Tag: Perry-Mansfield

Agnes de Mille at Perry Mansfield – Part II

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance History, Musical Theater, Perry-Mansfield

One of the challenges that Linda Kent faced when she was Director of Dance at Perry-Mansfield was to provide really meaningful experiences for the dance students after their concert which was held the fourth week of camp. That meant there were still two weeks left of the six-week program.  She came up with the idea of bringing guest artists to P-M so the students would be exposed to both master classes and a lecture demonstration by an outstanding artist.   

In 2007, P-M faculty member Christina Paolucci arranged an amazing experience featuring Gemze de Lappe sharing work of Agnes de Mille, along with two dancers and a musician.  (At that time I did not know about Agnes de Mille’s history with P-M.  Check out Part I of this blog to learn about it.) I was thrilled that the students would be able to have master classes and a lecture demonstration, and so Murray and I made a contribution to P-M to help fund it.

Christina at the time was Educational Director/Associate Artistic Director at New York Theatre Ballet, and Gemze had been working extensively with NYTB from 2005 until her death in 2017 as NYTB presented many excerpts from de Mille’s ballets.  A highlight of NYTB’s work on de Mille was a production called Dance/Speak.  A description in TheatreMania describes it well:

The New York Theatre Ballet celebrates its 30th Anniversary season with the World Premiere of Dance/Speak: The Life of Agnes de Mille, a dance/drama which tells the story of choreographer Agnes de Mille’s struggle for success in the American theatre. Written by Anderson Ferrell, novelist and director of The de Mille Working Group; Directed by Scott Alan Evans; Staged by Gemze de Lappe (including dances from Oklahoma!, Carousel, Brigadoon as well as Fall River Legend, Three Virgins and a Devil, Rodeo, and Debut at the Opera) with Additional Choreography by Liza Gennaro. All performances are followed by an intimate panel discussion with the creators.  

https://www.theatermania.com/shows/new-york-city-theater/dancespeak-the-life-of-agnes-de-mille_154271
Diana Byer, Sallie Wilson, Gemze deLappe and Paul Sutherland at a post-performance conversation after an evening of de Mille works produced by NYTB. Photo by Christina Paolucci
Elena Zahlmann and Terence Duncan in Oklahoma! Photo by Richard Termine, courtesy of New York Theatre Ballet

An obituary in The New York Times helped me understand better the contribution that Gemze made to the dance world and to keeping the integrity of de Mille’s choreography.  Richard Sandomer described it well in this quote:

Miss de Lappe understood that de Mille’s dancers had to be actors, and that her choreography — which was celebrated for incorporating elements of folk dancing and classical ballet — was as much about forging character as it was about learning the steps. When she recreated de Mille’s choreography, Miss de Lappe used her mentor’s vocabulary, vivid with motivational similes, to inform even the subtlest of movements.

The obituary also pointed out:

Miss de Lappe’s association with de Mille began in 1943 when she was cast in a small part in the first national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s“Oklahoma!”

…“She was the potter’s clay for Agnes and one of her foremost interpreters,” Anderson Ferrell, director of the de Mille Working Group, which licenses performances of de Mille’s dances, said in a telephone interview. “Gemze was her muse.”

Here’s the link to read the full Obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/obituaries/gemze-de-lappe-95-dies-keeper-of-the-agnes-de-mille-flame.html

Over the course of three days Gemze along with dancers Terence Duncan and Julie-Anne Taylor and music director Ferdy Tumakaka conducted a Repertory class for P-M dancers, held two master classes open to the public and presented an hour-long lecture demonstration. Repertory from Carousel, Brigadoon and Oklahoma were introduced. Christina and Terence remember that Gemze’s master class focused on the breath and very detailed characterization from Carousel.

Gemze (center) teaching at Perry-Mansfield. Photo by Christina Paolucci

Five years later in 2013, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Perry-Mansfield Linda Kent turned to de Mille’s Rodeo and shared the following with me:

I wanted to celebrate our history and our dance present and future.  Rodeo seemed the most perfect look back. I had great ambition and very little budget!!!  Paul Sutherland and the de Mille estate worked with us and we did an excerpt of the second half of the dance. Paul has been the exclusive restager of Rodeo since 1979 and he gives the dancers so much more than steps!!  It was a miracle to see contemporary 16-21 year olds ransformed into the gals and cowboys of de Mille’s first encounters. Our cowgirl, Cleo Person, was a delight in her awkward mooning over Keil Weiler as our Champion Roper (and fantastic tap dancer).  Paul Sutherland was delighted and I was thrilled that we could bring this back to the community where the inspiration began. 

Murray and I had already moved from Steamboat Springs to Santa Fe in late 2009 and while at first we returned in the summers, by 2013 we were busy sharing our artwork at fairs and didn’t make it up to Perry-Mansfield for the celebration.  We did hear raves from our friends about how well the evening of dance went.

One of the most delightful things of writing the blog posts for Mostly Dance is the interaction I get with other artists sharing memories. I am very grateful to Linda Kent, Christina Paolucci and Terence Duncan for going through notes, photos and memories that made this post possible.

