{"id":1417,"date":"2013-03-05T15:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T20:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1417"},"modified":"2013-03-17T13:08:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T17:08:56","slug":"looking-back-journeying-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/03\/looking-back-journeying-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back, Journeying Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Miki<\/a>

Miki Ohara costumed for Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze<\/em>. Photo: John Deane<\/p><\/div>\n

The Martha Graham Company, aged 87, is a determined survivor. It has soldiered on past the death of its sole choreographer in 1991, the sale of its 63rd<\/sup> Street building, and a lawsuit over its rights to Graham\u2019s dances. Then, not long after the company took over the Merce Cunningham Dance Company\u2019s studios in Westbeth, hurricane Sandy caused flooding in the basement storage space and damaged sets, costumes, and archival materials.<\/p>\n

Graham might not have approved of all the company\u2019s survival strategies\u2014certainly not of cuts to her masterwork Deaths and Entrances <\/i>for its 2011 revival, or perhaps the \u201cstreamlining\u201d of her 1962 Phaedra<\/i> for the company\u2019s just-ended season at the Joyce (although she would probably have approved a return to the original costumes). The grouping of her works in any given season under an overall theme, such as \u201cMyth and Transformation\u201d for the Joyce?\u00a0 She might have seen that as a shrewd marketing strategy. Times change. Graham didn\u2019t usually provide lengthy program notes, but artistic director Janet Eilber\u2019s very charming, laid-back spoken introductions are popular with audiences the company encounters on tour.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to predict what Graham\u2019s reaction would have been to the new works by others that Eilber and executive director LaRue Allen have commissioned (with an eye to what these additions to the repertory might have in common with Graham\u2019s oeuvre). Would she have been jealous of museum-style showcases in which her works are displayed alongside lesser ones by her contemporaries? Would she have been flattered or appalled at the thought of the company building a collection of other choreographers\u2019 variations on her 1930 solo Lamentation<\/i>?<\/p>\n

In the end, the important thing is that Graham\u2019s work stays in the public eye, and that her masterworks be staged and performed as scrupulously and meaningfully as possible. The greatest pleasure of the Joyce season for many of us was seeing three of her greatest works\u2014Cave of the Heart<\/i> (1946), Errand into the Maze <\/i>(1947), and Night Journey <\/i>(1947)\u2014presented together on one program, and Cave<\/i> returning on another that ended with the 1948 Diversion of Angels<\/i>\u2014 this last effectively purging away all the mythic hatred, dark urges, and desperate searching, and, in a golden high noon, hymning the transformative power of love. <\/p>\n

\"Blakely<\/a>

Blakely White-McGuire and Isamu Noguchi’s prop in Graham’s Cave of the Heart<\/em>. Photo: Costas<\/p><\/div>\n

Looking at these dances, you wonder how Graham came up with some of her visionary, often heart-stopping devices, and movements more gut-wrenching than anything previously seen in a dance. Cave of the Heart <\/i>explores the corrosive power of jealousy through the story of Medea and her perfidious mate, Jason. You see the root of it in the opening image. The sorceress Medea stands in front of the shimmering, golden \u201ctree\u201d and\/or garment designed by Isamu Noguchi (it also evokes both fire and the golden fleece of the legend); close behind her, kneeling or crouching, are Jason and the young princess with whom he is making an auspicious marriage; the girl, doomed by Medea\u2019s jealousy, is sandwiched between them. Four arms reach out and around Medea as she quivers \u2014echoing the sculpture\u2019s branches and bringing to mind many-armed goddesses. That image then shifts into another resonant one: Jason walks along carrying the princess pressed up against him and breasting the wind like a ship\u2019s figurehead; Medea, backing away, pulls them toward the shoals of their destiny.<\/p>\n

The brilliant duet for Jocasta and Oedipus in Night Journey<\/i> interweaves images of him as conqueror of the city and her as his plunder, of her as mother and him as son, of them as lovers. And who but Graham would think to turn the myth of Theseus entering a labyrinth to slay the Minotaur into a woman\u2019s arduous journey into her own heart and psyche to battle an anonymous \u201cCreature of Fear?\u201d<\/p>\n

