact we would have a good space to perform in at the Savannah College of Art and Design.  This was a great opportunity to create a new piece to go with I Never Saw Another Butterfly.  I remember listening to lots of music and giving much thought to what to create.  I stumbled across Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony and loved the first 8 minutes. The piece opens with about a four-minute reading by a solo voice, with some music.  The recording I first found, and originally choreographed to, featured Leonard Bernstein doing the vocal part.  So I created the solo on Michael Bush, the male dancer in the Tallahassee company at that time.  What follows the vocal section is a wonderful burst of music during which the solo dancer joins the other dancers in one of my favorite phrases, which we often used for auditions over the years.  With hands fisted, the dancers rise slowly as a group into a suspended relevé in simple parallel, from which they explode into a skip and leap, and a fan kick into a knee walk into a tilted attitude turn.

The performance in Savannah went well but more important to me was that the new piece Kaddish became a signature part of the repertoire for over twenty years, regularly performed before the Kaddish prayer in services and ending many concerts.  Shortly after that first performance I discovered a recording with a female voice (Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre) doing the part, and when I returned to New York, I used that recording and taught the solo to Lynn Elliott who did a magnificent job with the part.  

We used the female recording from that point on except when Rick Jacobs performed the solo.  (I obtained the permissions I needed to use the music and each year reported the number of performances so I could pay the appropriate royalty.)

Over the years so many wonderful dancers performed the solo part, and it was great fun for me to see how each dancer made it their own.  Kezia continued to teach the group section to new dancers even when she was no longer in the company.  She adds the following note: 

            One of my proudest moments, both as Assistant Rehearsal Director and as ensemble member, was during a performance at an arts festival, when the music suddenly disappeared in the middle of the group section of Kaddish – a tricky section with changing tempos.  We continued dancing without pause.  Our ensemble work was so reliable that when the music resumed, we were exactly where we should have been, as if nothing unusual had happened.

            Another one of my most memorable performances was in that same festival, a rain-or-shine, mainly-outdoor event.  Let it never be said that we ever performed with less than our full focus, technique, heart and soul – not even when we performed under that LEAKING tent top, for that ONE audience member sitting under his umbrella in the pouring rain to watch us. We laugh at these memories, like other touring mishaps, but they don’t detract from the pleasure of being part of such festivals.  This particular occasion also gave us the rare opportunity to enjoy performances by other artists, including most memorably the lovely music ensemble Voice of the Turtle.

Lynn Elliott inKaddish. Photo by Amanda Kreglow.
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Remembering Estelle Sommers with Great Fondness

JoAnne Tucker / / New York Company, Personal Life

Last week I wrote about the company’s performance of Kaddish at a Central Synagogue Sabbath service in May 1985.  We dedicated that evening’s performance to Ben Sommers, who had been President of Capezio, and who had died that week.  I mentioned in the blog that Ben’s wife, Estelle Sommers, had told me afterwards how meaningful the service was.  She also told me that we should get together for lunch after things calmed down for her.  About a month or so later we had lunch together, and that began a very special friendship that strongly impacted both the Avodah Dance Ensemble and my life personally. 

Estelle, like Ben, was a dancewearspecialist and managed Capezio stores:

Sommers made her career in retail dancewear as a designer, business executive, and owner of various ventures. She revolutionized the field of fitness clothing by introducing a new fabric, Antron-Lycra/Spandex, into her innovative designs for Capezio’s bodywear.   
(https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sommers-estelle-joan)

At some point either before our lunch or after she suggested that I reach out to and meet Linda Kent. She mentioned that Linda (then with The Paul Taylor Dance Company) was also interested in liturgical dance. I knew who Linda was and had great respect for her outstanding professional career, first with the Alvin Ailey Company from 1968–74, and then as a principal dancer with the Taylor Company from 1975.  I had often seen her perform.   Estelle sent Linda a similar kind of note, giving us information on how to contact each other.

Linda and I did get in touch, resulting in a personal friendship and professional collaboration. Linda created pieces and helped shape Interfaith programs for Avodah, guest taught at our workshops, and at times performed with the company (including filling in for Kezia when she broke her foot performing Let My People Go).  Linda also helped us find Avodah dancers by recommending students she knew from her position at Juilliard (where she had graduated in 1968 and joined the faculty in 1984), and she offered generous artistic and Board advice when Julie Gayer took over as Avodah’s Director.  Linda and I continue our long friendship today. (See photo in blog on Juilliard homecoming.  I will be writing more blogs later about Linda.)  Introducing Linda and me was very typical of Estelle, as she was one of the best networkers I have ever known.  In the same article I quoted above, Estelle was described as “one of the most enthusiastic advocates and patrons of dance,” sometimes referred to as the “empress of dance.” And I can affirm that indeed she was, for The Avodah Dance Ensemble.

Within a year of our meeting, Estelle suggested having a gathering at her apartment to introduce Avodah dancers and Board members to some of her influential dance friends. One very important contact we made that evening was Ted Bartwink.  Ted served as Trustee and Executive Director of The Harkness Foundation for Dance from 1968–2014.  The Harkness Foundation made annual contributions to most of the major dance venues in New York City.  Following that evening he came to at least one performance that I remember and for a number of years we received funding for our educational programs from the Harkness Foundation.

