Dance: When Words Are Not Enough

July 30, 2013 Laura Rensing Leave a comment

NEWS ALERT: We’ll be having a special GUEST POST from the granddaughter of Livia Bitton-Jackson, Laura Faiwiszewski* this Friday! And don’t forget to tune in for Stretch Dance Co.’s important announcement on Thursday!

During our last rehearsal, each dancer had to describe the show in one word as part of a promotional video that will be coming out this week.

You would think that finding one word would be easy after writing out several thousand of them for this blog, but I found that I was tongue-tied…and I wasn’t alone. I wish we had an outtake reel of all of us oohing when someone said a good word or stuttering out three in a row in the hopes that we could create a mega word that would somehow capture everything (supercalifragicourageousinspirationalmovingdocious?).

How can I say everything in one word, I thought, when this is so far beyond words?

Which, when you think about it, is really what this production is about.

In theater, they say that you only sing when your emotions cannot be contained in words, and you dance when your emotions cannot be contained in song.

The emotions run so high in I Have Lived a Thousand Years that words only convey a fraction of the story, but dance can connect those phrases with living poetry that transcends language and cultural barriers.

Whereas written and spoken words have a feeling of finality and definition to them, dance engages the audience’s imagination; they must imagine the words that could have been. In imagining themselves in the positions of these people, they can form a stronger connection to the material.

I Have Lived a Thousand Years stands out from many other Holocaust pieces because it is not simply a memorial for what has passed, but an investment for the future. We want audiences to connect with the material so that the next time they face adversity or cruelty, they can perhaps take strength from those who have come before us.

It’s easy to paint the Holocaust in the bleak grays of history gone by, but there was more to these people than just sadness. Livia Bitton-Jackson’s memoir does an amazing job of highlighting the humanity of each person in the book, of their personal moments of brilliance and strength in a dark time.

With dance, we hope to capture some of that complexity and add a new facet to Livia Bitton-Jackson’s compelling story, taking her knowledge beyond words and into our hearts.

*I think we should make it a rule that all posts be written by people named Laura 🙂

I Have Lived 1000 Years, Rehearsal Process

A Day of Rehearsal in a Thousand Years

July 23, 2013 Laura Rensing Leave a comment

This week I thought we’d take a little break from Holocaust history and take a look at the rehearsal process that goes into building a show like I Have Lived a Thousand Years. If you watched last week’s video, you already have a bit of an idea of what goes on (if you haven’t seen it, then go watch it now!).

Stretch One Big Family — We’re one big happy family!

Since rehearsal is once a week, the first few minutes are filled with a lot of hugging and weekly recaps of our lives. Some of us have known each other from previous shows and start dusting off old inside jokes (This is also the point where we make loud comments about how sore we are in the hope that Lyndell will go easy on us during warm up).

Spoiler alert: she never does.

Lyndell’s warm up is a mix between classical ballet and the exercise routine that Rocky Balboa abandoned because it left him in tears each day. Since we have dancers ranging from hip hop to contemporary to flamenco, the warm up gets on the same page as far as dance technique goes.

The “Hold and Cry” combo, guaranteed to bring a dancer to their knees.

It also serves as a great bonding experience. If I Have Lived a Thousand Years doesn’t work out, this company has great potential as a standup comedy act, so long as we performing under balletic duress.

After warm up, the rehearsal really gets going.

Lyndell’s way of approaching dance pieces is different from any other choreographer that I’ve worked with. She spends a lot of time talking us through the piece, not only telling us the context, but the greater meaning behind the dance and how it relates to the rest of the show, and the arc of our emotions throughout. We may even get a bit of a history lesson.

By this point, the jokes have died out and everyone has their game faces on. Each week brings a challenge: sometimes it’s just trying to perform the dance steps correctly or manage traffic patterns. Other weeks, it’s hard to connect to the emotional turmoil of those who went through the Holocaust.

Once we finish the day’s group piece, Lyndell works with some of the soloists. Anyone can stay behind and learn the solo, but most give into hunger pangs and grab a bite to eat. Our social media expert Matt catches a few interviews with some of the dancers, and that’s a wrap!

Be sure to stay on the lookout for the pics and videos coming out this week! We learned an extra dance for National Dance Day, so mark your Saturday calendar!

I Have Lived 1000 Years

I Have Lived a Thousand Years: A Tale of Compassion

July 16, 2013 Laura Rensing Leave a comment

I’ve run into a bit of a conundrum when discussing I Have Live a Thousand Years to friends. I get very excited talking about the company, but I often lose them a bit when I explain that our production is about the Holocaust.

“Isn’t that depressing?” They ask.

Well, it is and it isn’t.

