Tag: Regina Ress

Guest Blog by Regina Ress: There Was Joy in their Feet: Jerusalem, 1973

JoAnne Tucker / / Guest Posts

Regina Ress is an award winning storyteller, actor, author, and educator who has performed and taught from Broadway to Brazil, in English and Spanish, in settings from grade schools to senior centers, prisons to  Carnegie Hall, homeless shelters to The White House.  She teaches applied storytelling at NYU and produces a long-running storytelling series at NYU’s Provincetown Playhouse. She is a founding Board member of Healing Voices-Personal Stories. www.reginaress.com

 

Following last week’s blog on creating Sabbath Woman, Regina sent me an email with this memory in response to its  image of “congregants filling the aisles with joyful dancing,” and men going out to greet the “Sabbath Bride.”  I asked her if she would share it as a guest blog.  I am delighted she agreed.  Regina and I have been dancing and collaborating together since we were six!

I went to Jerusalem in 1973 to visit my college friend Ian. I had no expectations, religious or otherwise, just the excitement and curiosity of seeing an old friend I hadn’t seen in seven years. I knew that when Ian had been released from the U.S. army three years before, he had walked from Germany to Jerusalem. Walking, we know, becomes sacred practice and perhaps even a form of dance when done with intension.

Ian picked me up at Lod Airport and drove me up to Jerusalem. He was living in a flat on the roof of an old apartment building near the Souk, the Market. We walked up several flights of concrete stairs, turning on the lights at each landing to find our way up the dark, winding passage. This was my first experience with electricity as a precious and expensive commodity. We came out on to the roof and there was a small structure built in the middle of it. Ian’s place! In the day time, the Middle Eastern Jewish women living in the building used the roof as a space to winnow and dry grains in large, flat baskets. I had entered a different world.

When we arrived, it was early evening. Ian said we had been invited to a party. As I had just emerged from a twelve hour, non-stop El Al flight from New York, I was exhausted. I said that he should go to the party. I needed to sleep.

Ian returned home about 1:00 AM and I awoke. My internal clock told me it was early evening and I was wide awake. In the years since college, our lives had taken many twists and turns; we had a lot of catching up to do. Around 3:00 AM, Ian asked, “Are you ready for an adventure?” Absolutely!

It was a Friday night, and the August full moon lit Jerusalem. My memory is of a shimmering, cream-colored city, quiet, with a big bright sky. I had no idea where we were going and didn’t ask. I knew nothing about Jerusalem, and had no preconceived notions, expectations, images. I asked no questions, but simply watched the play of the moonlight on the buildings.

We parked and began to walk. There was a wall and a gate and we entered. I realized we were in the Old City. I had never been in a walled city before. I felt a shift in the quality of the space, a shift, if you will, in the feeling of the stones themselves. The air, too, felt different, as if the molecules were packed, dense with emanations from the stones, filled with the history of the place.

We walked along narrow stone streets bordered by stone buildings. The moon sailed in the sky and we walked in silence. No traffic noise, no sirens, only the sound of shoe against stone. And no other people. Until, at some point in our journey through the labyrinth of the Old City, we began to be passed by men, men running along the narrow streets. They ran with expectation, not hurry, their long black coats, like capes, flapping after them as they ran. There was joy in their feet.

“Mazeh? What is this?” I asked. “Ah,” said my guide, “On Friday nights they run to be at the Wall for Shabbat. They are running to greet the Sabbath Queen.”

It was then that I understood that we were walking to the Western Wall. I hadn’t even thought about it being early Saturday morning, let alone understanding the significance of the pilgrimage we were making on that moonlit night. We were silent again. The closer we got to the Temple Mount, the closer it got to the dawn; the closer to dawn, the more men dressed in archaic black passed us, running to be at the Wall for the first moment of Sabbath light.

We arrived suddenly at an open space, a space lit by the huge, sinking, August moon. There were many people, many kinds of people, but all were there to be at the Wall as the sky changed from black and silver to pink, yellow, blue, to dawn.  It was like a dream. It was not a dream come true, for I had never dreamed of Jerusalem. This was a dream I was experiencing wide awake.