At Estelle’s request, I often served on honorary committees for benefit events.  I was always thrilled to see my name on a list with so many outstanding dance and theatre people.  Murray and I enjoyed attending the events and below is the back of an invitation for a 1991 International Committee for The Dance Library of Israel which honored Stephanie French, the Vice President of Corporate Contributions and Cultural Affairs for the Philip Morris Management Corporation, a major supporter of dance in the New York City area.

Back of invitation for the Dance Library of Israel Event

Earlier that same year Estelle Sommers was honored with the 9thAnnual Dance Notation Bureau Award and I was thrilled to be on that Honorary Committee.  I end this blog with this lovely picture of Estelle.

Estelle Sommers
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Heroic Deeds – Honoring Righteous Gentiles

JoAnne Tucker / / Holocaust Repertory, New York Company

In 1993 when I first visited Israel, I remember a very emotional day spent at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.  Among its many remembrances, Yad Vashem honors over 11,000 Righteous Gentiles.  These are individuals who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. I knew that someday I would choreograph a dance to honor them and that happened during the 2001-2002 season.  That was a particularly creative season since I choreographed three pieces on four talented dancers: Andrea Eisenstein, Danielle A. Smith, Jessica Sehested, and Kerri Thoma.  The Avodah Dance Ensemble had moved from a part-time dance company operating throughout the year to a full-time company operating for 16 weeks of the year.  The opportunity to work so intensively for about six hours each day was very stimulating.

As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I began to realize that something else was motivating me as well.  Living in Jersey City, right across from the World Trade Center, I had witnessed, only a few months before, the collapse of the second tower as I stood about three blocks from our home and looked across the river with our neighbors. And I remembered that our youngest daughter had been working in the World Trade Center in 1993 when a truck bomb detonated inside the parking garage.  Her company was located on the 97thfloor and she had walked down.  She talked about how people were helping each other.  There were no lights and so people were counting stairs and eventually as she got lower the NYC Firemen were coming up and providing additional guidance. As I began choreographing Heroic Deeds I found I was not only thinking of the Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives but how people can help each other in emergency situations, such as what my daughter experienced, and of course of the many first responders on 9/11 who risked their lives.

Part of both the fun and the challenge of choreographing is finding just the right music.  I did, in a piece by the American composer Charles Ives.  In a review by Jennifer Dunning in The New York Times (April 10, 2002) of a concert we did at the 92ndStreet Y on the previous Sunday afternoon she pointed out, “Heroic Deeds distilled community need in a quartet as stark as its score by Ives.” 

Once I had the music and had begun choreographing with the collaboration of the dancers my attention turned to costumes. Finding gray tops and ¾ length pants in gray I decided to paint silver, black and lighter gray spots on them to symbolize ashes and destruction of property in an abstract way.

Tom Brazil, a dance photographer who had previously photographed Avodah, beautifully captured the energy of the piece. Here are some of my favorite photos, with the four dancers who helped to create the work. All of the following photos are by Tom Brazil and copyrighted by him.

From l. to r. Jessica Sehested, Kerri Thoma, and Danielle Smith
From l. to r. Danielle, Jessica, Andrea Eisenstein, Kerri
From l. to r. Jessica, Andrea, Kerri, and Danielle
From l. to r. Danielle, Kerri, Jessica and Andrea
From l. to r. Andrea, Jessica, Danielle
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First Dance Classes: Remembering Genevieve Jones

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Personal Life

My cousin Maxine, who is a year younger than I am, started taking dance classes when she was 4 or 5 and my family would drive to Uniontown, which was about an hour from where we lived in Pittsburgh, to watch her recitals.  These were long evenings with kids in satiny, glittery costumes doing various routines.  Usually the kids had several costume changes since they were in quite a few numbers.  So when my Mom wanted to expose me to dance classes she selected Kelly’s School of Dance, which was in our neighborhood and run by Louise Kelly.  Louise was one of Gene Kelly’s sisters.  Gene had grown up in Pittsburgh and now was in his prime in Hollywood. It was somewhat similar to the kind of dance school that Maxine had gone to, with the emphasis on recitals and costumes and young kids being exposed to tap, acrobatics, and a kind of intro to ballet.

My cousin Maxine in one of her recital costumes. (When I shared this picture with Maxine she remembered the following about the picture and the role her dance classes played in her life.)

My recollection is that this was taken when my ballet dance class performed Swan Lake. I think somehow we must have had individual photos. I was definitely in the chorus of ballerinas and sort of remember being in a semicircular formation with the other dancers. Note the braces so I think this was towards the end of my involvement with dance training 6 days/week when I decided as a teenager that I liked academics a lot more than dance and did not have the talent or the desire to be a ballerina or a dancer.

