Becket — Great Barrington resident and pilates and dance teacher Sherry Londe is helping to bring a new dance piece touring out of New York City to the southern Berkshire community. “3rd Gen: A Survivor’s Story” is a two-person performance inspired by the memoir of Holocaust survivors. Between February 26 and 28, it will be presented for students in Southern Berkshire Regional School District and through a free performance at Jacob’s Pillow, followed by a community workshop at Berkshire Pulse inspired by the piece and run by the creators. A talk-back with the creator and performers will follow the Jacob’s Pillow performance.
Created and choreographed by Shany Dagan, “3rd Gen” tells the stories of her own Holocaust survivor grandparents. The two dancers playing her grandmother and grandfather are Morgana Mauney and Yochai Greenfeld, with accompanying music composed by Luke Wygodny. Londe’s connection to the production comes through her daughter Morgana, a professional modern dancer based in New York who performs with Dagan’s company.
“The mission of the piece,” says Londe, “is to educate people about antisemitism and, by extension, intolerance, hateful rhetoric, distrust, and fear. I would like to feel that we’re educating people to become good listeners.” She hopes the performance might lead the audience to see things differently, to find a new way of seeing.
Such a message, continues Londe, is more important now than ever, “because intolerance has been normalized, to hate people who are other.” One effective way to break through such “othering” is by sharing the stories of those others, with dance, in the case of “3rd Gen,” serving as a point of entry through which to find commonality.
The day after the Jacob’s Pillow performance. the dancers will do an assembly at Mount Everett High School for grades eight through 12, a partnership made possible through the collaboration of science teacher Lindsey Brown. On Saturday, February 28, the troupe will offer a community workshop on storytelling through dance, in which, states the blurb for the class, “Students will reflect on their own family stories—choosing a word or phrase to explore through movement—and learn two original phrases from the 3rd Gen Project show repertoire.” The workshop is $20 and will be held at Berkshire Pulse in Housatonic. Students can register here.
The Jewish Federation and Women’s Foundation of the Berkshires are helping to underwrite the costs of the project to ensure it can be offered without cost to the public. But while the Jacob’s Pillow performance is free, you must use a QR code (seen here) to register.
3rd Gen: February 26, 2 p.m., at the Perles Family Studio at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket.
3rd Gen Community Workshop: February 28, 12:15 to 1:45 p.m., Berkshire Pulse in Housatonic, $20, ages 13 and older.
