Graham Company Dances in Shadow of Martha's Image

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on Sept. 17, 2007.

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- On film, swathed head to ankles in a tube of stretch jersey, the only bare flesh a face like an ancient mask and work-toughened hands and feet, Martha Graham dances ``Lamentation,'' her landmark 1930 solo that is the ultimate incarnation of grief.

``Lamentation Variations'' was concocted for the opening performance (significantly, on Sept. 11) of the Martha Graham Dance Company's two-week New York season. It follows the Graham footage with brief, slight pieces by Aszure Barton, Larry Keigwin and Richard Move (the Graham impersonator who used to be persona non grata with the troupe). These afterthoughts, borrowing some of Graham's gestures and fragments of the work's mood, are both insignificant and unnecessary.

Now under the direction of Janet Eilber, once a glamorous Graham principal, the company has been heir to chronic waves of disaster and dissolution in its 80-year life. Again, it's attempting rebirth (one of the legendary choreographer's favorite words). It's got three strikes against it.

The company has not yet produced heroic performers equal to those who brought Graham's great middle-period works to life in the 1930s and '40s -- pieces such as the flawless ``Appalachian Spring,'' the ecstatic ``Diversion of Angels'' and the tempestuous ``Night Journey'' and ``Cave of the Heart,'' all of which are being performed this season. Graham stars -- Pearl Lang, Mary Hinkson, Helen McGehee, Ethel Winter, Yuriko (Kikuchi), Matt Turney and Bertram Ross, among the ones I saw -- could tear a passion to tatters both physically and emotionally.

Operatic Scale

Then there's the cultural dissonance. Apart from Graham devotees, current audiences find even the best works hopelessly outdated, often ridiculous. The dances' fierce, gut-sprung vocabulary (Graham's unique invention) and their grand-opera emotive style couldn't be more contrary to the cool, sleek temper of the times.

And now Eilber, who can give the company no future if it can't sell tickets, has taken to ``contextualizing'' (one of her own favorite words) the repertory, promoting works of genius that used to speak perfectly well for themselves. Eilber has a different dance-world celebrity hosting each program, telling the audience what it's going to see and testifying to its worth.

Of course, there were redeeming moments. Relieving an alarmingly tepid opening night, the dancers playing the Adam- Eve-Lilith-Serpentine Stranger quartet in ``Embattled Garden'' unfroze a few minutes into the dance and went for broke. They still weren't wonderful, but they suddenly took a chance on owning their roles instead of working by rote like dutiful schoolchildren.

Vehement Eve

Cast against type to play Eve, Jennifer DePalo, a strong- boned woman with vehemence and concentration to match, was the most vivid of them. She proved her mettle the next night as the chief soloist in ``Sketches From `Chronicle,''' one of the few Graham pieces that regularly elicit cheers from today's viewers, with its superb, severe architecture and an all-female cast as self-contained as nuns and as ferocious as furies.

On the same program, DePalo also played the Leader of the Chorus, a secondary role in ``Night Journey,'' with concentrated fervor, putting a barely passable Jocasta and Oedipus in the shade.

I also liked the work of the young Atsuko Tonohata, as effervescent as spring in ``Diversion of Angels,'' and the veteran Miki Orihara, who seems to understand what's going on in a dance with every cell in her delicate body.

The third evening, as Medea in ``Cave of the Heart,'' Orihara approached that transcendent state in which the carefully designed choreography seemed to emanate from her own anatomy and state of mind. Tadej Brdnik, as Jason, used his blunt force effectively, in contrast to the other leading men in the troupe, who count too much on the beauty of their gorgeously honed physiques.

Most everything else I saw was destined to disappoint the old Graham fans and discourage new viewers.

Through Sept. 23 at the Joyce Theater, Eighth Ave. at 19th St. Information: +1-212-242-0800; http://www.joyce.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.