Everybody Say Hallelujah: the Los Angeles, California, residency

Liz Lerman with dancers rehearsing on the Skirball stage

WESTSIDE STORY: LOS ANGELES

Hallelujah: Stones Will Float, Leaves Will Sink, Paths Will Cross
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California
February 10-11, 2001

Stones, Leaves and Paths

The Los Angeles "Hallelujah" was the product of a two-year multiproject relationship between the Dance Exchange and the Skirball Cultural Center, but the new work itself only had less than one year to develop. In contrast, Burlington's "Hallelujah," a collaboration with the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, had four years of development. Dance Exchange production teams regularly visited both sites on a rigorously arranged schedule. In both cases, producing director Jane Hirshberg worked closely with the host producers in each city (Jordan Peimer at Skirball and Telos Whitfield at Flynn) to make sure the projects continued on track.

Through Peimer's efforts, the Skirball, a major center of Jewish culture, drew together its contacts in the Jewish, Christian and Japanese Buddhist sectors of the immense Los Angeles metropolis. Through meetings designed to elicit personal stories from the Angelenos, and exercises that drew movement from those stories, images began to build. They used two basic questions in their workshops: "What do you wish for?" And "What do you miss?"

Principal collaborators included a cadre of spiritual leaders from those communities, who came to be referred to as "the R&Rs" (the Reverends and Rabbis). This kind of collaboration is not unusual for the Dance Exchange, who see church leaders as a natural community resource for these projects. In addition, Lerman herself has been leading workshops with Jewish themes, helping incorporate movement into Jewish services, scriptural studies and children's education, and doing identity and memory work with Jewish day schools and elders communities.

The centerpiece of this residency was "Stones Will Float, Leaves Will Sink, Paths Will Cross," a collaboration between the Dance Exchange company and Los Angeles performance artist Nobuko Miyamoto, artistic director of the interdisciplinary company Great Leap. Collaboration with a single artist is unusual for the "Hallelujah" project, which so far has taken a much broader focus in each of the communities it has visited.

The Miyamoto collaboration included two major elements. One was Miyamoto's experimentation with Obon, a summer tradition in which people in Japan go home to dance together to remember their ancestors. Today Obon is performed by communities of Japanese American Buddhists all over the country, and Miyamoto has been collaborating with Rev. Masao Kodani in an evolving Obon at the Senshin Buddhist Temple in L.A. The other element was her investigation into the life stories of her two grandmothers, whom she never met. They were Misao Oga, a picture bride from Japan, and Lucy Harrison, a Mormon from Idaho. The theme that emerged from these elements was that of journeying — returning, crossing geographical, religious and cultural boundaries.

The L.A performance opened with a melange of short works created for and during the national "Hallelujah" project (see program). Its primary feature was "Gates of Praise," a formal dance work created at home in Maryland and intended to be performed as a prologue at each site to "anchor" the whole "Hallelujah" initiative. Act II was the new work, "Stones Will Float, Leaves Will Sink, Paths Will Cross." Miyamoto worked with the company both in L.A. and Takoma Park to interweave the rather straightforward, chronological tale of her grandmothers with other musical, text and dance segments from her life and community stories. These were performed by the professional artists along with the R&Rs, community members from the Buddhist and Jewish temples (including mothers and their children), and artists from the thriving local dance community. The unifying element was the Obon, the "Hallelujah" version of the traditional, circular Japanese community dance, which Miyamoto intends to take with her into the community this summer. The R&Rs appeared at intervals in the piece, dancing and giving short sermonettes on the theme of journeying.

The L.A. "Hallelujah" inaugurated the new Ahmanson Hall in the lavish Skirball complex. Unfinished by the time of the performance, the hall is a grand multipurpose room allowing space for performance and ceremonies such as weddings. According to Jordan Peimer, 2-300 people were involved in the L.A. project, 50-60 people appeared on stage.

The Rabbis and Reverends

The L.A. residency bridged some religious differences and created some lasting relationships among the spiritual communities within which it worked. It clearly meant a lot to the Reverends and Rabbis who participated.

