IN MEMORY
A TRIBUTE TO IRVING FLEET FROM AVODAH'S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Founding Avodah Board Member and composer, Irving Fleet, died of cancer on March 2. In 1972, Irving and I created In Praise for the dedication of Temple Israel's new sanctuary in Tallahassee, Florida. Irving created the music, I choreographed the piece and together we developed the libretto. These initial creative efforts led to the formation of Avodah. Over the next several years we created several other pieces together: Sabbath Women; Sarah; and Three Brides and A Cow. Our search to find expression of Jewish liturgy and text was the core of Avodah's repertory for its first eight years.
Irving shared his spiritual questioning, musical talents, and enthusiasm generously with us and I am most grateful. His encouragement from the very beginning days when he quietly asked me "what do I think about God?" have been a source of inspiration over the years. Irving remained a Board member until his death. He is survived by his wife, Anita, sons Martin, Charles and Philip, daughter Ann, and three grandchildren.

AVODAH'S CURRENT REPERTORY
All of our repertory can be performed in a concert format, as part of religious services, and with community participation. Experiential workshops for all ages are designed to accompanying them. Residencies fit the needs of our bookers ranging from day long to week long.

The Forgiveness Project - inspired by sacred text.
Heroic Deeds - a tribute to Righteous Gentiles. Can be used as part of Holocaust Education and Memorial Programs. It was also inspired by heroic acts related to September 11th. In workshops we encourage participants to find the "heroic" place within themselves. Balancing Act - Explores how we keep our balance in today's changing world.
Identity Crisis - The journey to find one's own voice.

WORK CURRENTLY BEING DEVELOPED
Newman's Blanket (working title) - a Multi cultural project incorporating dance, percussion and story telling inspired by long time collaborator Newman Taylor Baker's collection of instruments from around the world stresses our interconnectedness.

AVODAH RECEIVES GRANTS FOR EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Avodah is very pleased to have received several recent grants which have enabled us to continue our educational outreach work. Best Buy Children's Foundation awarded Avodah a grant of $10,000 toward our work with children in the New York area impacted by September 11th. With earlier funding from the Laura Jane Musser Fund and Harkness Foundation for Dance our project Balancing Act was developed for this work with children closely located to Ground Zero. A series of workshops culminating with children performing with the dancers were held at: P.S. 3, (the elementary school that housed the children that fled from Ground Zero on September 11th and were relocated there after for several months;) and The Murry Bergstraum High School in Lower Manhattan, about ten blocks from Ground Zero.

We also worked with sixth and seventh graders at P.S. 6, a school in Jersey City. The students were part of an inclusion class. They responded with great enthusiasm. An after-school program attracted fifty fourth through eighth graders. Their culminating event, performing Balancing Act with the professional dancers, filled the auditorium with parents, siblings and friends.

Funding from The Grand Marnier Foundation, The Gloria and Sidney Danziger Foundation and The Harkness Foundation for Dance made possible our work in using dance to teach about the Holocaust at The Oliver Street School in Newark, NJ. In the fall we performed our piece Heroic Deeds for the eighth grade. In February and March we worked with fifth graders on the same theme as they learned about Righteous Gentiles during the Holocaust and explored the heroic place within themselves.. They energetically performed with the dancers at a culminating event which included their interpretations of what makes heroic deeds possible (trust, taking risks, persevering, and cooperating in unusual ways).

AVODAH RESIDENCIES AT WOMEN'S CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
Last May, Avodah's Artistic Director, JoAnne Tucker, percussionist Newman Taylor Baker, and the four company members spent a week in residence at York Correctional Institution for Women as part of The Forgiveness Project funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. We were apprehensive about entering a prison. The paperwork to get security clearance and first morning's entrance through the double locking doors contributed to increasing our nervousness. Within an hour of working with the inmates that changed. The immediate response of the women, their enthusiasm and their willingness to risk sharing themselves creatively in movement made this a company changing experience.

For two and a half hours each morning, twenty-four women worked with us as we explored blocks to forgiveness, taking responsibility and asking for forgiveness or forgiving, and the feeling when one is forgiven through dance. On Friday when they joined us in performing the piece, the audience watched attentively in a way that was strongly felt by each performer. The whole experience was powerful and affirming in terms of the educational and rehabilitation power of dance.

The feedback from this initial residency deeply moved us. An article in the New London newspaper referred to it as "spellbinding" One of the inmates wrote "You and the ensemble accepted each one of us as we were, never questioning our past, approaching us selflessly, gently guiding us to a deeper place inside of us. It was as if, each one of us were being held and uplifted to whatever place we needed to be at, at that particular moment in time. I sometimes felt as though we were all blocks of clay, hard and packaged with labeling put on us by members of society that have never taken the time to get to know us. Avodah took each block of clay and nurtured it with warmth, enthusiasm, love and equality."