Today, I am most grateful for the self discipline, the coordination, mental development, the muscular training and the appreciation for the art of dance that I received from all of that hard work. My involvement with Tai Chi over the past 10 years brings back so much of the joy of dance – practicing steps, being graceful and remembering combinations. I also attribute my physical strength and my ability to comeback from my traumatic brain injury to this early training.)

Once I got to know my friend Regina and learned about the dance classes she was taking I thought I would like to try the kind of dance she was doing. Regina was studying with Genevieve Jones and had recently been in a delightful production of Johnny Appleseed. She was invited to play a skunk with an older group of kids. Genevieve had a totally different approach to working with kids.  Students were encouraged to make up their own movement, usually to a story she shared.  The music was mostly live accompaniment.  I wanted to do this instead of learning routines!!

Genevieve was a real pioneer in modern dance in Pittsburgh.  She was born in 1906 in Pittsburgh and attended the University of Wisconsin, majoring in dance.  (The University of Wisconsin-Madison, according to its website, offered the first university dance degree program in the country.)  Genevieve brought her love of modern dance back to Pittsburgh.  In the 30’s she began bringing such dance legends as Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Jose Limon to her hometown.

I soon was loving the creative movement classes she led, and I remember one dance program in which I was an Irish Lady and we danced a poem about the Irish famine when people only ate potatoes.

Practicing in costume for the Irish Lady, in the living room of our house on Shaw Avenue in Pittsburgh. I think I am about 10 in this picture.

In addition to the children’s classes that Genevieve taught, she also conducted quite popular ballroom classes for pre-teens.  Five of us from Shaw Avenue carpooled to these classes. One of our parents would drive us to the class and another would pick us up.  Jimmy Levinson, Joan Davis, Regina, Bobby Moser and I would pile into a car and off we go to her very large studio with chairs all around the room.  I seem to remember we had to wear white cotton gloves and it was all very formal learning how to do the basic ballroom steps.  We learned to graciously accept being asked to dance, and when it was women’s choice, to ask someone to dance.  Afterwards we would go back to one of our houses and have fun hanging out together.  While I didn’t keep in contact with Joan Davis, I do know that Bobby Moser took over his father’s interior design business in our neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. He died in his sixties. Jimmy and I have kept in contact through the years.  He has done amazing things in agricultural economics and with work in India. His son is part of an amazing non-profit in India which works with pregnant women and their newborn infants. And of course, if you have been reading this blog you know that Regina and I continue to enjoy both our friendship and working and collaborating together.

As a teenager I began teaching classes in my basement as a way to earn some money and found myself using many images and ideas from Genevieve Jones’s classes.   And many years later when I had a full-grown practice working with children in Tallahassee I again turned to ideas I had experienced in Genevieve’s classes.  By that time she had published a book sharing her stories, telling how she guided children in using them in movement, and providing original music from the person who had accompanied her classes.  Her materials were wonderfully useful, especially for working with children ages 3 to about 8. 

I also remember the simple imagery she used when doing some warm-up exercises like saying hello and goodbye as we pointed and flexed our feet!!

Teaching in Tallahassee, Florida, saying “hello and goodbye” with our toes. Picture taken around 1975.

Genevieve was a wonderful influence in helping me develop my creativity and starting me on a fun journey in dance.  As I became a teenager I wanted something different and found other dance teachers with a more disciplined and structured approach. 

As I was going through my scrapbooks getting ready for our move to Costa Rica, I came across an obituary that I had saved, written when Genevieve died in 2002.  In it she is quoted as saying, “Dance (always spelled with a capital D) is a sacred thing, a great and wonderful thing.” 

I very much wanted to find a picture of Genevieve Jones to include in this post.  I wasn’t able to, but what I did find, in a literary journal, was a wonderful piece entitled “Letters to Genevieve,” which describes her beautifully and shows the profound impact she had on one individual’s life. The work was written by Sarah Golin, and here is the link to it. https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v18n1/nonfiction/golin-s/letters-page.shtml.  Thank you, Sarah, for writing this. 

Regina Ress has also written about her experience in dance and the influence of Genevieve Jones. Here’s a link to it. Thank you, Regina, for sharing this.

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Tuesday Night Dance Classes: Thank You, Jeanne Beaman

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Personal Life

To get ready to write this blog I googled Jeanne Beaman hoping to find some pictures and a good bio online.  Instead I found an obituary. I knew Jeanne was getting up in years but somehow I didn’t expect to find that she had died just this month, having lived to be a hundred.  And an even bigger surprise was that she died in Bernallilo, New Mexico. My heart sank. Up until the end of January I had lived within a 40-minute drive of where she had lived. I could have visited her if I had known.  I hunched that one of her children must have moved to New Mexico and that she had been living with them.  Googling some more I discovered it was her son, Peter, and that he lived in Placido having moved from Pittsburgh. So… this blog takes on a special meaning for me. Not only do I want to share the strong impact she had on my development as a dancer and person but I deeply want to honor her.