I saw two casts of Cave. <\/i>In both, Tadej Brdnik played Jason \u2014a character as initially arrogant as Oedipus in Night Journey<\/i> (and, like Oedipus, a role created on Graham\u2019s much younger lover, Erick Hawkins). Stiff-legged and erect, he plants his feet on Isamu Noguchi\u2019s little stepping stones, until Medea\u2019s murder of his bride melts his bravado. Brdnik makes his descent into horror and despair fully believable. Xiaochuan Xie, the Princess on opening night, is charming in her innocent, flirty solo (although, as is sometimes the case, a mannerism with her mouth turns a smile into a sneer). In the same role, Iris Florentini\u2014tilting her chin up, gazing down at the world\u2014 looks as if she interpreted the word \u201cprincess\u201d to mean proud and self-assured and nothing more.<\/p>\n

\"Katherine<\/a>

Katherine Crockett as the Chorus in Cave of the Heart<\/em>. Photo: John Deane<\/p><\/div>\n

Natasha Diamond-Walker presents an arresting figure as the Chorus. She wears one of Graham\u2019s most original costumes, with its wide-sleeved over-blouse in red and brown horizontal stripes. The almost tangling flurry of that and the full skirt help her to look like a tornado swirling around in her impotence to stop the tragedy. Katherine Crockett, one of the company\u2019s three most impressive women dancers, of course, probes deeper into the role, more alarmed by what has been set in motion.<\/p>\n

Blakely White-McGuire, who is part of that triad of splendid women, attacks the role of Medea with a fiery grimness. You wouldn\u2019t want to meet her in a dark street. Indecision or lingering passion for Jason only make her fiercer, although I don\u2019t mean to imply her powerful performance is without nuances. One thing that I found distracting, however, is that she often seems to be looking at the audience, rather than through or beyond us\u2014 creating the illusion that she is telling us her story even as she re-enacts it.<\/p>\n

Miki Orihara, who during the company\u2019s March, 2012, New York season celebrated her 25th<\/sup> year as a Martha Graham dancer, is the season\u2019s other Medea. I was shaking by the end of Cave\u2014<\/i>not just because Graham\u2019s choreography knocks you out, but because of Orihara\u2019s performance. Her focus is almost inward; you feel what\u2019s seething up inside her and making her body contract and quiver almost before she moves. The climatic, terrifying solo to Samuel Barber\u2019s ferocious, juddering music comes after Medea has murdered the princess with a poisoned crown and undone Jason. In it, the dancer both devours and vomits the strip of red fabric that she draws from the bosom of her gown (Graham\u2019s original choice of a title for the dance was Serpent Heart<\/i>). When, after that animalistic fit, Orihara slowly circles her wrist to unwind the ribbon, coils it neatly onto her other palm, and tucks it back into her breast, you feel a web of emotions\u2014relief, maybe, sorrow, resolution, acceptance of the inevitable. Unlike Euripedes, Graham ends her play equivocally; Medea is left swinging, enmeshed in the golden branches, the costume of her fury.<\/p>\n

\"Ben<\/a>

Ben Schultz menaces Miki Orihara in the post-Sandy Errand<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Orihara plays the leading role in Errand into the Maze<\/i>. Only this time, the duet is called simply Errand<\/i>, and it has been stripped of more than its title. The Noguchi set, with its crotch-like portal into the emotional maze, could not, apparently, be repaired in time, so choreographer Luca Veggetti, assisted by Orihara, directed an adjusted, stripped-down version. Thanks to Orihara\u2019s profoundly sensitive performance and imaginative lighting by Beverly Emmons, the essence of the work comes across. The costumes are simple and neutral in color. The brick wall at the back of the stage is unadorned. The path into the maze is a beam of light, and a square patch on the floor indicates the entrance. The \u201cCreature of Fear\u201d doesn\u2019t wear the Minotaur\u2019s horned mask; instead his entire head is covered by a tightly fitting, flesh-colored net hood that blots out his features. Nor does he ever leave the stage, but lurks in the corners, waiting to be summoned up by the fearful thoughts inside the quaking heroine\u2019s head. <\/p>\n