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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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Linda Kent Brings a New Level of Excellence to Perry-Mansfield

JoAnne Tucker / / Perry-Mansfield

 It’s the final day of the 2001 six-week summer program for high school and college-age dancers at Perry-Mansfield.  Linda Kent has headed the program and I am watching the repertory class in the large studio of Steinberg Pavilion.  Tears of joy are streaming down my face as I watch a very enthusiastic, energetic group of talented young dancers perform repertory they have learned from works of Alvin Ailey and Jose Limon and even some phrases of Twyla Tharpe.  My eye catches a few of the people who helped make possible Linda’s role as new director of the dance program, and we smile broadly.  In just one summer the level of the performing arts program at P-M has skyrocketed, exposing the students to outstanding teachers, classics of modern dance repertory and new up-and-coming choreographers.

Steinberg Pavillon – taken from the Perry-Mansfield website. I love the way that all the studios at Perry-Mansfield are open to the outside.

Following my lunch with T Ray at the end of the previous summer, I had confirmed that Linda would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield.  T Ray and I met with both the Executive Director (June Lindenmayer) and President of the Board (Jim Steinberg) and they liked the idea and then reached out to Linda.  I had done my job making the suggestion and now it was up to them to make it happen.  There was a deep feeling of satisfaction in knowing that in some way I was contributing to making the dance program as extraordinary as it had once been.  

Linda drew on her many contacts in the dance world and put together an outstanding faculty for that first summer and the following 12 that she headed the program.  It included both young rising choreographers, and seasoned teachers from Juilliard and other established programs.  The Evening of Dance concerts were excellent each summer and one of my favorites ended with a section from Paul Taylor’s Esplanade that Linda set beautifully on the dancers.  It was a shared delight for me to watch classes and rehearsals and to get to hang out with the dance faculty.  A few weeks into the first summer I hosted a party for the faculty at our home and that became a tradition that we continued until 2009 when we relocated from Steamboat Springs to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

When dance became a part of the New Works program that preceded the official camp session, Linda selected gifted choreographers to come and develop work.  They have gone on to have exceptional careers. Two noteworthy examples are Robert Battle, who is now the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Camille A. Brown, who not only has her own company, but has been choreographing for Broadway, Off-Broadway and the recent Jesus Christ Superstar production on television. 

Linda continued directing the program through the 100th anniversary of Perry-Mansfield.  By that time I was well settled in Santa Fe and did not make it up to see the wonderful program she put together featuring a setting of the second half of Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo. Supposedly de Mille got the idea for Rodeo when she was on the faculty of Perry-Mansfield.

As happens, the new Executive Director (Joan Lazarus Dobkowski) decided to make a change and the following summer Linda did not return to Perry-Mansfield to head the dance program.  I am very pleased that in the course of 13 amazing summers Linda was able to have an impact on many young dancers. Linda is an outstanding coach and is able to guide dancers to find the very best way to execute a movement phrase. A December 2016 article by Kristin Schwab in Dance Magazine, titled “These Five Details Can Make or Break Your Performance,” pointed out that “for Linda Kent, even the slightest shift in focus can change the meaning.” I love the picture of Linda that accompanied the article. I am so glad that I had a role in recommending that Linda head the dance department at Perry-Mansfield and that so many young dancers benefited from the staff she engaged and from her direction and instruction.  

Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy of Juilliard, taken from the December 2016 Dance Magazine article.

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Some Reflections on Perry-Mansfield 1959-1999

JoAnne Tucker / / Perry-Mansfield, Personal Life

I thought I would be going back to Perry-Mansfield in 1959 but instead I ended up auditioning for and getting into a bicentennial summer stock production that ran most of the summer in Pittsburgh.  That will be another later blog. Right now I just want to focus on my history with Perry-Mansfield.  Even though I didn’t return, I highly recommended the camp to other dancers and in fact my sister attended in 1965 and Murray and I, along with my mother, visited her while she was at camp.  At that point Perry-Mansfield was in transition.  The founders, Portia Mansfield and Charlotte Perry, had donated the camp to Stephens College, a women’s school in Columbia, Missouri.  Harriet Ann Gray, head of the Stephens Dance Department, had been a regular teacher at Perry-Mansfield.  The camp had a four-year transition period and would not be under full control of Stephens until 1967.

The camp became a summer campus for Stephens so that when our two daughters were ready for a summer program I was disappointed that it wouldn’t work for them.  I pretty much hadn’t thought about Perry-Mansfield again until I saw a very small notice in Dance Magazine in the fall of 1991 that a group of townspeople had formed Friends of Perry-Mansfield, a non-profit organization to save the camp, as Stephens College was planning to sell it to be developed for condos or such.  I think I sent in a $25 donation. 