Jeanne Beaman https://obituaries.gloucestertimes.com/obituary/jeanne-beaman-1078445337

I was probably about 14 when I began taking an adult modern dance class that met on Tuesday evenings in Genevieve Jones’s Oakland studio. Luckily a friend of my Mom’s regularly took the class and offered to drive me to and from the class until I was 16 and could drive myself. I was the only young person in the class and it was quite a wonderful group of adults, many of whom still stand out in my mind as if it were only yesterday.  Fran Balter, the friend of my Mom’s, had children close to my age and had studied dance at Bennington and the Martha Graham Studio. She was a tall, stately, elegant woman.  And then there was Cecil Kitcat. She taught dance at Carnegie Mellon (then called Carnegie Tech).  She had a strong British accent and was probably in her 60’s.  She seemed very old to me and quite a character as she enthusiastically attacked the movement.  Several other women were regulars, and I don’t remember if we had any men in the class. 

Jeanne led the class with focused intent.  Small, with her hair in a tight bun, she guided us through a serious modern dance class, drawing from several different modern dance pioneers and putting together wonderful combinations of her own.  The class was well thought out, beginning with standing stretches, progressing to sitting-on-the-floor work that included Graham contractions and turns around the back.  When we stood up again, with pliés and tendus we were ready to go across the floor.  And that was what I loved most.  I remember one combination that had a super fun fall in it where we ran and lunged with an outstretched arm taking us to the ground followed by a roll and getting back up.  I later used that fall in an audition at Perry-Mansfield Dance and Theatre Camp and it got the attention of Helen Tamiris and earned me a spot in a piece she was setting.  Tamiris even asked me to please repeat the fall again at the audition. Many of the campers/students had put together a short dance before they came.  I hadn’t, so I put together some of my favorite across-the-floor combinations of Jeanne’s, ending with the fall. 

For me, Jeanne wasn’t just my modern dance teacher, but someone who could understand my drive and determination to be a dancer and my desire to have a career in dance.  Sometimes when I was being challenged at home and discouraged from a dance career she would speak with my parents, helping them to understand my love of dance and encouraging their support.

When Martha Graham’s film A Dancer’s World was made and first broadcast at WQED in Pittsburgh, Jeanne held a reception at Chatham College where she was teaching at the time.  Graham was there and I remember being introduced to her and saying that I so wanted to come to NYC and take her Xmas intensive course.  And of course she assured me that was indeed possible even for a person as young as I was at the time. (Probably 14 going on 15 at the time…. it would take me until I was 16 to go.) 

Later Jeanne left Chatham College and began teaching at the University of Pittsburgh.  By then I was in NYC and Juilliard.  When I came back home from Juilliard to attend the University of Pittsburgh, the university wouldn’t accept the ballet or modern dance classes from Juilliard to fulfill the required PE credit.  So I took Jeanne’s modern dance class in the PE department and served as her demonstrator for the semester. It was kind of our joke that here I was in this beginning modern class to fulfill a PE requirement.

Among my many memories is the composition assignment based on computer-assigned movement. Unexpected movement sequences challenged us.  Jeanne was a pioneer in working on using the computer and dance together.

As my dance career developed and Jeanne and her husband had retired, moving to Rockport, Massachusetts during the year, and in the summers to an island in Maine, we kept in touch.  She came to a dance performance by Avodah when we were in Boston, and on another tour when I had a day off I visited her in Rockport.  One summer when Murray and I planned a Maine trip we had a delightful time visiting her and Richard on their Maine Island.

Murray and I with Jeanne, summer of 1990
at their Maine Island.

We kept in touch, occasionally talking and writing, through the early 2000’s. At some point I knew that her children were encouraging her to leave Rockport where she was then living alone since her husband had died.  She wrote that she wasn’t ready yet.  

The dance world is small with lots of overlapping connections. At a conference in October of 2018 (when Elizabeth McPherson and I were presenting a workshop on Helen Tamiris), Elizabeth, Lynne Wimmer (a dancer/choreographer/teacher from Pittsburgh) and I were having dinner together.  Somehow Lynne and I began talking about classes with Jeanne Beaman.  Elizabeth perked up and shared that she had interviewed Jeanne for a book she had written about the early Bennington College summer program.  We had fun sharing our memories of Jeanne and marveling at Jeanne’s dance history from starting in ballet with the San Francisco Opera Ballet, then studying with the early dance pioneers, training at Mills College, teaching for many years, and advocating for dance, particularly in Pittsburgh and New England.

There is a strange empty feeling in me right now knowing that she has passed.  I send heartfelt love and condolences to her family and am deeply grateful for the role she played in my life.

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An Ad in Dance Magazine Leads to an Amazing Summer

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Costa Rica, Personal Life

It was late fall and I was 14 ½, nearly 15 years old and browsing through Dance Magazine.  I had continued to be very focused on dance, having progressed from the creative dance classes of Genevieve Jones to more structured modern dance classes with Jeanne Beaman.  Jeanne’s classes were a nice blend of a variety of modern dance techniques, definitely including some Graham technique sprinkled in.  