Stretch - Witold Pilecki — One of the Holocaust’s unsung heroes: Witold Pilecki was voluntarily imprisoned for 3 years in a concentration camp to gain intelligence about the camps for the Allies.

The Holocaust is inarguably one of the greatest tragedies of the modern age, but for every tale of incredible horror, there is an equally incredible tale of heroism. I recently came across one survivor’s incredible story and his cunning and courage had me floored the entire time. If you have a few minutes, you have to listen to how he successfully escaped from the concentration camps…twice. It’s unbelievable.

I think that people often get bogged down when faced with situations as terrible and terrifying as the Holocaust, and often believe that they are too small to change anything in something as huge as say, the Nazi movement.

What I love about Livia Bitton-Jackon’s account is the incredible thread of hope and compassion that she sustains throughout her ordeal. Bitton-Jackson, known as Ellie in her memoir, survives thanks to incredibly small acts of compassion, but those small acts often save her life.

It is as simple as a Nazi guard not reporting her when she is visited by her neighbors, of fellow Jewish prisoners risking their lives to move Ellie’s mother out of the infirmary before she was scheduled to be killed, or even the Angel of Death himself, Josef Mengele, telling Ellie to lie about her age when she steps into Auschwitz (starting next week I’ll start a brief Cliff Notes version of the book so you can follow along!).

Many of these acts you can’t even really call kindnesses, such as a guard nearly beating her to death instead of executing her, but that fraction of an ounce of mercy vouchsafes her another day of life. Yes, her story is still a terrifying account of the evil of mankind, but also of the incredible strength of even the tiniest doses of human compassion.

It is so humbling to work with this material and the irrepressible hope of these people even as they systematically murdered. It is also inspiring to see that no act of kindness, of compassion is useless. Ellie’s proves that even the tiniest of gestures can mean the difference between life and death, between hope and despair.

Stretch - Dancers — The dancers are pretty inspiring, too!

We can turn away from images of cruelty—and it is natural to do so. But it is only by facing the truth of what happened then that we can confront what is happening now, and what will happen in the future.

“It is your generation’s responsibility to rebuke racism, anti-Semitism, hatred, discrimination…to learn something about the past so that [the Holocaust] will never ever happen again.” – Emery Jacoy, Holocaust survivor

I Have Lived 1000 Years

An Education in Ignorance

July 9, 2013 Laura Rensing 1 Comment

Stretch - Denai — Stretch dancers discussing the Holocaust.

A few weeks ago, Lyndell lead a history session to help educate the company about WWII, the Holocaust, and dispelling some of the myths about the people involved.

What struck me the most from our discussion was when I heard that Hitler learned to read from anti-Semitic pamphlets. I can’t help but wonder: What if the first things that Hitler had read hadn’t been couched in ignorance and hate? What if he had read about new technology, or music, or even something as mundane as farming?

I’m sure it took more than a few pamphlets to lead him down the dark road to the Holocaust, but I find it significant and tragically ironic that the materials he used to educate himself were based in falsehoods and generalizations. Those pamphlets were not the cause of the Holocaust and the terror visited on those involved, but they were the first step towards genocide.

When we talk about the evils of the Holocaust, we often focus on hatred and racism as its strongest factors. For me, however, I see another theme that runs through the history of WWII: ignorance.

Stretch - Eugenics — The poster reads “Sterilization is liberation, not a punishment. Who would want to be responsible for this?”

I was particularly struck by this while reading I Have Lived a Thousand Years. Part of the motivation for eliminating the Jews was the German obsession with eugenics, the idea of breeding out undesirable traits. For Germans during this time, blonde hair and blue eyes signified a superior human being.

For us, the concept is laughable. Why should blue eyes indicate a higher level of intelligence? And yet, the most powerful men behind the Holocaust believed in it so much, they were willing to systematically murder over 11 million “undesirables.”

Genocide does not begin with burning bodies, but with burning books. Those at the head of these murders often try to hide that the victims are people just like us, despite different coloring, religion, or anything else that pseudo-science may try to classify.

I truly believe that knowledge is our greatest shield against such depravity, and that ignorance is evil’s strongest weapon. This is why I believe so strongly in Lyndell’s vision for our production of I Have Lived a Thousand Years.

By breathing life into the very human lives the passed through those dark gates, we can take one step towards combating that ignorance and prove that any tolerance of hate is dangerous.

The next world leaders are sitting in classrooms right now. What are we teaching them? Are we teaching them to hate, as Hitler learned? Or are we teaching them the bravery to face the truth, and the courage to do something about it?

