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Mayne Mentshn (My People)
Artist’s Statement
Mayne Mentshn (My People), a work that resonates from the very depths of my soul. Although as an artist, I feel connected to every dance that I create, never before has a work connected every facet of my being. With mind, body, spirit, both past and present, the creation of Mayne Mentshn was an inevitability for me. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I spent the last 18 years creating work that explored the pain of that experience for my parents, family and me. As I have grown, I have come to realize that to fully understand the profoundness of pain and loss, one must experience and celebrate the life that was interrupted. Sifting carefully through the rubble, I discovered a rich legacy and a story that had to be told. If not, the pain would remain and the lives and memories lost forever.
In Mayne Mentshn, including The Klezmer Sketch and The American Dream, I finally acknowledge all of the strengths, trials, and more importantly, humor and joy that have sustained ‘my people’. In The Klezmer Sketch I wanted to mine the exuberant, joyful, yet soulful quality of Klezmer music that inspired me to explore Jewish gesture, expression, ritual, character and values. I wanted to celebrate the uniqueness of the Jewish journey, and yet, the extraordinary universal connections that it engenders.
In The American Dream, I wanted to address the complexities of living in and growing up in a European Jewish community in America. The problems my family and I encountered are not unique. They represent the constant struggle of all immigrant cultures as they struggle to maintain the identity of their cultural roots while becoming a part of another, larger whole. What is the essence of our unique legacies? What are the inextricably linked values? What is the “fragile thread”? These are the questions explored in The American Dream.
This work reflects a return to my Eastern Europe roots. I say return because in 1983 I created and in 1991 expanded my work Cries of the Children. This work set to a haunting score by composer/ cellist, David Darling and powerful photographs of pre-war Polish-Jewish life, by Roman Vishniac, reflects my feelings, fears and dreams as a child of survivors of the Holocaust. My 1989 work, Lifeline, though more abstract in its relationship to my family history, reflects the Jewish concern for intergenerational connection, the belief that we travel through life as both individuals and a community and that through mutual commitment and responsibility we are connected and exist in relation to each other. (In Lifeline, various ropes create the metaphor for these connections.) These powerful messages of strength, generosity, commitment and connection were the essence of my parent’s philosophy, rooted in their Eastern European Jewish culture and legacy.
This newest work, Mayne Mentshn, is a tribute to my family, from my nuclear and extended family, to the human race at large. It is about a spirit and passion for life, people and truth. It is about life, death, survival and renewal. It is a gift I both give and take. It is a work that took CDDC on tour to Poland in summer 2001; a journey that profoundly illuminated, not only the genesis of this work, but the incredible legacy to which it pays homage. It is both an opportunity and responsibility that the dancers and I accept with pride and reverence.
Performances of Mayne Mentshn are dedicated to the
memory of my father, Henry Dorfman (1922-2001) and the humanity he engendered
and the legacy he so passionately delivered.
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