Reverend Noriaki Ito of Higashi Hongwanji Temple in Little Tokyo, downtown L.A, said he especially enjoyed learning to move in the performance and dancing in the Obon. "We have been talking in our temple," said Ito, "about how important it is to express our concept of Buddha not only verbally, but with the entire being in whatever we do." Ito’s short sermonlike story in the performance related to the name of the city of L.A.: Our Lady Queen of the Angels. "We meet good and evil people, but where are the angels?" he asked. He recommended: "Imagine that everyone you meet is enlightened but you, and each has something to teach. They are our buddhas. They are our angels, our bodhisattvas." Ito’s only regret was that there was not enough time to get his community of 400 families involved, and they only heard about the performance after the fact.

Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom Temple in the San Fernando Valley gathered 40 people from the synagogue for workshops, engaging them with the possibilities of working with people of other faiths, and 10 of them performed in the piece. Some were "apprehensive about moving," he said, "but Liz is very creative. The small group really had a chance to work with the whole company." He, too, regretted that more of them were not part of the process. "The problem is: A performance is a performance," he said. "I wish we’d had more time to share stories and involve more people. Many didn’t get a chance because there were a lot of rehearsals and we were rushing to get it finished." Feinstein said he became very close with Rev. Ito, and their two families have been meeting for dinner and talking about bringing their congregations together.

Rev. Masao Kodani (Rev. Mas) of Senshin Buddhist Temple said he was pleasantly surprised at the process of the work. "Liz is an amazing person to watch," he said, echoing the opinion of all the community people I talked with. "How she works with people — a large group of nondancers — and gets them to produce. I would say ‘I don’t do that,’ and pretty soon I saw that I did do that." Ten people from Senshin’s 500 families were in the piece. "Nobuko rounded them up," said Kodani. "It was a new experience for everybody. They were pretty impressed with Liz’s sensibilities about differences." Like Ito, Kodani expressed a wish that the performance take place again "on this side of town" (Skirball is in the hills on the west side of L.A., a good 30 miles from the two temples.)

Rabbi Judith Halevy of Malibu Jewish Center comes from a performance background herself. She took a chance in "Hallelujah" with a story about traveling to a desert hot spring with friends and swimming undressed in the spa pool: "naked lady rabbis protected by the angel." She said she hesitated to present the story because it is hard for her community to accept woman rabbis, and especially to think of them as naked human beings. "It’s hard to be a full-time rabbi and a woman," she said. "Liz made me tell that story. My director brain knew she was right, but my rabbi brain didn’t want to go there. I knew who was in the audience. You really struggle with all sorts of projections. They think you’re a nun, that you have no life. It has to do with lives colliding."

Rev. Jim Price of Diamond Canyon Christian Church in Diamond Bar (some two hours east of Skirball) said it was his first chance to meet a troupe of dancers. "I was impressed with the whole team," he said. "As people they were helpful, kind, inclusive. They are good human beings, including the way they treated each other." Price told his religious conversion story in the piece. In helping him select a story for the performance, he said, "Liz asked me a lot of questions. I was moved by how open she was to my answers. I would have thought she would go for something more nebulous, but she went right for the core." Price regretted that his multiethnic, 400-family congregation didn’t get to see the piece, due to confused communication with the theater. About 50 members did take part in workshops. "The artists watched and listened well as people told their stories. People didn’t know what to expect. Physical expression feels kind of funny at first. They pulled out good stories. By the end we were worshipping! We felt blessed."

Crossing Religious Boundaries

The experience was educational, too, for the Dance Exchange artists. Celeste Miller is a "resident artist" with the Dance Exchange, and a well-known choreographer/performance artist in her own right. She served as project director for the Los Angeles residency. Her exchange with the Christian community in Diamond Bar was "a real eye-opener." She was surprised to find that Price's flock had gotten the impression that the "Hallelujah" event was solely Christian, and they responded to the process in a characteristic fashion. "For example," said Miller, "during the exercise where we asked them for something they wished for, a lot wished that their mates would find Jesus. I had to leave a lot of baggage at the door." As a community artist, said Miller, she often asks others to "step away from their own presuppositions. I have found the Christian mission the opposite," she said "robbing people of their own religious practices. I politically align them with the religious right. One basic ‘Hallelujah’ question is: Can we all come together and be in praise of something?

