Performing at the Jerusalem Theatre… with the Beginners

Last week, B"H, I had the thrill once again of performing on stage at the Jerusalem Theatre. Bright lights. Applause. Adrenaline.

And yet, I wasn't dancing in a dazzling sequence costume with my steel-shuffling troupe. I was performing with the beginner tap group.

No… I did not accidentally wander into the wrong dance number or forget where I was supposed to be!

FINDING A NEW ROLE

I have been tap dancing for twenty years.

Twenty years.

At this point in life, I should probably be teaching the beginners. Instead, I joined them.

Not because I stopped “real” dancing or lost the place I had earned in our kick line. And definitely not because I stopped loving it. But because my ankle and knee recently decided they were no longer interested in jumping high or f-lapping faster than a speeding bullet. Apparently, my joints have been holding meetings without me, and decided: “Effective immediately: reduce high-impact commitments.”

So I adapted.

That's how I found myself in beginners’ tap, relearning steps I once knew in my sleep.

At first, it felt strange. Who willingly goes backwards? But you know what? Beginners don’t agonize about what they used to be able to do. They simply try to do it now. And that’s surprisingly peaceful.

TWO TAP LIVES

Now, I haven’t left my veteran tap class. I’m still there too. Every week. Standing beside dancers who sometimes perform steps that my arthritic ankle and knee look at with deep suspicion.

So I’ve become something of a choreographer for one. When a routine asks for a step my joints politely refuse, I don’t leave the line, I adjust. I simplify. I substitute. I improvise. And you know what, everyone still smiles and loves me.

It’s not always easy, and occasionally I suspect my body and I are performing two slightly different dances to the same music. But I stay in the room. And that matters more to me than anything else, because I love my troupe and I want to dance with them as long as I can.

So my week now has two tap lives:

In the veteran class, I stretch myself, adapt my steps, and try to stay part of something bigger and more complex than what I can comfortably do alone. In the beginner class, I relearn, rebuild, and remind myself that joy doesn’t require expertise. Between the two, I keep dancing.

ON STAGE

And then something unexpected happened. We performed at the Jerusalem Theatre. Yes. The beginners’ troupe. There I stood under stage lights, feeling exactly the same thrill I have felt for years at every stage of dance.

The stage, it turns out, doesn’t care what your level is. It only cares that you give your all and shine out   your personal aura. And the audience doesn’t come to measure technical perfection. It comes to feel your love and enthusiasm, your willingness to share your gift across the footlights.

LIFE IS MULTI-DIRECTIONAL

Many of us believe that life moves in one direction only: Forward ..to.. better ..to.. more advanced ..to.. more capable.

But then, one day life quietly introduces a different curriculum: Oy vey, so... adapt ..and.. simplify ..and.. begin again.

At seventy, I’m learning that “beginner” is not a downgrade. It’s a skill. A state of mind. Really... a privilege.

There is something deeply honest about the beginners’ class. No pretending. No hiding. No comparison to who you used to be. Just: Can I do this step today? And if not, can I do a version of it that still lets me dance?

So, here I am tapping in two worlds, and I’ve discovered something important: I am still a dancer.

Not because I move the way I used to. But because I still move. And I still say yes to the stage.

Maybe that’s the real secret of this stage of life. You don’t stop performing when things change. You learn new ways to stay in the dance.

And if that means being a beginner at seventy … then I’ll take it. And tap on.

She Hung Up Her Tap Shoes. I’m Still Lacing Mine.

Last year, at 71, my friend Fayge hung up her tap shoes. 

Not dramatically. Not with a final Broadway bow.

Just quietly. After eighteen years of shuffle-ball-change, costume mishaps, and late-night laughter.

When we began dancing at 50 (me) and 52 (Fayge), we were on top of our game. (Yes, really.)

As the years went by, tap became more challenging, but we did our best with a determined smile. And there is a moment we often shared that I treasure most.

After a particularly difficult step - the kind that requires fierce concentration and silent prayer - when we somehow managed to execute it without collapsing into each other, Fayge and I would reach out and squeeze hands. No words. Just that squeeze.

We did it.

That squeeze said: We’re still here.
Still moving.
Still brave enough to try.

WOMEN OF STEEL

But tap is not simple at any age. It demands speed, precision, strong knees, cooperative ankles.

Now Fayge and I have none of those things.

