Fuel
Peter Randazzo: “I think that she was like an extremely finely tuned racehorse – if she sneezed wrong in the morning she could completely throw out her back.
And something I always remember – you know the way female dancers are always not eating, to stay thin, and how people often don’t eat before performing, stuff like that? Well, Amelia was unusual. She would eat! And I mean not just before or after but during performances! It was bizarre. She’d eat, like, veal parmesan or something- then run out on stage! I’m not kidding.”
Ann Tutt: “In the Itcush family home in Regina, the home-cooking environment made you feel you’d walked in off the prairies, nowhere near a city. Even if the larder had potatoes and little else, the aprons were always cleaned and pressed, the kitchen immaculate. One of my memories of Amelia is of the way she liked to cook fried sausage, fried onions, fried potatoes and green peppers. Eastern European immigrant farm family peasant fare. Walk in, dinner at the table, then tea and pie.”
Ronnie Yee: “Amelia called me up one day and she goes “Ronnie, can you help me pick up some stuff?” Sure, of course I would. So we went to a meat store and she bought 30 pounds of beef. She said “Yeah, it takes me a month to eat this much beef.” And I wondered How can you eat this much beef?! A couple of times I helped her buy these things, and for such a small woman she eats so much!”
Chihiro Beppu: “When Amelia was coming to Japan, I remember that she was not fond of carbohydates – and there are so many carbs (rice and noodles) in Japanese cuisine that she had a hard time keeping her health in Japan. I remember talking about that when I was in Canada, because there there’s so much meat, protein, protein, protein!”
Jennifer Mascall: “When she was a visiting teacher she stayed at our house in a period when we weren’t eating meat but kept raw meat in the fridge to feed our dog. As I'd cook, I kept noticing her going to the fridge and looking at the meat. She’d ask "what’s that?" and I’d explain it was the meat for the dog. Every so often she’d make a comment about the dog, and finally it dawned on me that she was craving meat so I went out and bought a steak. The next year, we showed her Vera’s, an organic hamburger eatery near the studio where she was teaching. Every day she’d head over enthusiastically and come back with an organic hamburger. I found it very endearing.”
Ashley Johnson: “In my first year of training I lived in her studio (a renovated church in Davidson, SK). Amelia came over one day and told me she was going to teach me to quarter a chicken. Just randomly, out of the blue, as if learning how to cook meat was an important part of becoming a Mitzvah Teacher. Then for months, on Sundays we would quarter chickens and make stock. Amelia would tell wild stories about her dancing days and talk about how concepts of the work related to life. It was during those Sundays that I learned about bones, joints, fascial tissue. Really, I think I learned the most about this work on those Sundays.
Later, when I got a car, Amelia was ecstatic - we could go buy ground beef in Regina. Off we'd go to Fellinger's Meats and haul the 25 pounds of ground beef she bought back to the church. To prove how fresh it was, she ate a handful in front of me, raw! Then Amelia decided we'd take the car in search of a nearby Hutterite colony to buy chickens. We drove for hours. Finally, she suggested we stop and ask directions; (obviously!) I should make the inquiries. I made it through three barking dogs to find a family having dinner and was invited to join them. After about an hour of maps and phone calls, back at the car with completely illegible directions, I found Amelia peacefully napping, entirely unconcerned that I might have been kidnapped.