"After the workshop, we ended up dancing to this Christian rock group, and I was so uncomfortable. When we invited them to a gathering with the other participants and told them who would be there, someone cornered one of us and said ‘We won’t be showing up because we don’t associate with people who worship false gods.’" When the artists departed Diamond Bar and Miller tried to tell them this story, she realized she was in a car with mostly Jews and Buddhists. She knew more about Christ than anybody in the car. "It was a rich moment for me. I had to explain the Crucifixion, the Resurrection." In spite of their hesitancy, five of the Christians did show up for the gathering, and Jim Price showed up at the Buddhist temple for his one-on-one interview. "If this is all this project does," said Miller, "it will be miraculous. Art brought these people together — stories translated to movement. It allowed us to share religions without being so obvious. On the personal level, we can do quiet reflections without being forced into the open. This was enough."

Mixing Sand and Salt

Miller said she, like most others I spoke with, did not have a good sense of the performance until after it was over. The process of combining Miyamoto’s traditional musical theater style with postmodern dance was a bumpy one, and the piece kept changing, right up through the last performance. It contained additional material from each artist’s research. "‘Hallelujah’ is usually based on a theme that arises from all the stories," Miller said. "Here was one story from which we would draw threads together. For my role of Lucy, the Mormon grandmother who married a Japanese, I did a lot of research on the Latter Day Saints, and how Mormons view intermarriage — not fondly. According to my research Lucy would have had to be thrown out of the church."

Equally as interesting was the interaction between Miyamoto, a Japanese American, and the Dance Exchange’s Kazu Nakamura, who was born in Japan and played the Japanese picture bride (cross-gender casting, I might add). "I watched the referencing she would do with him," said Miller, "She’d say, ‘In the Japanese culture, this is what we do, right?’ And he’d sometimes say no."

"Trying to dance a story, you bring the very essence of things out," said Miyamoto. "A lot of things got distilled: these women and their crossings. We had to encompass these relationships and the larger context as well. I think of my marriage to Terabu (African-American) and of my child Kamau. My grandmothers would never imagine how far these crossings would take them. Like a ship that takes off and you don’t know where it’s going.

"The mix-master, Liz, is experienced in utilizing as many voices as she can," Miyamoto went on. "Anyone who wanted to be in it was in it. It was an incredible challenge and a little frightening to me. Such nerve. What gives her the courage to ask the reverends and rabbis, such busy, influential people, for this commitment?"

Nobuko Miyamoto in "Stones Will Float"

Miyamoto had to experiment with weaving the story into the community piece. In 1999 she had totally lost her voice, and still experiences a vocal challenge, which became a metaphor for her search for family identity. "I went to Liz with that and she glommed onto it," said Miyamoto. Portions of her medical struggle with her voice were incorporated into the piece and told by Lerman, almost as a Greek chorus to the narrative. "Part of me was in a vulnerable position talking about it," said Miyamoto. "It was my story and that made it difficult for both of us. I wanted to perform more deeply than we did. Twenty minutes was too short. Six to eight weeks was too short. Time was our greatest enemy. Some things got left out. The last Obon piece, for instance, was supposed to include the audience. The issue of crossing: My vision was people crossing into the circle, hoping we could create opportunities for the audience to join in. The problem was big: How to include everybody."

Overall, said Miyamoto, it was a wonderful experience, "mixing sand and salt. Difficult and wonderful. The Dance Exchange is so humanistic. They care about the process, want people to feel included. I really enjoyed learning how Liz had created these structures for the company to spread her theories. It’s a fantastic experience, but not an easy one."