Fayge was diagnosed with Parkinson’s years ago. Yet, she kept dancing. She kept showing up every Tuesday night with lipstick on and her tap shoes laced tight. But last season she decided that the turns and the quick movements – um, tap is mostly turns and quick movements - were asking more than her body could give.

So she chose to stop.

ALONE ON THE DANCE FLOOR

So, here I am. Seventy years old.
In a class of women ranging from 33 to 50 … and then… me.

I have arthritis in my ankle, which makes my shuffles occasionally slur in ways I’d rather not discuss, and hops live only in my mind. My knee, injured two years ago, still negotiates every fast combination. When the choreography calls for “quick and light,” I do my best to remember what that once felt like.

Still, Tuesday night tap is my happy place.

KEEPING MOVING

Fayge may have hung up her tap shoes, but she didn’t hang up her dance costumes. She still performs in “The Walker Dance,” a joyful piece filled with women over sixty who march and sway with more energy than orthopedists would advise. (We dance with walkers, but B"H, they're still props.) Fayge does yoga. She exercises. She shows up for life.

And she still belongs to our tap family.

She keeps in touch. She cheers us on. She lives in our inside jokes. Even without the shoes, she is part of the rhythm.

And me?

Fayge has officially made me the oldest tap dancer in Gush Etzion.

For now, I am choosing to stay. To shuffle imperfectly. To ice my ankle. To stand in a room full of younger women and claim my place anyway.

One day, I too may hang up my shoes.

But not yet.

For now, when the music starts and the floor answers back, I am still reaching for that invisible hand squeeze.

Still here.
Still moving.
Still dancing.

(Photos by our dear friends - Rebecca Kowalsky and Beth Lanin)

 

The Past Three Months Have Been Harder Than I Realized

The kumquat tree missed them.

On Friday afternoon my newly-seven-year old grandson climbed the garden wall of our home and almost ran into my arms. I burst out in giant loud messy sobs. He stopped so short that smoke came out of his sneakers, and he anxiously eyed me top to bottom, sure that I must be bleeding somewhere.

I started apologizing (by this time his eight-year-old sister was beside him, watching me scare my grandchildren with my wailing). Choking on my sobs, I told them, “Savta is just so happy to see you at my home. I missed you all so much. My house missed you. My kumquat tree missed you. The toys missed you. I'm sorry. I can’t stop crying, because I am grateful.”

Absolutely frozen, they watched me in silence - a bit afraid, a bit weirded out, a bit pity-filled for Savta. And I realized that the past three months have been harder on me than I realized.

Like the rest of you, I spent more than two months in self-isolation – not leaving the house, not seeing my friends or family, not participating in any real-world activities. I zoomed. I whatsapped. I facebooked. I even worked a little. B”H for my heroic husband (ad 120 beyachad) and wonderful kids who shopped for us. B"H for exciting screen door visits.

HEY, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

Mostly, I watched a deserted world at my front door, as I prayed in my rocking chair. (Wow, that does sound like an old lady from some novel, but truthfully, we had been left behind in a ghost town.)

And I observed, as life transformed over the weeks - from me alone with my birds, to one person walking through the street on Shabbat, to three kids and a dog, to a few couples and a family here and there, and then this past week, voila…a busy exciting bustle passing my door.

I did everything I was told. The day the Health Ministry said we could go out (of course, with our masks), I tremulously and hesitatingly walked out my door, holding my brave husband’s hand. When they said we could visit our grandchildren, but at a distance, my husband and I jumped in the car and visited every single grand/kid immediately. We even brought “We-love-balloons.” We just wanted to see their faces in living color sans-screen, even if not up close.

THE SHOCK OF REALITY

But nothing could prepare me for the sight of my cherished little people climbing up my wall. I am still overcome with emotion, thinking how much we (the protected part of the population) have suffered more than the rest of the world at-large from lack of interaction with our grandchildren.
Thank G-d, they are back in our lives.

An amazing outdoor get-together (with masks, except for eating and smiling.)

And still, we older folks probably won’t totally heal until that day comes when we can hug those little people that we love and smother them with kisses. May it come soon.
PS - thank you to the folks who worked to keep us healthy and safe. xoxo

Purim and the Death of the Soviet Haman

Throughout Jewish history malicious Haman figures have risen and B”H fallen. In our minds Germany’s Hitler, yemach shmo, is the Haman of the last generation. But Russia’s Joseph Stalin, yemach shmo, ranks very close. Responsible for the deaths of about 15-20 million of his own people, Stalin had a special place in his black heart for the Jewish people.

