A moving night of Yiddish song and dance

Like many Jews, Ruth Botchan reveres her immigrant heritage and honors the memory of those lost in the Holocaust. Unlike most, however, she expresses those feelings through dance.

The founder of the Berkeley-based Ruth Botchan Dance Company, Botchan will revive one of her most popular pieces, "Mothersongs," in Berkeley next month, in a new production entitled "Bridges." It will be paired with a presentation of traditional Persian dances from the Shahrzad Dance Company.

Botchan titled "Mothersongs" for a reason. The accompanying music consists of Yiddish folksongs, lullabies and show tunes Botchan's mother used to sing to her daughter years ago.

In the new production, Yiddish singer Betty Albert-Schreck performs those songs live while Botchan and her ensemble of six interpret them through modern dance.

Botchan divided "Mothersongs" into three sections: the Old Country, the New World and the Darkness (her term for the Holocaust). The piece includes songs like "Raisins and Almonds," "Eli, Eli" (by World War II heroine Hannah Senesh) and the Yiddish theater classic "My Greenhorn Cousin."

Each of the three sections features two or three separate dances. The "New World" portion describes the hard life of former shtetl dwellers making their way in the big cities of America. "Instead of finding the streets lined with gold, they found sweatshops," adds Botchan.

The Holocaust section includes songs written in the camps, including one by composer Hirsch Glick, who surreptitiously wrote his tunes on scraps of discarded paper. Another dance features a quartet of dancers holding yahrzeit candles. "It tells the story of a woman from the resistance who blew up a Nazi caravan," says Botchan. "She emerges from the woods proud of her contribution."

Pairing "Mothersongs" with dances choreographed by Shahrzad Khorsandi makes sense to Botchan. "Her work is very beautiful," she says. "Aesthetically there is a similarity in a deep way having to do with the kind of movement I do and she does. We treat the body in a similar way."

The mullahs of modern Iran have banned traditional Persian dance, an act that resonates for Botchan, who remembers how Jewish traditions were assaulted in Europe not so long ago.

"[Khorsandi] has a mission to preserve these dances," says Botchan. "I have a deep desire to connect with my past. Anything we can do in our small way to promote understanding, we want to do."

It's been 10 years since Botchan and her company last performed "Mothersongs," but the Jewish connections that inspired it go back further than that. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Botchan gained early exposure to the arts, thanks to her actor father and musician mother.

While a young dancer in New York, she performed with Rod Rodgers, Beverly Brown and Susan Cherniak before teaching at the Erick Hawkins School. She moved to the East Bay in 1980, launching her own company shortly thereafter. Today, her ensemble is the resident modern dance company at Berkeley Moving Arts.

One of Botchan's daughters inherited the same artistic inclinations, having become a working actress. In fact, she became fluent in the Mamaloshen after answering an ad from the famed Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre in New York City.

Meanwhile, back on the left coast Botchan continues her work with her company. Her newest project is a series she calls "Matters of Life and Death," a project that deals with those pesky intimations of mortality.

"Having reached an age when good friends have died, I felt a need to explore that and maybe come to terms with it," she says. "I find that I gravitate toward making dances about things that are of deep importance to me."




"Bridges," by the Ruth Botchan Dance Company and Shahrzad Dance Company, will be performed 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, June 2 and 3, and 2 p.m. Sunday, June 4, at Western Sky, 2525 Eighth St., Berkeley. Tickets: $15-$18. Information: (510) 848-4878 or online at www.berkeleymovingarts.com.