Hungry for lots more technique and intensive training, I was determined to find a program to attend in the summer.  Dance Magazine was an excellent source and I came across an ad for Perry-Mansfield’s Camp/Performing Arts Program which said Helen Tamiris would be teaching there for the first three weeks. I looked up Tamiris and found that she was not only a pioneering modern dancer but was also the choreographer of several Broadway shows.   Wow, that would be a perfect person to study with! The challenge was that the camp was located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and that was pretty far from Pittsburgh.  When I approached my parents they said they would pay for the tuition but I had to pay for my transportation.  I found that one could take the train from Pittsburgh, change in Chicago to Denver and then take a trainfrom Denver to Steamboat Springs. I seem to remember that the round trip fare was around $75 (this was 1958).  Another friend, JoAnn Fried, was also interested in going.  She would focus on drama while I would be a dance major.

Now how to raise the necessary money.  Definitely babysitting would be one way.  Then in brainstorming with JoAnn Fried we came up with the idea of teaching classes in my basement.  We could charge 25 cents per class, and have a culminating creative type recital like Genevieve Jones did.  My Mom was very enthusiastic and said we could use the finished room in our basement, which even had its own bathroom. Luckily there wasn’t too much furniture and we could easily move it to the side, giving us plenty of room to dance. Finding students wasn’t hard either, between younger kids in the neighborhood, my sisters’ friends,and daughters of my Mom’s friends.  The word quickly got around and we had a nice group of kids to work with. 

Picture of JoAnn Fried and myself working with two of our students. I’m holding the arm of my sister Suzanne (of blessed memory). This picture is from a Pittsburgh newspaper, May 1958, which I recently found in a saved file.

Once my parents realized that I would indeed be able to make the transportation costs, they agreed that I could attend camp and allowed me to apply.  They made the deposit for the summer and agreed they would pay the rest of the tuition. JoAnn Fried and I called ourselves Jo-Jo Inc. and had fun putting together a production we called Westward Ho as a culminating event. We needed a place to perform and Mom helped us to rent the local grade school auditorium for an evening. 

Looking back I realize that my parents’ asking me to raise the transportation costs was an excellent experience that ended up providing me with tools that have helped me through my life. Maybe it is best summed up by saying I learned that I could envision an idea and carry it through. That kind of skill set enabled me to found the Avodah Dance Ensemble and run the company for 30 years and then later in life develop the film company Healing Voices – Personal Stories.  

It has also served me in my personal life.  Recently it was put into practice as Murray and I moved to our new home in Costa Rica. Having learned from the time I was a teen that it was OK to attend a summer program halfway across the United States, I didn’t find it so overwhelming to be building a new life in Central America. Knowing that from the age of 14 I was able to collaborate with another person and build a program with a culminating event fueled my confidence that I can envision and make change happen.  Early I learned that one needs a certain level of determination and problem-solving ability to make one’s vision happen.  I am grateful that I was encouraged from a young age to do this.

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Remembering Louis Johnson

JoAnne Tucker / / "Let My People Go", Dance History, New York Company, Personal Life

Our “Let My People Go” cast members of The Avodah Dance Ensemble are like a family.  There is a special closeness, especially among those of us who worked directly with Louis.  So it felt quite natural that the way I would hear about Louis’s passing this past Tuesday, March 31, was to get a message from Christopher Hemmans, who danced in “Let My People Go” while a student at Juilliard.  He shared this notice, and a little later I got a text message from Freddie Moore, sharing the same link.   

I am filled with so many warm memories of my collaboration and friendship with Louis and feel so blessed that he was an important part of my dance history.  I have written many blogs about the collaboration, from the first blog of Mostly Dance (on June 1, 2018) to a most meaningful one on September 7, 2018 describing the last meeting I had with Louis.  Kezia so beautifully wrote of Louis in 1999, and that is a part of the September 7th blog too. I encourage you to check it out along with all the other blogs from June 1 to September 7, 2018.

We are living in such a strange time with so many deaths that I fear that Louis’s passing will go without the proper honoring that he deserves.  When Loretta Abbott passed we had a small but very special meeting together at St. Mark’s church hosted by Jeannine Otis. Now it looks like the way we can gather together is via a ZOOM meeting.  So I am suggesting to our Avodah family that we do a ZOOM meeting to share our favorite memories of Louis.  How about if we plan on doing that after Passover and Easter… on Tuesday, April 21st, the time to be determined by who wants to participate. Please leave a comment on the blog, or email me directly at jotuc122@gmail.com if you would like to participate.

JoAnne and Louis
Picture taken by Tommy Scott

1958 Summer at Perry-Mansfield

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life

Preface: Why am I continuing to paint and write this blog at a time when the world is in crisis? An honest answer is because it allows some structure to this time when Murray and I aren’t leaving our home. For part of each day there is an element of peacefulness and joy in my life as I reflect back or create anew. Doing something creative engages me and I invite you along on the journey. I also welcome guest blogs… won’t you share how you are structuring your time to find some peacefulness and joy!

Even though it is nearly 60 years since I ventured to Steamboat Springs and attended Perry-Mansfield, the memories are crystal clear in my mind. The blend of the arts, the Colorado landscape, the rustic setting with horses – all evoke smells, sounds and visual images swirling me back in time.  I was lucky to attend at a time when Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield were still very active as the founding directors.  According to Wikipedia,  “Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp was founded by Charlotte and Portia in 1913 and is the oldest continuously operating dance and theater school in America.” 