On the miraculous Purim of 1953, Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror ended.

Stalin was a maniacal murderer. Paranoid, he saw those around him as enemies. The Jews were a Fifth Column to him, disloyal, dangerous. In well-orchestrated actions, Stalin executed scientists, intellectuals, writers, artists, peasants, landowners and his own Army’s generals - with a special emphasis on the Jews.

The Night of the Murdered Poets of 1952 eliminated Jewish culture along with poets, writers, playwrights, artists. The Doctors’ Plot of 1953 launched a vicious anti-Semitic media campaign when Stalin accused the nation’s Jewish doctors of planning to poison Soviet leaders.

Building on the need to eliminate the three million Jews from Soviet Society, Stalin reportedly planned mass deportations of Soviet Jews to Siberian concentration camps.

Only a few days before the doctors were to go on trial, and before the reported deportations were to take effect, Stalin suffered a massive stroke on March 1, 1953 on the holiday of Purim. He died a few days later, and not long after, the doctors were found innocent and (if they had truly been planned) no trains carried mass numbers of Jews to the Gulag.

Soviet Jewry had been saved on Purim 1953. And while the Soviet Union didn’t stop using its secret police or gulags until the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Jewish population lived on, some assimilating into Soviet Society and some courageous figures fighting to retain their Judaism and even to emigrate to Israel.

This year IY”H, The Women’s Performance Community of Jerusalem in partnership with OU Israel will bring to the Jerusalem stage, “Whisper Freedom”, the story of the struggle of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s. Follow our journey to Moscow on facebook.

Just Dance!

On Isru Chag, I'll be tap dancing in two numbers for the Efrat Community Center end-of-the-year dance recital. Six-year-olds will twirl in their tutus. Teenagers will energize the audience with their hip hop. I'll be joining our tap troupe, Steps Ahead, as we dazzle on the dance floor with a dozen women from 16 to 65.

Most of us have been dancing together with incredible choreographer Judy Feinerman Kizer for 11 years now. My daughter Bati was the youngest then, 15 years old, and today the youngest is adorable Shira. We're a dancing family - every age, every background, every body type - and we're happiest when we're together. Of course, for Fayge at 65 and me at 63, it's not as easy as it used to be. Our shuffles are not as fast and our flaps sometimes don't sound so sharp.
But we love to tap, and as long as our dancing family will have us, we'll keep practicing and trying to keep up.
Dancing gives us joy. It surrounds us with the women we love. It's healthy too - good for the heart, the brain, the muscles, balance, etc.
So, I may not be so light or quick on my feet anymore, but you won't see anyone with a bigger smile or having more fun out there on the dance floor.

When the Heart Says 'Yes', and the Body Says 'No'

Our Steps Ahead Tap Troupe on Stage
in "Dames of the Dance 10 - Legacy"

My friend Fayge and I have a nightmare. We talk about it all the time. The nightmare is: no longer being able to tap dance. Yes, it’s true. We’re 62 and 64 and we tap dance. Actually, we live for tap dancing.

Fayge and I on stage in DAMES 1, more than 10 years ago.

We both began tapping ten years ago (really 11). I was just past 50 and she a drop older. Who begins tapping at 50? That’s when tap dancers are retiring. But my doctor told me that I had osteoporosis and dancing would be good for me. So, Ginger Rogers just had to move aside. Two minutes ago, I called Fayge to ask why she started tap dancing. Her answer was simple, “Because you did.”

Wow, I never knew that. Mwa, Fayge, love you!

Well, thanks to our patient talented teacher/ choreographer Judy Kizer, we learned amazing steps and have gotten better and more proficient year by year. We’ve also gotten older. How come no one else in our troupe has aged? Really!

We come to rehearsal with pains in our knees or toes. Fayge has sciatica. I have arthritis. But we keep tapping. And as long as our troupe will have us, we’ll try to keep up.

Our tap troupe, our family, led by choreographer Judy Kizer

Our tap troupe is our family. I think they’re keeping us young to some extent. We feel better when the dozen of us are standing up together. Fayge and I want to succeed because of them. We want to try harder. And when all that fails, Fayge says she smiles, and that’s all that anyone cares about.

By all accounts, dancing is supposed to reduce your blood pressure. That might well be true. I hope it’s strengthening my bones, like my doctor promised. It’s thought to keep your brain sharp, prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia. I hope that’s correct, but when we’re learning a step, I always worry, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I don’t know what’s next!! Help help help.” B”H, somehow when we perform, all the steps and formations come to me (and if they don’t, some dancer that I love pushes or pulls me to the right place).