In the summer of 1992, Murray and I took a trip to Rocky Mountain Park and were staying in the western part of the park, about a 2-hour drive from Steamboat Springs where Perry-Mansfield is located. I suggested that we take a drive over to Steamboat and see what the town was like, as I had been pretty impressed that a group of townspeople were making an effort to save the camp.  We did drive over and liked the energy in the town.  It had grown from when I was there, particularly the ski area, but it still had the feel of a small Western town and none of the pretensions of Aspen or Vail. As we were wandering around town we picked up some brochures of condos that were doing summer rentals and even drove by a few of them.  And in fact the next summer we rented a condo for a month and had a great time hiking, swimming and being in Steamboat.  Strangely, though we drove by the entrance to the camp quite a few times I never wanted to go in to visit. Somehow I didn’t want to ruin the wonderful memories I had.

Murray and I in Rocky Mountain Park in the summer of 1992.

We continued to rent for a month each summer and then in 1996 we bought a condo and began to increase our time to five weeks.  Since we were beginning to feel a bigger commitment to Steamboat and what the community had to offer,  I decided I would go to Perry-Mansfield’s “Evening of Dance” concert.  It was pretty bad and I didn’t go back for a few years until the summer of 1999.

Once again, I was very disappointed in the evening.  There were a few lovely dancers but the choreography of the pieces didn’t appeal to me, seeming weak attempts at being avant-garde and not particularly challenging for the dancers.   At intermission I was quietly talking to one of the townspeople that I recognized,  sharing my disappointment, when someone interrupted the conversation and asked who I was.  I shared that I directed a small modern dance company in NYC and that I had been at P-M the summer of 1958 and had loved studying with Tamiris and being in the piece “Dance for Walt Whitman.”  At which point this lovely woman began doing one of the movements from the piece.  So I immediately asked who she was.  “T Ray Faulkner,” came her answer,  and I just hugged her, telling her that I remembered her well from the summer I had been there.  We laughed and she said we needed to talk and asked if I would be willing to go out to lunch with her.

I agreed of course, we exchanged contact information and set up a time to meet!  

Before I go any further, this seems a fitting time to share more about T Ray and her role with Perry-Mansfield, and honor this beautiful woman who contributed so much to so many lives and to the well being of Perry-Mansfield. I think all of us who attended P-M from 1957 to 2015  have wonderful memories of T Ray.  T Ray started as a counselor at P-M but soon was asked to assist the two directors, Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield, doing a wide variety of things that the ladies didn’t have time for.  She was also a major help in making the transition to ownership by Stephens College.

T Ray [on the right] with another counselor in the summer of 1958. Photo that I took!

T Ray was drawn to modern dance even though she grew up in a religious household where dance was “for whores.”  I found this wonderful write up about T Ray on the website of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, honoring alumni, and I share it here as it lets us know about T Ray’s professional life. 

In the early 1950s, Thelma Ray Faulkner was told that a college degree could take her anywhere she wanted to go, provided she used it. Forty-five years, four continents and hundreds of souvenirs later, Faulkner proved those words to be true. The 1956 OCW graduate has made her mark in the world of education, earning both her Masters and Ph.D. in dance and related arts from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, in 1965 and 1969, respectively, and has taught on every educational level from kindergarten to post graduate. She taught dance at Indiana University in Bloomington, Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, the University of Oregon in Eugene and Arizona State University in Tempe. During her career in higher education, she did post doctoral work at the Laban Art Movement Center at Goldsmith College, part of the University of London. She was a visiting professor at the University of the Americas in Chalua, Mexico, a guest teacher/artist at two colleges in Brazil and was a judge at Brazil’s major international dance competition. She retired from college teaching in 1982, only to reenter the field of education as an elementary school teacher. For the last six years of her teaching career, she worked with third-fifth grade Native American students on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Whiteriver, Ariz.  As a Language Arts Specialist, she taught creative writing to children with reading and writing limitations. Still not content to retire at the age of 65, Faulkner elected to work part-time at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her travels have taken her to countries in Europe and South America, the island of Malta, China, Antarctica, Egypt, and around the world.

T Ray, picture found on the Internet, as I remember her around 2010. T-Ray died June 9, 2016.

T Ray and I indeed had lunch together and we talked about how the dance program could be improved and might return to the outstanding status that it once held, of key people in the field of dance having a role at the camp.  As we were talking I thought about my good friend Linda Kent, who had danced in Alvin Ailey’s company for seven years upon her graduation from Juilliard and then gone on to perform with Paul Taylor for 14 more years.  She was now on the faculty of Juilliard and I knew how diverse and deep her contacts in the dance world were. I also knew that she didn’t have a summer program that she regularly participated in and I thought that maybe she would be interested in heading up the dance program at P-M.  

Linda and I had worked together on several projects, she had set two pieces for The Avodah Dance Ensemble, had helped me with casting, been a guest teacher in week-long Avodah summer programs, and on one or two occasions had even danced with the company when a dancer was out sick.  I had watched her coach dancers and I thought she was one of the best coaches of dance!! I’ll share more about how Linda Kent and I met and the various projects we did together, in a later blog.

T Ray loved the idea and thought the next steps were to meet with June Lindenmayer, the current director of P-M and Jim Steinberg, the President of the Board of Friends of Perry-Mansfield.  She would set up those meetings and in the meantime I was to ask Linda if she would be interested in heading the dance program at Perry-Mansfield.

In the next blog I share what happened next!

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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 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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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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