This March we returned to York. Over thirty women worked with us this time. We expanded to both a morning and an afternoon session to accommodate the larger group. While we perform in a bland environment, a prison area where two hallways intersect, magic was again created in a piece we developed on site about "Things Taken." Our return visit this year was supported by a grant from the George A. and Grace L. Long Foundation to the Connecticut Foundation of Southeastern Connecticut for Avodah's residency.

The following week found us in residence at Dolores J. Baylor Women's Correctional Institution in New Castle, DE. They invited us to do The Forgiveness Project. Pacem in Terris, a community-based peace education organization, coordinated the residency. They found local funding with a large part coming from The Marshall-Reynolds Foundation as well as other local Delaware groups. We worked with over thirty women who were enrolled in a GED or pre GED program at the prison school. The morning group was part of an Addiction Rehabilitation Program. Again, it was an extremely well received project.

Percussionist Newman Taylor Baker, the four Avodah Dancers that were part of both last year and this year's prison residencies feel very rewarded by the work. The inmates, both those dancing with us and those watching, responded positively, honestly and enthusiastically, to modern dance as a means of expressing feelings.

DANCERS SHARE THEIR THOUGHTS
As artistic director of Avodah, I am very blessed with five talented women. This whole season I was thrilled with both the performances and the hands on community work of the dancers whether in the prison setting or with school age children. I honor their outstanding teamwork, integrity, and exceptional talents. Two of the dancers, Andrea Eisenstein and Kerri Thoma, worked with Avodah last season. Sidra Bell, Natrea Blake and Kathleen Hahn joined the company this fall. (Kathleen was unable to continue in the spring but hopes to return next fall) This fall, at the end of our five week season, I asked all five of them to take a few minutes to write down one particular thing that they found unique or memorable in working with Avodah. Here are their thoughts.

From Sidra Bell:
"We led a movement workshop at Town and Village Synagogue, in which we interacted and performed with a youth organization called the Avodah Jewish Service Corp. The participants were exposed to ideas of movement related to physical and emotional balance. We divided into five small groups in which each of the Avodah dancers guided the participants in the creation of small dances. These small creations were incorporated into a choreographed piece called "Balancing Act" that the Avodah Dance Ensemble and the participants performed together. The students reacted enthusiastically to the experience and were struck by how, through movement, they had found a powerful means of communication with each other. Through dance, as one participant said, they saw aspects of each other they had never seen and that would be hard to see using verbal communication. As a dancer I was impressed by their ability to be open to the experience. As a group they were extremely focused and through the dance they found new ways to be creative. This creative process led them to see each other and themselves in a different light. To reinvent oneself is a valuable skill that can be learned from the act of improvisation and exploring unfamiliar means of expression."
Sidra is a native New Yorker, who began her dance training as a scholarship student at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and went on to receive ten fellowships for study at The Ailey School. She has performed works by Kevin Wynn, Steve Rooks, Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Earl Mosley, and Buglisi/Foreman. She has most recently performed with Nathan Trice/Rituals at Judson Memorial Church and Long Island University. Sidra is a 2001 graduate of Yale University and is artistic director of Sidra Bell Dance New York.

From Andrea Eisenstein:
"Avodah traveled to Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA to lead a workshop for the business school to encourage team building and thinking outside the box. I was assigned to work with seven male college students. Their assignment was to take a term from their business school class with Professor Miller (Avodah's president) and interpret it through movement. My group immediately chose the business term, linear regression. As a dancer this term was unfamiliar to me. I asked them to explain what it meant. They started brainstorming on each word verbally and then one by one translated the term into movement. We then tied each movement idea together to build a phrase. The seven men were very impressed with what they had choreographed." Andrea returns to Avodah for her second season. She began her dance training in Houston, Texas at the Jewish Community Center. She graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston in 1996 and then continued her training at Sam Houston State University, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Fall of 1999. While at Sam Houston she was awarded Performance Scholarships and Grants. In 1997 Andrea received the SHSU College of Arts and Sciences Dance Excellence Award. She has worked with Bridgeman/Packer, Liz Keen and Teri Weksler. Andrea has formed a company called Ironstone Movement Company that performs her choreography in the New York area. She is a certified Pilates mat instructor.