I stood there as the moon slid behind the old buildings and the world of color returned. I breathed the air warmed by the old stone walls and watched the many pilgrims to this ancient, holy place. It was there and it was then that I began my personal pilgrimage to the ancient holy place hidden deep within my heart. It was the beginning of a shift in my relationship to the sacred, to the way I would move upon the planet and through my own life.

A few days later, Ian took me to meet his spiritual teacher, the resident monk in a Zen Center on the Mount of Olives. As we sipped green tea, Ian told his teacher that I didn’t understand the Zen practice of sitting meditation. And, he added, “Regina feels guilty about not wanting to sit with us. Tell her it’s OK.” The monk turned to me and, in a deep, penetrating voice said,  “You don’t sit.You move.”

Not long after that trip to Jerusalem, I found my personal expression of a relationship to the sacred in ceremonial dance. Since then, in community and alone, I have danced in pine groves and cathedral crypts, on mountain slopes and Manhattan’s streets. And even my not so “sacred,”more celebratory dance is also, always, an expression of my relationship to a wider and deeper reality. And when I dance, wherever I dance, like those men running to greet the Sabbath Queen, there is joy in my feet.

Regina sadly leaving Israel.  It is early morning and she is on the way to the airport.

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A Half Parachute and a Large Living Room

JoAnne Tucker / / Childhood, Healing Voices - Personal Stories, Musical Theater, Personal Life

In an earlier blog I wrote about an intensive discussion I had at about the age of 8 with Regina, a very good friend who lived down the street from me, about who was the better ballerina, Moira Shearer or Margot Fonteyn.  In this blog I want to share the great fun I had dancing in Regina’s very large living room.

I am not sure where Regina got the half parachute that we played with, but what a joy it was to wave it, dance under it and use our imagination to turn it into whatever we wanted.

We lived on the same street about a half a block from each other. Regina is only about two months older than I am, but because her birthday is at the end of November and mine isn’t until January and the cut off date for kindergarten was December 31, we weren’t in the same grade.  She was a half year ahead, having started kindergarten in September while I began in February.  (The Pittsburgh School district had admissions to start in both September and February, and one could even graduate in February from High School.  I doubt this still exists.)

Anyway, back to the living room.  It was very large, reminding me of the living room in my grandmother’s house that I use to dance in as a toddler.  There was lots of open space for us to move in. I remember in one part of this magical space, close to where you entered, was a record player along with lots of musical theatre records.  During our grade school years and into the beginning of middle school I remember spending so many afternoons listening to musicals of that period such as The King and I,  Oklahoma, and Kiss Me Kate.  Regina had a lovely singing voice and she would sing along.  I did not, so I was strictly about dancing. We talked about a favorite actress, Gertrude Lawrence, who was the original Anna in The King and I and was on the recording we regularly listened to.  Her biography, Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A, became a favorite of mine. I saved that book for many years, occasionally returning to re-read it.  That book and Agnes de Mille’s Dance to the Piper were major sources of inspiration during my pre-teen and early teen years.

Another favorite actress that I remember liking during this time was Celeste Holm, who was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma. With my awful, out of tune voice, I sometimes tried to sing I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No. Alas… even this kind of song did not work for me.  It was a good thing I liked to dance, ‘cause a triple threat (singer, dancer, actress) I would never be.

l. to r. JoAnne, JoAnne’s sister Peggy, Regina at Peggy’s birthday party.  The only photo I could find of us at the age when we were having fun in Regina’s living room.

Those early after-school/weekend times influenced me in several specific ways.

Many years later, when I built the Creative Dance Center in Tallahassee, Florida (See https://mostlydance.com/2018/11/09/feminism-meets-the-bank-building-a-dance-studio/) one of the first things that I made sure to have was a parachute as a prop to use both with children and adults. This time it was a full parachute that I was able to purchase from an Army Surplus Store.  It was an all-time favorite of all ages.  Sometimes we just made a large circle and watched the wonderful waves it made.  Other times we lifted it as high as we could, making the shape it would be in when it floated down from the sky and then brought it back to the ground. Sometimes I would invite a child to be in charge of how she wanted the rest of the class to hold the parachute so she could dance under or around or what she was imagining it to be, such as a roaring ocean waves.  