Perry-Mansfield’s website describes:

…two ladies came to the frontier mountain town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado with a mule named “Tango.” Although the town was populated with people primarily engaged in mining and ranching, it was Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield’s vision to explore and teach “natural dance forms” and “artistic expression close to creatures and mountains and out-of-doors.”

Quickly regarded by the locals as the “mad ladies of Steamboat,” Charlotte and Portia founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in this spectacular mountain setting – a 76-acre campus 7,000 feet above sea level and 150 miles northwest of Denver.

From their humble beginnings in a few rustic cabins and some lean years when the “scenery was the salary,” Charlotte and Portia nurtured Perry-Mansfield into one of the premier performing arts schools and camps for children and youth of all ages.

JoAnn Fried and I arrived at the Steamboat train station which is now the Arts Depot.  I don’t have any pictures of our arrival but I do have one of our departure.  

JoAnn Fried and I at the train station at the end of summer.

The first few days were a whirlwind of activity settling into a rustic cabin (no bathroom) up a fairly steep hill.  Down the hill was the bath house with toilets, sinks and showers. I quickly got to know three roommates, one from Denver, another from Wyoming, and I don’t remember where the third was from.  I also think our counselor may have slept in our bunk, but I am not sure. I do remember her name was Jo and she was from Minnesota. Auditions and class placement were also an important part of the first few days.  I excitedly and boldly auditioned for both Helen Tamiris’s piece that she would be setting on a selected group, along with Midsummer Night’s Dream, the theater production to be staged in the first few weeks of camp.  

In an earlier blog I mentioned that I hadn’t prepared anything for an audition and quickly put together favorite phrases from Jeanne Beaman’s class, ending with a fun fall of sliding onto an outstretched arm and then rolling to get up. When I completed my phrase of probably two minutes, Tamiris asked me to please repeat the fall.  A day later a list was posted outside the office door listing the selected campers. I remember being thrilled to see my name there.  Only two of us under college age were selected, myself and Martha Clarke, a year younger than me.    

At that time Perry-Mansfield went from young campers (in a section called The Ranch) all the way to College-age students, each age having its own section at the camp.  All ages attended at the same time.

I also auditioned for Midsummer Night’s Dream. I don’t remember the initial audition but I do remember the callback. Three of us were called back to read for Titania. I was stunned. I had never taken an acting class and never thought of myself as anything other than a dancer.  I had gone to the initial audition because I wanted to apply myself to as many different opportunities as possible.  I didn’t get the part and did get cast in a small role in the production, which I declined, feeling that the rehearsals for Tamaris’s ballet were enough for me.  It was exciting to have made the callback and to have had the experience of auditioning for the part of Titania.

Since I was cast in the ballet I was also permitted to take Tamiris’s advanced technique class and Tamiris’s composition class. The composition class was a real eye opener. I don’t have much memory of the technique class other than doing relevés into falls and catching ourselves, in each direction. The composition class left me with two main approaches that in ways are still part of my life.  First, that one can start with an ordinary gesture and from that build a whole dance, and second, that one must totally commit to what one is doing!!

The piece Tamiris developed that summer was Dance for Walt Whitman.  It was in three sections, each featuring a poem that was read.  The middle section was my favorite, inspired by the poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.”  All the women linked arms and moved as one body.  My mom surprised me and came out for the performance.  As I was packing for the move to Costa Rica I found a letter that she had written my dad.  Reading it was very moving to me and I share just a few sentences from it.  

JoAnne was an important part of the group. Tamiris added a fall for her… she slid half way down a 3 ft ramp and got up gracefully 10 beats later.  The ballet lasted 20 minutes and the effect was magnificent. 

I’m getting more convinced that she really has something to express in dance.

Program from Perry-Mansfield’s Evening of Dance
Picture of Tamiris that I took!

Working with Tamiris was a turning point for me in dance. The confirmation of being selected and then the experience of the actual classes, rehearsals and performance cemented my determination to have a career in dance.  But the experience at Perry-Mansfield had another major influence on my life. It introduced me to the western Rocky Mountains and confirmed my love of being in nature.  During the summer I would hike up from the cabin to the top of the hill,  and in a level area do a short dance of thanksgiving for being in such an amazing environment.  

Picture taken by one of my friends, of me dancing at the top the hill at Perry-Mansfield.

After the Tamiris ballet experience I had several more weeks of camp and wasn’t particularly impressed with Harriet Anne Gray, who took over for Tamiris.  Instead there were two other experiences that stand out in my mind.

On her day off, Ray Faulkner, the head counselor of our Hill unit, invited me to join her on a hike up Fish Creek Falls to a lake at the top. It was breathtaking and awesome and the wildflowers were amazing.  Hiking, wildflowers and being in nature have been important parts of life since then. 