Guest Blog, Uncategorized

Guest Post: A Trip to the Holocaust

July 5, 2013 Laura Rensing Leave a comment

Stretch Dance Co.’s makeup designer Brittany Vardakas has recently returned from Israel. Read about her experiences in Jerusalem and the Holocaust History Museum.

I feel as if I have just returned from another world; a place where the spirit of hardship and suffering still lingers, and yet a feeling of faith somehow trumps all the pain.

I had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. You enter the museum by walking down a small hill where a video plays of Jews living a normal life, doing daily duties, people shopping, and children playing.

As you stop to watch the images flash by, you find yourself getting more involved. The change happens so gradually that you don’t spot what’s wrong at first. Shops start to close down, streets look less busy, and you see more people sleeping outside and begging for food. Just before the video goes to blank, you see them: the Nazis.

You’ve been so involved in the video that you didn’t realize that you’re in a triangle shaped building that zigzags through till the end. You feel trapped; the only way out is to walk all the way through.

So your journey starts.

During your walk, you start with the history of Hitler. You see the tools of the trade of genocide: photos are posted everywhere, there are videos playing and displays of clothing, books, and propaganda, even hair samples that they would use to prove that you were a Jew.

You feel hatred, but it is the small things, the normal things that hit you the hardest. You see children’s toys, books, bikes, and clothing while you look at photos of tiny faces, as lost to us now as their toys were to them.

Your heart grows heavy. You think, why? The worst for me was when I had to walk over the shoes that were collected from the prisoners before they entered a concentration camp. It’s the feeling of losing something so simple that we take for granted everyday.

Holocaust Museum Images — A cattle car that was used to transport Jews to the concentration camps.

The last room you enter is filled with black books containing the names of the victims. There are so many books, but some have many blank pages as well, as they are still trying to get all the names of the victims.

At this point you’re exhausted.

You think that nothing can redeem, can ease the suffering of those people. You can’t even begin to put yourself in their footsteps. What it could have been like. How much pain they went through each day.

And yet I have seen Orthodox men and women in their daily lives; walking around, praying, and playing with their children. I wonder how many of these people are descendants of that tragedy. Maybe some of their parents and grandparents had shoes in that pile, maybe their sister left a toy in that display.

Despite having their hair cut off, being stripped of their clothing, being stripped of their humanity, these people have never lost sight of God. Their faith is something so beautiful and unbreakable. Their love for God is out of this world.

This trip has not yet set in with me yet. Trying to explain what I saw and what I experienced is still hard because it was so overwhelming. My life has been changed.

I Have Lived 1000 Years, Rehearsal Process, Uncategorized

Welcome to Our New Blog!

July 2, 2013 Laura Rensing Leave a comment

Hello and welcome to Stretch Dance Co.’s blog! While you’re waiting for this week’s amazing video, I’ll be satisfying your curiosity about the latest Stretch Dance Co. news, the dancers, the rehearsal process, and even a little bit of history.

LauraStretch — That’s me at one of Stretch Dance’s rehearsals!

Who am I? I’m Laura Rensing, one of the dancers in I Have Lived a Thousand Years. This is my first Stretch production, but I’ve been dancing since I was three years old! These days I perform a lot of musical theater, but I am thrilled to, ahem, stretch my boundaries. You can probably spot me in some of Matt’s photos of the rehearsal process (I’m usually the one with flowers in my hair!).

You may be wondering why I’m writing this blog in place of our fearless leader, Lyndell Higgins, Executive Artistic Director of Stretch Dance Co. Lyndell has been developing this production for the past three years and can probably recite the book backwards, to say nothing of her knowledge of the history surrounding it.

For me, like many of us, the Holocaust dredges up memories of dusty textbooks and black-and-white photos of skeletal prisoners, a frozen image of history, an event relegated to the past tense.

But the reality is that the ripples of the Holocaust touch the tragedies of today’s society. History books would say that genocide ended the day Auschwitz was liberated; reality proves otherwise.

When we look at the Holocaust as history, we leave it there. In the concentration camps, Jews dehumanized and tattooed with serial numbers. We have given them new numbers in place of their names: statistics, casualties, facts, but we forget that over 11 million people lived and breathed, as well as died in the Holocaust.

Knowledgeable Lyndell — Lyndell shares words of wisdom from MLK.

Lyndell, of course, knows this already. Her vision for I Have Lived a Thousand Years is not a judgment about what happened, but a timeless lesson about the incredible strength of human compassion that arises even in the midst of unimaginable cruelty.

She has lived and breathed these lives working on this project, but I come with a new set of eyes, discovering new lessons even as you do.

I hope that by sharing my discoveries with you, we can give these countless victims a legacy beyond the grim chambers of the concentration camps, and a brighter future for future generations.

Stretch Dance Company

Monthly Archives: July 2013