By Elizabeth Tucker–
The embodiment of strength and physical groundedness for many, Jane Alexandre died on February 16 from ALS at the age of 71. A memorial service on March 7 drew a crowd that overflowed Ackerman Hall in Tarrytown.
As the founder of Tappan Zee Dance Group and Evolve Dance and a teacher at Rivertown Dance Academy, she was a mentor to girls as they matured and a source of needed creative support to adult women. At the memorial service, Julie B. Johnson, a student of Alexandre’s, said that when she first met Alexandre at age seven, “she seemed like she was ten feet tall, and that’s how she always made me feel, like I was ten feet tall.” From taking ballet and jazz as a child, Johnson would proceed to teaching at TZDG, to co-founding Evolve with Alexandre, to pursuing graduate study and becoming a professor of dance at Spelman College in Atlanta.
Alexandre founded Tappan Zee Dance Group in 1987, the same year her oldest daughter, Joanna, was born. The school offered classes in modest studios installed in back rooms of the United Methodist Church (now Iglesia Cristiana Restoración) on South Washington Street. Even young children’s desire to dance was received with complete seriousness and the significance of physical expression was honored through older adulthood. The school emphasized a strong foundation in ballet technique; along with their regular teachers, students were given the opportunity to take classes with and perform alongside guest artists. To name a few, these included Alexandra Beller of Bill T. Jones Company, Amy O’Brien of White Oak Dance Project, and Ernesta Corvino, who taught the Tappan Zee students classical ballet repertoire as it was devised in the first part of the nineteenth century by Maria Taglioni. Alexandre herself taught ballet and concert jazz.
Alexandre nurtured creative expression in her regular faculty. She hired Annie Tucker, who had also started at TZDG at the age of seven, as a college student. Tucker remembers that Alexandre “gave us a lot of trust. She offered space to faculty to work on their choreography free of charge and featured their dances in annual performances.” In 2004, Tucker and Alexandre interviewed Robert Brown, the caretaker of the United Methodist Church, with whom Alexandre had developed a friendship. Johnson choreographed a dance based on the interview. Another project was an outreach program at Washington Irving School, where Tucker co-taught a dance class for children with special needs. This experience would inform her graduate research at UCLA.
Alexandre stressed that TZDG provided adolescent girls a safe environment apart from home and school, where they could “love their bodies for all they could do,” in the words of her daughter Jill. For Johnson among many girls, loving her body was not easy. All the more firmly did Alexandre insist, “you should never speak badly about your body. Only say nice things.” To do so was to practice “a kindness that starts with yourself and ripples out to others.” In a more sarcastic mode, Tucker remembers a running joke that faculty should wear T-shirts instructing “Parents, deal with your own shit!” rather than passing their neuroses to their children. As an adult student, Emily Metzner says,“you could count on Jane’s class—that you would work hard and have a laugh and leave feeling more connected to yourself and to other dancers, all working together to create something.”
Karenne Koo started dancing with Alexandre at the age of thirty-five, when her younger child had just started preschool. She soon became aware of “a whole host of issues, ranging from self-doubt to a body not accustomed to the physical training to self-consciousness to just plain wondering ‘what the heck am I doing here?’ Jane noticed my discomfort and was by my side through the process of accepting that I was there to learn, not to put myself down. She was firm in her support and at the same time gave me space to figure things out for myself. Always truthful that the process was not going to be easy but always encouraging in her quiet way. She pushed me to challenge myself, and oftentimes I wondered why she had confidence in me when I couldn’t find it in myself. But I stuck with it, primarily because I wanted to learn from her and to be in her energy sphere.” Alexandre then offered Koo a job as the studio manager.
Differences among the board about the direction for the school caused Alexandre to leave TZDG in 2006. The school closed in 2008. Alexandre began a PhD in Leadership and Social Change at Antioch University. Koo says, “I remember sitting in a coffee house with Jane and Julie Johnson, brainstorming ideas and sharing our philosophy on what dance meant to each of us. . . . We were firmly committed to the idea that dance is an intrinsic human activity and should be available to all people.” They founded Evolve Dance, which partnered with YDance at the Tarrytown Y, where Alexandre served as artistic director. Evolve had a professional and pre-professional dance company and developed an outreach program that took its members to Ghana, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Peru. Koo recounts, “We taught dance to girls rescued from trafficking, LGBTQ support networks, children dealing with difficulties stemming from systemic poverty, and other such marginalized communities.” When Koo moved to Arizona, “we had a three-year residency with Arts for All, a Tucson-based organization that provided arts programming for adults and children with disabilities.” In 2017, Koo co-founded Dancesequences, a nonprofit with the mission to advance inclusion through movement and dance. She reflects, “My current work is possible only because I had those years cultivating valuable skills while working alongside Jane. She was clear in her vision, uncompromising in her advocacy for people who did not fit the socially-constructed norm of ‘dancer,’ and her innate understanding that each person needed space and time to realize their potential. I hope that I carry those qualities as I continue my practice.” A moment of reciprocity occurred for Tucker when she was able to invite her mentor to UCLA to present at the conference “Choreographing Politics/The Politics of Choreography,” which Tucker had co-organized.
In 2015, Alexandre founded The Dancer-Citizen, a fully open access scholarly journal with twenty issues now available online. Topics include “particular untold histories of dance, agents of change in dance, the creative process, dance as reclamation of culture, dance as resistance to racism and ableism, multimedia projects raising awareness of climate change, and the lived experience of confinement and incarceration,” in the words of Metzner, who serves as copy editor. Alexandre began teaching Theology and the Arts at Union Theological Seminary.
In 2016, Jessica Horgan and Rachel Pritzlaff, two administrators of the YDance program, brought Alexandre and other faculty members from YDance to found Rivertown Dance Academy. While not an official advisor, Alexandre fundamentally provided the vision for a dance school accessible to all, a place where, in Horgan’s words, “financial aid was given to any who proved need, with no cap to the number of dancers served or amount of aid given. She believed in taking care of our Spanish-speaking neighbors . . . and she offered a welcoming space where dancers of all skills and abilities could experience the joy of dance.” Alexandre’s daughters Erica and Jill soon joined the faculty. With performances March 20–22, they will celebrate their tenth spring festival.
Links:
https://www.juliebjohnson.com/
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