Perry-Mansfield also offered special western trips. I had signed up for a three-day trip to the Grand Canyon.  It actually wasn’t to the Grand Canyon but rather to Dead Horse Point which is in Utah where the Colorado River cuts through it much like it does at the Grand Canyon.  That was another awesome nature experience.  We camped out and that night was during the August meteor shower and I remember an amazing night counting shooting stars.

Picture of me at Dead Horse Point!

As the 6-week experience ended and we boarded the train to head for home, I found myself filled with a new energy and a clear direction for my life.  

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An Intercultural Harmony Grant Funds a 2004 Summer Workshop

JoAnne Tucker / / Movement Workshops, Multicultural Programs, Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life

Avodah began to do week-long summer dance training programs in 1997, but I want to share memories of our final one, at Perry-Mansfield in August 2004.  We were very fortunate to have a grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund.   This fund, which began in 1989 upon the death of Laura Jane Musser, is devoted to her interests, which included the arts and helping children.  One of the areas funded is Intercultural Harmony and we applied for a grant to provide a five-day workshop teaching how to use movement, music and storytelling to create multicultural programs in schools.  The grant enabled me to put together a stellar faculty and to help provide scholarships to participants.

This was not the first Avodah workshop at Perry-Mansfield in Steamboat Spring, CO. The first one was in 2001 when Amichai Lau Lavie and Libbie Mathes joined me as the faculty with our week focused on Yoga, Dance and Sacred Text. Libbie was my next-door neighbor in Steamboat Springs and we quickly discovered our common interest in dance and sacred text from both a Jewish and a Buddhist perspective.  This was a great opportunity for us to work together.  Libbie is a highly trained and gifted teacher of Yoga, having studied in India in both Asana (posture) and Pranayama (breath work).  Amichai is now a rabbi, but at the time of the workshop he was a student, extremely knowledgeable about Jewish text.  Libbie remembers “loving his analysis and insights into the Moses sagas.”  The workshop was part of Avodah’s training program for leaders of dance midrash, and at least one person who had done workshops with me in NYC made the trip to Perry-Mansfield in Colorado.

Libbie and I did another workshop the following year focusing on Meditation, with Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg joining us. And then in 2004 we had a faculty of five, all people that I had a long history of working with.  As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we focused on training teachers to use multicultural programs in the schools. Libbie continued providing the Yoga section and insights from her explorations of India and Yoga’s traditions.  Regina Ress, an international storyteller, had a huge number of relevant stories to share and had taught in schools at all levels.  Kezia had both an education degree and a dance degree, and had danced and taught with Avodah for 13 years.  She and I had led many workshops related to dance midrash and multicultural work that grew out of our piece Let My People Go.  Newman Taylor Baker is a percussionist I had worked with since 1989 as part of Let My People Go and then in other teaching situations along with our prison programs.  He had years of experience presenting school programs and had the most amazing collection of percussion instruments from all over the world.  In addition we invited Julie Gayer to join us, as she was taking on the role of director of The Avodah Dance Ensemble in the fall of 2004, since I was no longer living in New York City and was retiring from heading the dance company.

Our 2004 faculty from l. to r. Libbie, Kezia, Julie, JoAnne, Newman and Regina sitting on the edge of the Louis Horst Dance Studio at Perry-Mansfield.

We not only had participants from throughout the United States, but two members of the Steamboat Springs community, as well.  Libbie remembers a chemistry teacher and also an administrator.  We were thrilled that we could offer scholarships to participants.  Having all worked together before, this was a sheer teaching joy where we could just easily flow from one leader to another.  As Libbie and I were next-door neighbors and luckily the townhouse on the other side of mine was vacant, we rented it for the week, and everyone had fun hanging out together after teaching.  I remember that Newman introduced me to quinoa and showed me how to rinse it first before cooking it.  And then the weekend following the workshop, we had a wonderful time hiking two of my favorite trails. 

Storytelling, movement, and music are all ways to connect to others and learn about different cultures, finding common threads and celebrating differences.  For me on a personal note it was a wonderful way to complete my work with the Avodah Dance Ensemble as its founding director.  Avodah had begun with my exploration of my own Jewish roots and my relationship to Jewish text.  Now over thirty years later, I had changed and my focus was on building bridges between people and seeing intercultural harmony (the beautiful phrase used by the Laura Jane Musser Fund).  And how wonderful to be able to hold this workshop at Perry-Mansfield in the Louis Horst Studio.  It was like so many pieces of my life coming together…nature, spirituality, dance history, personal history, deep friendships and artistic collaborations. 

Regina hugging a tree on one of our hikes.
Resting on a hike and totally enjoying being together.
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Journey: A Dance Piece about the Jewish Immigrant Experience

JoAnne Tucker / / Avodah's Early History, New York Company, Personal Life

One of the main political talking points a year ago was how to reform U.S. immigration policies.  Today it is overshadowed by COVID-19.  Yet it is still a very important theme because immigration is a fundamental building block of the United States, and the current administration does all it can to block entry to the country. As director of the Avodah Dance Ensemble, I became fascinated with the Jewish immigrant experience to the U.S.  In 1985 I came across a book called Chaia Sonia, written by Don Gussow, describing the journey he and his family made to the U.S. (arriving in 1920).  After reading the book, I reached out to Don Gussow, asked to meet with him, and then asked for permission to use ideas from the book as themes for a new piece the dance company.  He was most enthusiastic, and generous with his time, and he strongly urged me to meet his son Alan Gussow as a possible collaborator on the project.  Alan and I met, and Alan began coming to rehearsals and became a key collaborator on “Journey.” I will be writing more about that later but first I want to share the result of a Google search to check the proper spelling of the title of the book Chaia Sonia.

