I know we make it look easy, but putting up a brand new original production with a young company can have a lot of pitfalls. Luckily, our fearless leader Lyndell has thought of a way around several of the issues.
How does Lyndell choreograph for dancers from different styles?
Our company consists of dancers who have studied anything from hip hop to flamenco, so you’d think it’d be incredibly difficult to make the corps pieces looks cohesive and strong. It probably is, but Lyndell makes it seem easy. Though all of us in the company come from a different dance background, everyone has an incredibly strong acting ability that helps knit us together. The movement in the group pieces is often very fluid and simple, but uses timing, ripples and acting to keep the pieces dynamic.
The dance solos are a very special treat. Lyndell tailors each dance to the soloist’s abilities and strengths, so each solo is absolutely stunning to watch! The solos are where you’ll see the flavor of where each dancer comes from, which makes the piece much more personal to us as we continue to build it.
How do we get by with just one rehearsal a week?
The great thing about rehearsing once a week is that we can slowly build our company. Many of us perform in other productions at the same time, and all of us have at least one other day job. Though it can be tough to keep the energy going at 9pm on a Saturday night, it’s great to end our week with Stretch! It means that each dancer has some homework when we go home, but it also gives us more time to work on the story behind movements.
It can also be difficult when performers are absent due to work and other shows, but we take a video (not the ones that you guys get to see!) of the combinations each week so that everyone can catch up and stay on the same page.
How do you get the word out about a young company?
Our social media extraordinaire, Matt Lardner, does a fantastic job of updating Stretch Dance Co.’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and makes our amazing videos each week. It may sound silly, but social media can mean a lot these days. Besides, it’s a great way to share with our friends and family everything that we’ve been doing! And of course, we’re using our Preview Performances to get the word out and give you a sneak peak into the amazing work that we’ve been doing. Hope to see you there!
Laura Faiwiszewski with her grandmother and the author of I Have Lived a Thousand Years, Livia Bitton-Jackson!
A post from the author’s granddaughter, Laura Faiwiszewski!
Not to be confused with the eloquent writer of the Stretch Dance Company blog, my name is also Laura (I like this guest blogger–she should do a blog every week–the other Laura), and I am one of Livia Bitton-Jackson’s granddaughters.
I heard about the I Have Lived a Thousand Years dance production from my grandmother, and I was immediately excited with the idea of the project. Telling the story of the Holocaust through dance, and a story about my own grandmother’s experiences to top it all off, sounded like an amazing way to honor the memories of those who perished, as well as an inspiring way to teach our present generation about the lessons of the horrible cruelty of the Nazis. While the Holocaust happened over half a century ago, it is still very relevant, and I know that this production will prove that to its audience.
I would like to share a little bit about myself. I am currently an undergraduate student in Rutgers University in New Jersey and majoring in Psychology. I am active among the Jewish community on campus, as I served on the Hillel student board (an organization that creates opportunities for Jewish students to celebrate and explore their Jewish identity at over 500 university campuses) and I always make sure to be involved in Pro-Israel programming. On another note, although it has almost nothing to do with my major, I have a passion for dance.
Does this count as an audition for the production, Lyndell? I say she’s in!
This past year I took a few different dance courses through Mason Gross, Rutgers school for the arts, and I just loved every minute of them (though if I were to be completely honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not the most coordinated or best dancer).
There is just something so special about dance than enables one to express his or her emotions through movement, and it can be as equally emotional and cathartic for an audience. That, along with the actual fun of dancing and improvisation, made me fall in love with dance.
So why am I writing a blog post for the Stretch Dance Company? What inspires me to want to take part in this production, even though I live across the country and can contribute very little to the process?
Well, for starters, my grandmother has always taught me that the Holocaust has very important lessons that must be shared with the rest of the world. I always find myself sharing my grandmother’s story with my peers and passing along her book, because I understand how important it is to constantly share that information. The Holocaust was a very dark time in world history, and it wasn’t only a tragedy among the Jewish people. At least 5 million people, such as homosexuals, gypsies, people with disabilities, and others were brutally murdered, along with the 6 million+ Jews that were killed.
The Holocaust was a violation against humanity as a whole, not just against these specific groups. It is important to learn from the cruelties and evilness of the Holocaust, but it is also important to remember the kindness and heroism that took place.
Many Jews continued to secretly practice their religion in the camps, even though they knew they would be killed if caught, because the hope and inspiration they got from their rituals gave them the strength to continue to survive.
Photo: Uriel Sinai for The New York Times.
There were gentiles who hid Jews in their houses to keep them safe, even though they were putting their own families in danger as a result. Many inspirational stories come out of the Holocaust that teach us to never give up hope, to stand up against evil, and to always help those who need it.
This coming semester, I will be interning through the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, teaching children and teenagers in public schools about the Holocaust. Teaching the world about this black mark in our history is something that is so important to me, because I really believe it is important to learn from the mistakes of those before us to make sure it never happens again for anyone.
That is why I think this production is so incredible- it sets out to teach people of our generation about the cruelties that can take place, as well as the kindness and hope that can be used to combat hatred.
Stretch Dance Company’s production of I Have Lived a Thousand Years will convey the lessons of the Holocaust in a new way, as it will be expressed through the powerful tool of dance. It will give the audience a new way to relate to and to understand the Holocaust. I’m sure this production will give its audience the motivation to fight against hate and to create a brighter future. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
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’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.
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.
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
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.
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.