Lerman also saw a cultural difference in their approaches. "It was new to collaborate at such a high level with someone not in the company," she said. "There was often the question of whose piece it was. We found a temporary solution. At our worst, we both retreated to different corners." (See Lerman's Program Notes)

The Skirball’s Jordan Peimer observed what he took to be a cultural struggle as well. "Nobuko’s tension resulted from a different understanding of storytelling," said Peimer. "It was almost the difference between the oral tradition and written, the oral tending toward the chronological. When you mess with narrative structure, as Liz wanted to do, you can discover unforeseen potential in the story. It can be rearranged and become bigger.

"Nobuko was speaking in the present and two pasts," said Peimer. "Liz creates in the present tense. She expanded the piece beyond the Miyamoto collaboration by bringing in the reverends and rabbis." Their contributions, said Peimer, extrapolated from the bare narrative to add commentary about death, risk and salvation. Such strategies, said Peimer, "give you a chance to expand inside the story. Art can transform in that way. You can retell a personal story and make it universal."

The personal aspect of the story made it more challenging in collaboration for Lerman, but she is experienced at working with other people’s stories. "When the storyteller is the protagonist," she said, "it’s problematic. They usually want the piece to have a therapeutic rather than an aesthetic moment. There has to be a good guy and a resolution. Nobuko kept waiting to come back to herself." Lerman found the experience illuminating. "I am so much smarter having gone through this. "

Lerman credits herself with "Final Editing" in the program. "In terms of ‘Hallelujah,’ I am editor-in-chief," she said. "Each piece needs to fit inside something larger. To make great art I need to be ruthless, and editing is always political. I’m trying to do it in public so everybody understands. It’s different from choreography, or ‘making up steps.’ I have been calling myself an environmentalist. There is also such a thing as ‘conceiving’ of the work, and ‘inventing’ the vocabulary. But postmodernism is a tool, not a doctrine."

Measuring "Hallelujah"

Viewing this work as a critic, I think this artwork was seriously impacted by something that had little to do with the extent of community interactions or the limits of the artistic collaboration: the inadequacy of the space in which the performance was presented. The temporary stage was elevated, and surrounded by folding chairs on three sides. The live music and some of the action took place in the balconies. It is impossible to overemphasize the difference in my experience of the work on the two consecutive nights I saw it.

Saturday night I was seated far to the side of the stage, so far that I did not even know anything was happening above me on the balcony. The pure dance portions were very hard to understand visually, and the Miyamoto collaboration made no sense to me at all. Fortunately, I returned on Sunday and was seated in the balcony facing the stage, for a completely different view of the entire program. The dance works were energetic and evocative, punctuated with moments of sheer poetry. The contrast in the different styles of the company members ran from hilarious to awe-inspiring. There are perfect dancer bodies, chunky bodies, long and tall bodies, soft older bodies. It’s a special treat to watch the lanky, white-haired Thomas Dwyer (who only began to dance in his senior years) move methodically through the choreography, surrounded by youngsters, then bunch his body and drastically cast it backward in the air over the shoulder of the stalwart Peter DiMuro, who carries him away.

The Obon sections, which from below appeared to me nothing more than far too many people milling about in a dangerously small and elevated arena, from above became a river of humanity flowing in a circle around and through many different cultural forms. Surely more than half the audience each night was cheated of the art experience they had hoped to enjoy. The artists later told me they had expected the room to be finished, and for it to be a theater, not a multipurpose space.

Anyone who has ever undertaken a building project knows that it always takes twice as long as it should. It is hard to know what the answer is here, and whether the Skirball should be blamed. But it is my opinion that they have not built a theater for interdisciplinary performance at their palatial Los Angeles facility, and artists should refuse to perform there unless the work fits the room and the room is finished. Considering the cast of L.A.’s "Hallelujah," and the effort involved in finishing the production on time, the result was nearly tragic. In a case like this, we are fortunate that the measure of quality extends beyond the presentation and into the beneficial and long-lasting community interactions that were an inseparable part of it.

Original CAN/API publication: May 2001