When I do a search for creative movement with a parachute, the results are usually focused on pre-schoolers or young school-age children, and there are lots of fun ways the parachute has been used. However, nothing comes up for use with adults, and I found that use equally  satisfying. Leading adult workshops, particularly in Tallahassee when I was doing “permission” workshops as part of Transactional Analysis Training (that’s another later blog), I used it with great success especially with encouraging adults to find or rediscover their inner child.

Clearly those afternoons fostered and reinforced my love for musical theatre, which led not only to attending theater but also choreographing and directing some musical theater.

Regina and I continue our friendship and creative journey to today.  Over the years we have led workshops together, and sometimes as we are dancing around a room with 20 or so participants, we pass each other and smile remembering those times so many years ago when we were doing something similar in her living room. 

Regina and JoAnne attending a film festival, September 2014.  JoAnne and Regina are Board Members and filmmakers with Healing Voices – Personal Stories. The organization was honored that its film “Jessica’s Story” was selected for the Festival and won best LGBT film in the Festival. Photography by Murray Tucker.
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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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A Challenging Film Project

JoAnne Tucker / / Dance in Film, Healing Voices - Personal Stories

What a joy it is to now have Healing Voices-Personal Stories’s new film Out of the Shadow: Shining Light on Domestic Violence posted on Vimeo and our website.  This project and resulting film were more complicated than our earlier films. The idea for the film was brought to us by HV-PS’s board member Leona Stucky-Abbott and grew into a Day of Action Against Domestic Violence held on October 5, 2019.  Check out this website to see where events were held.  In this blog I write about the role that movement and dance played in the Day and in the film.   

One of the things we recommended for the Day of Action was a Die-In to remember and acknowledge the large number of women who have lost their lives to an intimate partner. As we began to share our idea with people, it became clear we needed to establish some basic guidelines for what we meant as a Die-In.  It was not to be a protest but rather a time to remember those women who have lost their lives!!  We gave a basic movement outline…. to have those women who were representing the victims enter first and lie down on the ground.  Other women (who did not want to lie down) and men then made a protective circle around them.  Once everyone was in place, all observed a minute of silence with no movement.  After the minute, with the cue of a chime, one woman began to get up, then help another person up, with the two acknowledging each other before moving on to help another woman up.  Once everyone was up, they affirmed, with dance and gestures, the celebration of life and the message that the violence has to stop.  

We did a demonstration film of our model and provided it to groups so they could get an idea of what to do.  We of course also suggested that they come up with their own ideas too.  You can watch the demonstration film here.  It was exciting to get the videos from the different groups and see what they came up with for October 5th.

We also suggested that each event plan something special to call attention to domestic violence.  I was thrilled that we ended up with three specific dances that play an important role in the film.  Two of the dance pieces were a part of the New York Day of Action held at St. Mark’s Church.  Regina Ress, who organized the NYC event, describes them beautifully in the film and I strongly urge you to watch it.  Briefly, one of the dances was performed and choreographed by Sonali Skandan, who has an East Indian dance company. It is about a courtesan who is trapped and longs to be free. The second dance, Ni Una Carmen Mas (“Not One More Carmen”), was performed by Ivanka Figueroa and choreographed by Gabriela Estrada who enthusiastically signed up to be a part of our Day of Action when we first announced it. 

Screenshot of Sonali Skandan taken from Out of the Shadow
Screenshot of Ni Una Carmen Mas, performed by Ivanka Figueroa 
and choreographed by Gabriela Estrada from Out of the Shadow

Trapped is the third dance piece featured in our film and its history is very interesting.  It is performed by Tiana Lovett with choreography by Lynne Wimmer.  Lynne Wimmer is the co-director and editor of Out of the Shadow and a longtime friend.  We have collaborated on lots of different projects. I suggested she read Leona Stucky-Abbott’s book The Fog of Faith.  Leona is a board member of Healing Voices – Personal Stories, which produced the film.  Leona also brought to us the idea of making a film related to how many women have died from domestic violence –  nearly double the number of men who died in combat from 2001 – 2012. (6,500 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan while 11,700 women were murdered by intimate partners.)