As her imagined adversary, the formidable Ben Schultz doesn\u2019t have the Noguchi mask to de-humanize him, so he has to work hard to avoid tilting his head or doing anything that could suggest a motive on his part. Without the set piece to barricade herself into and release herself from in the end, Orihara must show us that, in conquering her fear, she has freed herself to go on with her life. That she is able, with amazing simplicity, to manage this is a testament to her tremendous gifts. I nevertheless hope that the set, with all that it implied, will eventually be restored to the piece.<\/p>\n

\"Katherine<\/a>

Katherine Crockett and Ben Schultz in Graham’s Night Journey<\/em>. Photo: Costas<\/p><\/div>\n

Katherine Crockett has matured wonderfully as a performer since joining the Graham company twenty years ago, and her performance as the unhappy Jocasta in Night Journey<\/i> is a moving one. Her Oedipus is Schultz\u2014appropriately muscular and demanding, although perhaps a touch too coarse with her. Some of the finest choreography in this masterly dance is for the six members of the chorus (led by Mariya Dashkina Maddux). Known as \u201cDaughters of the Night,\u201d they flock onto the stage like ravens\u2014their bodies fiercely pumping, their gazes aghast, their black skirts swirling as they turn.<\/p>\n

\"Humbled<\/a>

Humbled Jason (Tadej Brdnik) with proud Phaedra (Blakely White-McGuire in the title role). Photo: Costas<\/p><\/div>\n

Compared with the above three masterpieces, the 1962 Phaedra <\/i>falls short. It\u2019s engrossing, though, as well as a bit lurid. The two U.S. senators who saw it abroad in 1963 hastened to complain to Congress about sending out such a shocking work on a tour sponsored by the State Department.\u00a0 They could have been objecting to Phaedra\u2019s opening and closing moments. Lying on her \u201cbed,\u201d dreaming of her hot stepson Hippolytus, she shoots a leg into the air like a fantasized erection. Committing suicide, she stabs herself in the vagina. Hippolytus first appears behind a wall of tiny doors that can swing open to reveal a manly thigh or bulging crotch. Perhaps the senators were bothered by the lustful duet\u2014an enactment of Phaedra\u2019s lie to her husband Theseus about how Hippolytus raped her. She\u2019s angry that, dedicated to the virgin goddess Artemis, the boy spurned her advances (she, however, was urged on by Aphrodite, who opens her legs explicitly to indicate where she stands.)\u00a0 White-McGuire and Maurizio Nardi give their duet the avid eroticism that Phaedra is denouncing to her husband, while Brdnik, as Theseus, humanizes yet another arrogant hunk.<\/p>\n

Excerpts from a 1941 film of Graham performing Lamentation<\/i>, encased in the stretch jersey tube against which she strains, precede three variations of the solo (unfortunately the film\u2014like Peter Sparling\u2019s montage of various Diversion of Angels<\/i> casts\u2014has been stretched to fit the back of the stage, so that the dancer appears wide and squat). An eloquent new Lamentation<\/i> variation by Doug Varone joins ones by Bulareyaung Pagarlava (2009) and Yvonne Rainer (2012). In Pagarlava\u2019s variation, to music by Gustav Mahler, Dashkina Maddux dances with, and in counterpoint to, three men, who intermittently copy Graham\u2019s wide-legged seated position on her bench, but without the bench. Rainer has Eilber herself onstage, periodically consulting a watch, while Crockett enters trailing a skimpy piece of fabric, climbs onto a box, squats down, and shoves her limbs inside her tee shirt until she resembles a watchful, broody hen guarding her eggs. From time to time, Eilber marches across the stage and feeds papers into a very noisy shredder. (Is this about destroying your heritage? About rebirth?)<\/p>\n

\"Doug<\/a>

Doug Varone’s Lamentation<\/em> variation. L to R: Tadej Brdnik, Lloyd Knight, Abdel Jacobsen, Maurizio Nardi. Photo: Paula Kajar<\/p><\/div>\n

