Lisa Danette Watson - Mostly Dance

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

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

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

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

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

The Full Cast. Photo by Tom Scott.

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

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

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

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

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

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