Screenshot  of Trapped performed by Tiana Lovett with choreography by Lynne Wimmer

In a recent email, Lynne Wimmer wrote:

Leona, your brave, blunt autobiography of your terrifying experiences was what directed me to paw through a collection of old (and I mean old – reel to reel 1 inch tapes) videotapes and discover that the first dance I’d ever choreographed had some purpose besides history. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such a talented, willing creature as Tiana. So, working on this project also sent me back into the dance studio as a choreographer for the first time in six years. I don’t know if I’ll ever venture there again, but it was a nice, short return visit to my former life.

Last year I visited Lynne and loved seeing her work with Tiana and how this very first piece she choreographed could have a wonderful place in the Day of Action or on its own.  As it turned out, Lynne beautifully staged a Die-In in a church as part of a Day of Action event organized by the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Salt Lake City, and later filmed Trapped. 

At some point as Lynne was editing she experimented with seeing how the Grimms’ tale “Old Rink Rank,” which Regina had told in NYC and which we had included (in a shortened version) in the interview we taped at Northern New Mexico College with filmmaker David Lindblom’s students, would work with her dance.  When she shared it with me, I thought, “Wow did that work!” and so it became part of the film.  Regina and Lynne are now thinking of developing this into a film of its own, and I hope they will do that.   It is always very special and fun to see things come together that were not necessarily planned.

To conclude, I honor Lynne Wimmer and the amazing job she did to take a series of photos and video clips from many different groups and edit it into this film.  Her artistic sensitivity, film editing skills, understanding of dance and the choreographic process took this film to a higher level than we imagined!!  THANK YOU, LYNNE.  

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Guest Blog by Regina Ress: Spiraling into the Center and Outward Bound

JoAnne Tucker / / Guest Posts, Poetry

JoAnne’s Introduction:

When I opened my email a few days ago, I was thrilled to see a message from my good friend Regina Ress, sharing a poem she wrote back in 2013 after we led a workshop for women inmates at the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility. It resonated with me for two reasons. First, the work I have done in prisons and jails since 2002 has been very meaningful, and sometimes Regina and I worked together in those settings. Secondly, I recently built a labyrinth on my property, and walking it is something I do daily as well as encouraging guests to enjoy it.  Regina’s poem was written in a follow-up workshop with the women on writing about our experience together walking a labyrinth (which I helped create) in the barbed wire encircled yard of that county jail.

Thank you, Regina!

About Regina:

Regina Ress, award-winning storyteller, actor, writer and educator, has performed and taught for over fifty years from Broadway to Brazil in a wide variety of settings from grade schools to senior centers, from homeless shelters and prisons to Lincoln Center and the White House.  To learn more about Regina visit her at:  www.reginaress.com/about.html

Spiraling into the Center and Outward Bound:

A Reflection on Walking the Labyrinth with the Women

Santa Fe County Corrections Department Adult Correctional Facility

October 3, 2013

                  by Regina Ress

Being in the Center.

Being is the Center.

Walking slowly

Entering, Centering.

 

The Path winds and doubles back

In and out into the Wider Path

Which winds and definitely doubles

Back upon itself; upon myself.

 

I encounter myself

In all the others

On the Path.

 

I love these women who, willing to walk,

Stay with me, with each other, with themselves

In the Center of this labyrinth.

 

Knowing what?

That we share the space

That we share the grace

Of the Center.

 

What is the way in?

That first step supported by the breath,

Moved forward on the breath;

Forward, spiraling gently in,

And gently out again.

 

The Center awaits us all.

As does the sun glistening on barbed wire.

An oddly beautiful spiral of circles,

Of spiraling circles,

Endless circles reaching out

To the blue sky beyond.

 

An odd gift, this cage.

A glimpse of moving wire

Meant to keep us in

But when looked at from

A different perspective,

It is a Trail, a Path

Of outward bound.

Photo by Judy Naumburg of the barbed wire in the Santa Fe County Corrections Department Adult Correctional Facility.

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