JE SUIS UNE DANSEUSE

I am a tapper. Tap dancing is what I do. It’s part of my identity. My tap bag is always ready. When I pick it up and rush off to rehearsal, I can’t help but hold back the smile I feel taking over my face. I can’t wait to see my dancing pals. I can’t wait for our group hug. I can’t wait to praise each one for the amazing way she executed a step.

Last year, I injured my knee. I could hardly stand. I lamented to my husband, “Maybe I should quit. What good is a dancer who can’t stand up?” “Never quit,” he said. “Always dance. Never quit.” I actually listened to him, and although I could only stand for ten minutes of our 60-minute class, I kept going. B”H, my knee healed. I’m still making up from a year of injury, but I persevere.

Fayge keeps going too. She kvetches and I krich, but we do it on the dance floor.

Last week, we completed a fabulastic season of dance with the production “Dames of the Dance 10 – Legacy.” The dances were more than spectacular. The dancers more than gorgeous. We even received praise from respected columnist Barbara Sofer: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Dancing-grandmas-543899

Fayge and I on stage in this year's DAMES.

We danced with uber-talented teenagers, with magnificent ballerinas, sexy belly dancers, exotic Bollywood dancers, energetic hip hoppers. They were all marvelous and duly praised. And what got surprise acclaim by Barbara Sofer and our audience, as well? Our dancing grandmas!
Maybe our grannies gave audience members hope that quality of life, creativity, friendship, fun and achievement continue after 60. Maybe we were just funny. Whatever the reason, we were dancing!

So, when the heart says 'yes', do everything possible for as long as you can to make the body say 'yes' too.

 [Thank you to Rebecca Kowalsky, www.imagesthroughtime.com, for the photos.]

Grandmas on Stage / Grandkids in the Audience - A guest blog by Mimi Katz

Dance -
1. To move one's feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps,
especially to the accompaniment of music

My girls with their performing grandmother

2. To leap, skip, etc., as from excitement or emotion; move nimbly or quickly
What does it mean to dance? The definition in the dictionary is pretty straightforward and clear. But the dancing my girls and I watched this week had so much depth than that.

Auntie Bati, Grandma, Auntie Nava

I took my ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters to watch their aunts and grandmother dance in a very special performance entitled, "Dames of the Dance", an all-female dance performance for women of all ages.
We look forward to this show all year, with its bright colors, creative dances and shining costumes.
The day itself was full of excitement. "Today we are going to see Grandma's show."

Grandma tap dances (at right) with Auntie Bati right in the center

The girls must have asked me twenty times what time we'd be going and in how much time is that. We headed out. My older daughter was worried every time we slowed down for the slightest bit of traffic and the eta on the Waze changed even by a minute. As we got closer to the theater we stopped to buy some snacks, the anticipation barely allowed the girls to eat dinner before we left.
We arrived at the theater and immediately looked for our family. My daughters were so happy, we arrived early. They couldn't wait to see their cousins, aunts and grandmothers. We got our tickets and found our seats. Our family had an entire row. Even their great-grandmothers came to see the performance.

Grandma plays a grandma

This year's show surpassed well beyond all of our expectations - and we have high expectations based on the previous years we've attended "Dames".
The theme of the show this year is legacy. It's "Dames" tenth anniversary - with 100 women volunteering to dance, rehearsing for months, devoting their efforts to a cause. Their goal is to raise money for the needy in their communities. This year they set an additional goal - to contribute to an IDF Lone Soldiers’ Home in Gush Etzion.
Ten years of shows, of creating a group that has become like family. They wish to extend their love to soldiers who don’t have family with them in Israel. Their message is clear - we love you! You do have family in Israel - we are here for you!
My daughters sat in awe watching their grandmother perform with love. She is able to combine the things she cherishes most - charity work, family and friends, and dancing. This is the legacy.

Showbiz kiss

So what does dance mean? Well, to us it represents beauty and expression, awareness and activeness, facilitating change and providing help, movement and progress and most of all love and unity.

"Dames of the Dance" has one more performance, a 5 PM matinee on Monday February 26, geared for the younger crowd. The sports hall of Efrat will be filled with cheering kids in the stands and shuffling mothers, sisters and grandmothers on stage.
[If you're in Greater Jerusalem, tickets: tixwise.co.il/damesofthedance.]