Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Education notebook: Not a hidden dance
Members of the William Fleming High School dance company imagined how they would feel as children of the Holocaust, then turned that into a modern dance performance to welcome a survivor.
STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS The Roanoke Times
Mishel'la Green (center) performs an interpretive dance Thursday inspired by hidden children of the Holocaust.
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Holocaust survivor Sally Frishberg has been telling her story for more than 40 years now, but she's never received quite the welcome she got at William Fleming High School on Thursday, two days after Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"I feel so at home with you and so warmly welcomed," Frishberg said after a four-movement modern dance by Fleming's F.R.E.E. Dance Company and select modern dancers from the Roanoke Ballet Theatre.
Frishberg, a retired teacher who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., spent last week in Roanoke speaking with students about her experiences as a hidden child of the Holocaust.
Dance teacher Liza Deck has been working on the performance for about a year. She said she was excited for her students -- many of whom have had to overcome adversity -- to hear from Frishberg, and she wanted to welcome the survivor in her own way.
"This [dance] is the way I know best to communicate my feelings," said Deck, who has been dancing for more than 30 years. She teaches dance at William Fleming High School and William Ruffner Middle School in addition to classes at the Roanoke Ballet Theatre.
"I think it goes right to your heart, right to your feeling," she said. "And if you're a thinking person, it goes right to your intellect."
In dark, simple, layered outfits, each with one burst of color representing springtime and a fresh start, the dancers took the stage.
The first three movements were choreographed by Deck and performed by her middle and high school-aged students, but the final section was created almost entirely by the dancers.
Deck told her students to write a letter from the viewpoint of a hidden child before choreographing the dance.
Then each student created her own solo by focusing on a handful of the strongest words in her letter, said F.R.E.E. dancer Christina Smith, an 18-year-old Fleming senior.
Smith, who will study dance next year at Virginia Western Community College, choreographed pain, fear, sadness and power into her solo, but doubted she would have had Frishberg's strength under the same circumstances.
"I would have rather acted it than done it in real life," she said.