I am never satisfied to see just what comes up on the first page of a search.  I usually continue for five to ten pages more, just because I often find fun surprises and additional information.  That is exactly what happened with the search for Chaia Sonia and Gussow.  First of all I was thrilled to see the book is still available and there is even a free download at one site, although I was reluctant to try it since it required registering and I wasn’t sure of the website.  What I did find was a YouTube video recorded by Don’s grandson Adam Gussow in July 2019. Adam has been a Professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi since 2002.  But I knew about Adam because his father Alan often proudly shared that Adam was building a reputation as a harmonica player, and that was back in 1985.  Indeed Adam has built an outstanding reputation and is highly regarded for his blues harmonica playing. A review in American Harmonica Newsletter says that “Gussow’s playing is characterized by his technical mastery and innovative brilliance that comes along once in a generation.”  Futhermore there is a documentary on Netflix called Satan and Adam about Adam’s collaboration with Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee.  It is a fascinating and well done documentary, covering from Adam’s first meeting with Satan (on Satan’s spot on a Harlem street) through their longtime collaboration.

I watched the full 23-minute video on YouTube with total attention.  And of course the opening title immediately caught my attention because its full version is so relevant to this blog.  The second line says, “All my people are immigrants – An American apologizes for the behavior of our president.”  It opens with Adam playing the harmonica and wow that just inspired my old bones to get up and dance.  Soon Adam begins speaking about his own family roots and in particular the book his grandfather wrote and how deeply he wants to apologize for the behavior of the president of the U.S.  I strongly urge you to watch it.  Here is the link.

Don Gussow, author of Chaia Sonia, was a publisher of trade magazines and wrote four books.  Chaia Sonia tells of his family’s flight through Poland and Russia to freedom. It is an incredible journey focusing on his mother, a courageous woman who led her family on a five-year journey from Lithuania to the United States, arriving in 1920.  

Current cover of Chaia Sonia, which is available at Amazon.  I remember a slightly different cover… but my memory could be wrong.

Before talking specifically about the piece “Journey” that we created, I want to share a little bit about Alan Gussow (1931-1997).  He had an outstanding, nearly 50-year career as an artist, author, activist/environmentalist and educator.  At age 21 he was awarded the Prix de Rome. He was introduced to art and in particular watercolor as a student at Middlebury College.  The following is[fix] an excerpt from a Fall 2018 article in the Maine Arts Journal, written by Carl Little, entitled “In Conversation with the World: Alan Gussow’s Watercolors”:

“As a student at Middlebury College in Vermont, I learned at least two things about art,” Gussow once recalled. “First, that art was magical. How I or any person could mix a little water with some paint and then make marks and shapes which look like parts of the world still remains a source of wonder.”….. “At Cooper Union where I studied for one year after Middlebury,” Gussow recalled, “I learned that art was a form of energy.” However nature-centered his art became, he consistently practiced a highly expressive approach to subjects, often entering realms of abstraction. 

It is interesting to note that in the 80’s Alan began experimenting with art as a process instead of a product. He brought wonderful energy into the process of our rehearsals.

As I continued developing ideas for the piece I decided that I wanted to reach out to others who had made a journey from Russia to the U.S. about the same time. I was lucky to know two other people with stories to share. One, Louis Siegel,was the father of a longtime friend of mine. We met and he shared his story.  I was immediately struck by themes similar to Don Gussow’s story. My husband’s Aunt Bess also recorded her story for us and again the same themes emerged.  These were long and difficult journeys involving crossing rivers, being hungry and sometimes stealing food.  

Rehearsals began with the five Avodah dancers at that time: Beatrice Bogorad, Jean Ference, Kathy Kellerman, Rachelle Palnick and Rick Jacobs.  Alan often joined us, sometimes with a very large piece of paper that he spread on the floor and enjoyed drawing on as we danced.  Ideas from the drawings later became a poster and invitation to our opening night performance.   We responded to the stories, creating an abstract piece with the desire to get to core of the experience, capturing the energy it took to make such a long and difficult journey.  I am not sure how successful we were with the finished product but the process was a meaningful and rich experience, at least for me, as the collaboration with Alan opened new doors and ways of thinking of things.   And interestingly, in researching for this blog, I feel a reconnecting with Alan.  I now look forward to studying his watercolors and learning from them, as well as from his writing, what I might apply here as I experiment with watercolor and enjoy time painting in our garden.

Page from Avodah Scrapbook showing the poster and invitation painted by Alan Gussow.
A favorite picture from “Journey.” Photo by Tom Brazil.
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