From Natrea Blake:
"As a member of Avodah I have witnessed the high level of growth and excitement during our various school residencies. It is wonderful to see the craving in the students eyes when they are participating in the workshops. They want to dance and are so eager to learn from us. This was particularly apparent with the sixth through eighth graders I worked with in a ten session after school program. It is obvious that this program was an asset to the students' growth. It is the same discipline, concentration, focus, and commitment applied in dance that spills over into academic achievement. It makes them more aware of how important it is to believe in themselves and be confident. I hope to see more small dance companies following in our footsteps - educating children in mind, body and spirit." Natrea was born and raised in Queens, New York. She began her dance training at the Bernice Johnson Cultural and Arts Center. Natrea is a graduate from the New York City High School of Performing Arts and received her BFA from The Juilliard School. She also studied at the Alvin Ailey School, Peridance, and Ballet Hispanico. Natrea has worked with Hans Van Manen, Lar Lubavitch, Roger C. Jeffrey, Ron Brown, and Darrell Grand Moultrie

From Kerrie Thoma:
"In developing material for fifth graders at Oliver Street School in Newark, part of our Holocaust Education project based on our piece Heroic Deeds, I asked the children in my small group to share any personal experiences they have with helping others or times in their lives when they have been heroic. A young girl from Brazil remembered helping another student. They were out at recess and a really "mean" girl that nobody liked got bit by a snake. She was scared and bleeding. No one was helping her. Our heroine took the risk to help someone she didn't like and now has a special friend who she will always remember. Although this story seems a distant cry from the stories of the righteous gentiles of the Holocaust it is the important personal connection and universal message that helps the children experience the work we're bringing to them."
Kerrie returns to Avodah for her second season. Kerrie, a Chicago native, has been teaching children and adults for the past fourteen years in all levels and styles of dance. She received her BFA in Theatre Arts with an emphasis in Dance Performance from Northern Illinois University. Her extensive background includes performing, teaching, and choreographing (in the United States and abroad), as well as having owned and directed the Washington Dance Center in Washington, Iowa. Kerrie is co-director and founder of Forevermore Theatre Arts, a NYC based theatre company.

From Kathleen Hahn: "Beginning is always the hardest part of a workshop. We, as the leaders, are trying to read the group to see what approach will make them feel most comfortable and they are the most cautious wondering what we will ask of them. One of the biggest surprises was that once we got over that hump they went way beyond following our lead. Every group we've worked with has not only enjoyed following but creating. It makes me believe that the desire to create is much more universal than I had realized."
Kathleen grew up in North Carolina and received her BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts in 2001. She recently moved to New York to pursue interests ranging from dance and comedy improvisation, choreographing, performing and teaching, to authentic movement. She owes a lot of her inspiration to summers spent at American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival. She has performed at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre and for Anne Hammel at The Construction Company.

THOUGHTS FROM AVODAH'S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, JOANNE TUCKER:
If you had asked me a year ago what I thought Avodah's future would be, I might have started to cry. Last March and April I found myself wondering if we were on the right track. Somehow, something new was called for and I hadn't yet figured out what that was. I knew that I was rethinking how I connected to liturgy and text. My hunch was that I personally felt a need to move from focusing on the particular to making a more universal statement. Then, in May Avodah spent a week at York Correctional Institution for Women.

The experience was quite amazing on many levels. First of all it broke down all of our myths about prison and in particular women inmates. The twenty four women we worked with ranged from sixteen to seventy years of age. They were bright and creative. As Joe Lea, Avodah's new board member and educator at York pointed out, most of the women have drug or alcohol problems and we are seeing them when they are clean and sober. Many of them have been abused and their violent crimes are usually the result of not knowing how to handle the abuse.

It amazed me how well they responded to modern dance and the improvisational approach that Avodah has developed over the years. Several weeks after the residency at York, long time Avodah collaborator, Newman Taylor Baker who had also spent the week at York and Kezia Gleckman Hayman who danced with Avodah for thirteen years and now is a Board member and I had lunch together. Newman and I enthusiastically shared our week at York with Kezia. At some point in our animated conversation, I found myself saying that not only would I like to do more work in women's correctional institutions but that I hunched there were probably many other places that didn't regularly welcome or have modern dance that we could also easily win over. Kezia suggested the idea of the corporate world almost as a joke. Newman and I immediately saw the possibilities. So now Avodah is expanding its vision.

Our method has major implications for team building, reinforcing cooperative behavior, and teaching creativity or thinking outside the box. Communication skills are greatly enhanced by our approach and the transference to a variety of educational objectives was enthusiastically pointed out to us by Joe Lea at York.

Avodah now has new directions. Yes, we welcome participating in Shabbat Services or presenting concerts in our traditional venues. We also now offer our talents in new settings from corporations to prisons. So if you are eager to stimulate creative thinking and team building in your business, for an organization's board, to reinforce an educational program, or in a unique setting that rarely uses dance, I hope you will give me a call so we might explore how improvisational movement and Avodah's approach to involving community in dancing with us can further your goals. You can reach me at 201-659-7072.