Preserving Memories Through Dance

Alumni Profile: Rachel Linsky ’11

Rachel Linsky ’11 has carved a unique path: conveying the stories of the Holocaust through dance, combining her two passions.

“From my time at Schechter, Holocaust education was one of the most resonant things taught because it was taught through both history and stories,” she says. “And it’s the individual stories that really stay with you. When you have the breadth of material, and when you hear stories directly from Holocaust survivors, it resonates.”

Rachel started dancing in Schechter’s afterschool program, learning hip-hop as a fourth-grader in a class taught by Erica Sperberg of The Dance Academy of Siagel Productions. Her nascent dancing career picked up steam before eventually landing her at Elon University, where she earned a B.F.A. in dance performance and choreography and a B.A. in arts administration. It was at Elon that her passion for dance and Holocaust education melded even further.

“In college, as I began to choreograph, I found meaningful inspiration in the symbols, movements and songs I learned growing up,” she says. “I use dance as a means to tell stories. My family, Judaism and that strong sense of community are a significant part of who I am and the stories I tell.”

Elon, a town of about 11,000 located about 20 miles from the bigger city of Greensboro, North Carolina, has a very small Jewish population. Rachel took this setting as a way to help increase her peers’ awareness.

“For a lot of people, I was the first Jewish person that they met, which was a very striking difference from the Boston Jewish community,” she recalls. “At one point, I realized that my peers did not have the same experience with Holocaust education as I had, and they didn’t necessarily have that inherent respect for these stories and pieces of Holocaust literature.”

With her mission established, Rachel created a dance piece set to a poem by survivor Alexander Kimmel, with three of her peers participating as dancers.

“I was able to bring my non-Jewish friends into the Hillel Yom HaShoah programming. They were curious to see the dance piece I was working on, and to see their other friends in the dance program,” she says. “In that moment, I realized that this could be an interesting means to bring Holocaust education in a non-religious setting to a more diverse group of people.”

This crystallization set the direction for Rachel’s career. Her first post-graduation piece, entitled “Do I Want to Remember?,” was accepted into the Boston Contemporary Dance Festival. She was able to hire Bostonbased dancers with a grant from Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

Rachel’s Holocaust-inspired dances, under the umbrella of “ZACHOR” (remember), are a collection of works focusing on different survivors’ stories and words. Her next stop would have been a residency at Chelsea Theater Works in 2020. However, like many others, the pandemic forced a change of plans. While she still found a way to create, it unfolded much differently than originally imagined.

“The pause that the pandemic created for the arts world, and the shift to Zoom, enabled me to take a lot more time to talk with my dancers about why I believe that Holocaust education is so important and relevant today,” she says. “Amidst the pre-pandemic hustle and bustle of the arts world, there wasn’t always that time to pause and just talk. That discussion time ended up being really important.”

Rachel ultimately collaborated with Olivia Moon Photography/halfasianlens to create a dance film titled “Selection” that premiered in September 2020. It was recorded at the New England Holocaust Memorial.

“In that film, I could see very clearly how all that time on Zoom paid off. While we couldn’t move as expansively as we would have liked to, since we were limited by the space in our respective apartments, we did get to talk about the intention behind each movement and gesture I was creating,” Rachel says. “It was very clear that it led to stronger performance quality and stronger storytelling from the dancers. The dancers were more passionate about what they were doing. They were able to articulate and share that with their own communities.”

The blueprint had been set. For her next dance film, “Hidden,” the dancers who worked with Rachel read the story of Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor hidden for two years as a young boy in a Polish family’s attic. During and after reading the book, I Still See Her Haunting Eyes: The Holocaust and a Hidden Child Named Aaron, dancers responded to Rachel’s discussion prompts and selected memories that most resonated with them. This all happened before any dancing even began.

“I wanted to create a more collaborative creative process that could lead the way to an embodied Holocaust educational experience for the dancers involved in the work. In turn, I hoped that would create even clearer storytelling for the audience members,” Rachel says. “It was clear that the audience was able to not only recognize the story that was being told, but they understood the importance of studying histories like the Holocaust in this embodied and resonant way.”

“This new approach is especially important as we think about what happens when there are no longer any living survivors to tell their stories,” she adds. “How do we keep passing them down? And how do we keep hearing their stories and hearing the lessons they have for us while actively working toward their goal of preventing history from repeating itself?”

Rachel is currently developing “Hidden” into an evening-length work, which will be performed live in October 2022 at the Boston

Center for the Arts. She also will be leading her first-ever embodied Holocaust education workshop series with teenage dancers, who will be incorporated into the performance. She is eager to share her creative process with these students and to learn from their perspectives and why they believe it is important to keep these histories alive today.

“With ZACHOR, I hope to keep creating works to honor a variety of testimonies; there are so many stories that are each so important to hear,” she says. “And it’s critical to me that, as a community, we take time to reflect on how survivors’ lessons for us are relevant to our lives today, and the many injustices happening around our country.”

Without those early lessons from Schechter, Rachel’s passion for Holocaust education might not have become so fervent.

“For me to have grown up constantly hearing stories—having Holocaust survivors come in and speak to us at school—is a very special thing that should be cherished,” she says. “For the generation after me, the opportunity to hear those stories first-hand is dwindling.”

Rachel now sits in the teacher’s shoes and understands that the direction she’s chosen is not an easy one, but ultimately, is crucial.

“To create work and open up conversations on these topics involves a lot of responsibility, a lot of research and a lot of weight,” she reflects. “But this work is deeply meaningful, and I do believe that it can enact reflection and change.”

You can read more about Rachel and see examples of her work at rachellinsky.com/zachor.

Spring/Summer 2022 | Schechter Stories