Louis and I wanted to do another collaboration together and this time create a piece that would have space for community members to participate in both the choreographic process and the performance. As we toured with Let My People Go throughout the United States and saw the enthusiasm with which communities were collaborating in presenting a performance we began to wonder what it would be like if they became part of the performance, creating a piece that engaged both the company and community members.
We had created a piece on one of our tours to the suburbs of Chicago in 1997 when the company worked with youth from New Faith Baptist Church in Matteson, IL and B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, IL, spending the afternoon together. Using the friendship between Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as motivation, the piece, involving about 15 young dancers from the congregations, was titled Stand Up Take Action.
This experience showed us a beginning path to engage community with the company and so as the tenth anniversary of Let My People Go was nearing in the fall of 1998, we began work on a new collaboration which Louis and I called Make a Change. Rehearsals got underway with dancers Beth Millstein, Tanya Alexander, Jessica Losinski and Mark Walcott with original musical accompaniment by Newman Taylor Baker and Jeannine Otis. We were all used to working together and so things progressed quickly and smoothly as we established set choreography with places where community members would join us.
Our goal was to create a piece about the energy it takes to make a difference – to explore the idea of change, with joy and celebration, and ask participants not what causes they supported, but rather what kind of energy is needed to make a change.
Performances were planned for January of 1999, first in Brooklyn’s Park Slope Jewish Center, then in Staten Island, and the official opening at our home base of Hebrew Union College. In Brooklyn six members of the Brooklyn Brownstone Coalition danced with the company in the piece. The Staten Island performance was sponsored by Temple Israel and was held at the Music Hall of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, billed as a community celebration in Dance and Song for Dr. Martin Luther King, on Sunday evening, January 10th. An earlier announcement in the Staten Island Advance invited community members to participate. They did not need professional training. They just had to be comfortable moving, and willing to improvise. They also had to be available to attend two workshops earlier that week and the dress rehearsal at 3 p.m. on the performance day.
We were thrilled at the diverse turnout and enthusiasm of the 16 adult participants. The workshops were great fun to lead and I found myself dancing up a storm too.
Community members at a rehearsal. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.
JoAnne demonstrating hambone. Photo by Kezia Gleckman Hayman.
Kezia in the Avodah Newsletter described our process:
First Louis and JoAnne built a structure for the piece, setting choreography on company members and leaving gaps for community participants. The dancers collaborated in creating their movements, and musicians Newman Taylor Baker andJeannine Otis created the entire musical score under Louis’s direction. Short phrases of movement from set choreography were then selected for teaching to community casts. In a few workshops bringing together volunteers from a variety of groups in a given local community, JoAnne coached participants through guided improvisations to find their own movements expressing their heartfelt desire to “make a change.”
Kezia and Mark teaching a combination to community members. Photo by JoAnne Tucker.
We were also very fortunate to have a grant from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The cultural challenge grant was matched by 90 individual contributors and the official opening of the piece was on January 28that Hebrew Union College.
Additional grants related to the project followed. The Tribune New York Foundation funded our return to Brooklyn’s Midwood High School to work with 11thgraders in a combined English and Social Studies curriculum focusing on ideas related to the new piece. We also conducted workshops and performed for youth from temporary housing in Pleasantville, New York in a program coordinated by Mara Mills, Director of the Newman Theatre at the YW-YWHA in Pleasantville.
Later in the year we received a grant from The Irving Caesar Lifetime Trust. Lyricist and songwriter Irving Caesar (1895-1996) was known for his lyrics to “Tea for Two,” “Swanee” and the show No, No Nanette. This grant enabled us to conduct a series of six workshops at two different New York City public high schools, culminating in the students’ joining the company in a performance at their school.
Just before writing this blog I watched a video of the Staten Island performance of Make a Change. Unfortunately the quality is very bad so I won’t be sharing it online. But let me describe a few things that struck me as I watched. First of all for this performance, the piece opens with Louis and me on stage. We have a brief discussion about the work and then as we shout together, “Change!” the piece begins. The 16 community dancers are wonderful, showing confidence in their parts, and working sometimes as a complete group and other times in small groups of four. When Newman first enters it is with a bold jump into the center of the stage and he plays “hambone” – usinghis hands on various parts of his body to create rhythms and different sounds. The community dancers join him at the end. Later we find Newman participating with the dancers, helping Mark to lift another dancer.
A key movement phrase to show determination to make a change is a series of small weighted jumps in a second position plié (the position shown in the photo led by Kezia and Mark). The community members later join the company members in this phrase. Louis set some wonderful balletic moments and even a bit of jazzy Broadway-show style movement. Jeannine playfully enters and moves around the stage with original music she composed to the phrase “make a change.” In all, it is a fun, lively, interactive 10-minute piece.
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