The Passover haggadah contains a passage discussing the personalities of four sons – wise, wicked, simple and unable to ask. They are just one of a series of “fours” one finds in the seder, including four questions and four cups of wine.
Dancer-choreographer Sofi Askenazi, a native of Mexico City, has a personal set of four. She has three siblings; and all four of them have come to take approaches to Judaism that are even more contrasting than those of the haggadah’s four sons.
This fact became the inspiration for a dance work that Askenazi created for her master’s thesis at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Titled “The Fifth Cup of Wine and Other Additions to the Passover Seder,” it will be given its premier performance on Friday, June 30, and Saturday, July 1, both at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, July 2, 2:30 p.m., at the Danceworks Studio Theater, 1661 N. Water St.
In an interview at her Shorewood home, Askenazi, 34, explained that her younger brother, Isaac Tenenbaum, 33, is an Orthodox rabbi in Miami Beach. Her sister, Linda Renner, 36, is a former dancer turned “religious psychologist,” who lives in Mexico City and is “Orthodox, but not as Orthodox as my brother.”
Her older brother, Nehemye Tenenbaum, 38, is a filmmaker and is “halfway” in religious observance, sort of an observant Conservative Jew, and also lives in Mexico City. And Askenazi herself is “completely on the other side” of her rabbi brother.
That makes four children: a “believer” (the rabbi), an “intellectual” (the psychologist), the “introspective one” (the filmmaker), and one who is “fragmented” (herself), she said.
And in thinking about these qualities and her family’s own seders, Askenazi said she thought that there ought to be a fifth cup of wine that represents another quality – tolerance.
She said her family has established that quality when they get together. “We argue and fight, all the time” at the seders, but “we’ve managed to come to an understanding.”
To convey all this in dance, Askenazi said she starts with a group of five female dancers, including herself, seated in a circle formation, which represents a table. The dancers will leave that circle and return to it in various ways.
The work is a family project in more than inspiration. Her filmmaker brother has provided a piece of video art for the section about him. She consulted with her rabbi brother about the meaning and symbolism of the seder.
Her mother, Janet Tenenbaum, is a singer who will perform songs in Yiddish, Hebrew and Ladino for the piece. And her father, Max, is both a civil engineer and “a classical music connoisseur” who helped her choose other pieces of music by Jewish composers.
This project, which Askenazi said she has been planning for about a year, means more to her than just a step toward her degree.
“I think I like using my heritage as inspiration,” she said. Previously, “I was always running away from it,” under the belief that “it doesn’t go with art.” Now finding ways to use it “feels more truthful to me,” she said.
Admission is $15 general, $10 for students and seniors. For more information, call 414-277-8480.
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