When Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, stepped through Jacob’s Pillow’s front curtain to introduce the group’s performance, she mentioned that this was the 94th year of the MGDC, which made it the oldest dance company in the United States. Actually Graham’s history travels twistily backward even further, when she and the Pillow’s founder, Ted Shawn, danced … [Read more...]
Martha Graham: Sacred and Profane
The Martha Graham Dance Company at New York City Center, April 11 through 14 I assume that Isamu Noguchi heard at least some of Carlos Surinach’s sly, scorching music for Martha Graham’s Embattled Garden in rehearsal before he designed the scenery that would be so crucial to the 1958 dance. The garden is the one we’re told existed in Eden. No greenery for Noguchi (and not much innocence in … [Read more...]
Speaking of Gender. . .
Richard Move and MoveOpolis! performs at New York Live Arts. I have warm, twenty-year-old memories of a cold corner in New York’s meatpacking district (you entered the funky, all red nightclub called Mother on Washington Street and exited on 14th Street). On certain weekends, lines waited to get into the latest iteration of Martha@Mother, the variety show co-produced by Richard Move and … [Read more...]
Martha Graham Rediviva
Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce Theater, February 14 through 26. I’ve already written about the three new works that the Martha Graham Dance Company has acquired (http://www.artsjournal.com/dancebeat/2017/02/the-martha-graham-dance-companys-new-visions/). Of the remaining pieces programmed for the company’s season at the Joyce Theater, one is Nacho Duato’s 2013 Rust for five of the … [Read more...]
The Martha Graham Dance Company’s New Visions
The Martha Graham Dance Company commissions works by Annie-B Parson, Pontus Lidberg, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. There’s no point in wondering how Martha Graham would react to her seeing her company onstage today (Rant and rave? Smile approvingly? Wade in and make changes?). She disowned many of the 191 dances that she choreographed during her creative lifetime (1926-1991); others were … [Read more...]
Marching Forward, Sometimes on Tiptoe
The Martha Graham Dance Company performs at City Center Erick Hawkins once claimed that he never knew that Martha Graham, his partner, lover, and onetime wife was fifteen years older than he. She knew it, however (and habitually chopped several years off her age when documentation was needed). In 1946, a period when he and she were temporarily on the outs, she choreographed Cave of the … [Read more...]
The Many Faces of Spring
The Martha Graham Dance Company celebrates Appalachian Spring's 70th with a new work by Nacho Duato. Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring was first performed in October of 1944 in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress on a not very large stage intended for chamber music concerts. Its back and side walls with working doors would have made it awkward for the eight dancers to make … [Read more...]
Another Rite
The Martha Graham Dance Company dances The Rite of Spring and Nacho Duato's Rust at Jacob’s Pillow, August 21-25. I like to imagine that at least once a month this year, somewhere in the world, a dance company and/or an orchestra has been thundering away at Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece Le Sacre du Printemps, Obviously, I’m no statistician, but it does seem that, in 2013, the centenary of … [Read more...]