Varone has set four men (Brdnik, Abdiel Jacobsen, Lloyd Knight, and Maurizio Nardi) upon a bench longer than Graham\u2019s and, to a section of Maurice Ravel\u2019s Gaspard de la Nuit<\/i>, builds tender images of grief and consolation. The performers lean toward, pull away from, and nestle against one another in shifting patterns that, despite their fluidity, are weighted by sorrow.<\/p>\n

\"Xiaochuan<\/a>

Xiaochuan Xie (L), Mariya Dashkina Maddux (foreground), and Ying Xin in Luca Veggetti’s From The Grammar of Dreams<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Two dances by other choreographers grace the season. Veggetti created From The Grammar of Dreams<\/i>, set to a recorded score of the same name by Kaija Saariaho. (Veggetti, the composer, and lighting designer Beverly Emmons all donated their work in the costly aftermath of Sandy.) The score is a rich one; a soprano and an alto weave or intersperse their voices through silences, their fragmented words drawn from Sylvia Plath\u2019s poem \u201cParalytic\u201d and her novel, The Bell Jar<\/i>. Emmons creates pockets of light that appear, linger briefly to illuminate moments in the dance, and then go out.\u00a0 Five women (White-McGuire, Dashkina Maddux, Xie, Peiju Chien-Pott, and Ying Xin) often make sudden moves\u2014sometimes in unison, sometimes all different from one another\u2014then freeze. The sudden blackouts are like interruptions in their lives; when the lights come on again, they\u2019re somewhere else\u2014now two dancing in their own ways, some standing still, one sitting watching. They wear simple costumes and white socks, which means they often travel smoothly, almost skidding, but always in control. The atmosphere is one of absolute visual clarity embedded in mystery.<\/p>\n

\"Lloyd<\/a>

Lloyd Mayor as the hero of Richard Move’s The Show (Achilles Heels)<\/em>. Photo: Hibbard Nash<\/p><\/div>\n

The other work new to the company is Richard Move\u2019s The Show (Achilles Heels). <\/i>The piece was commissioned in 2002 for Mikhail Baryshnikov\u2019s White Oak Dance Project and starred Baryshnikov. Remounting the piece for the Graham company seems both appropriate and audacious. Move, of course, is the great Graham impersonator and scholar, whose scrupulously designed, high-caliber variety shows (beginning in 1995 as Martha@Mother) both satirized and honored Graham. Numerous New York theatergoers might never have become interested in her without him.<\/p>\n

The Show<\/i> is also appropriate in that it fits nicely into the \u201cMyth and Transformation\u201d theme. The hero, Achilles, inhabits Graham\u2019s favorite mythic territory, as does his moral dilemma. In The Iliad<\/i>, when the Greek army badly needed his skills, he stayed in his tent, nursing his rage over an insult his commander, Agamemnon, had meted out. His lover, Patroclus, donned Achilles\u2019s armor, went in his stead, and was slain. The hero\u2019s grief and shame finally roused him to fight.<\/p>\n

\"Quiz-show<\/a>

Quiz-show hostess Athena (Blakely White-McGuire) and contestant Achilles (Lloyd Mayor). Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

What\u2019s audacious about The Show (Achilles Heels) <\/i>in terms of the Graham repertory is Move\u2019s delight in gender-bending, fashion, and camp. Achilles\u2019s vulnerable heel becomes plural\u2014a pair of golden stilettos that he chooses over the blood-red pair Patroclus offers him. Stalking proudly in these, he evokes both runway models and the tragic actors of ancient Greece, who made themselves taller than life with platform shoes. <\/p>\n

To inform us about the plot, Move\u2019s hero (Lloyd Mayor) answers questions to do with the Trojan War (correctly, of course), posed by an exuberant quiz-show hostess (Mayor and White-McGuire, channeling Athena, lip-synch Baryshnikov and Deborah Harry of Blondie, who appeared live in a 2006 revival of Move’s piece at the Kitchen). This Achilles knows the work of Constantine Cavafy, and his uncollected winnings are in euros. The score by Arto Lindsay is augmented by Harry\u2019s voice singing Blondie gems, such as \u201cBeautiful Creature,\u201d \u201cWar Child,\u201d and \u201cNo Exit,\u201d that create their own strange alliances with the plot.<\/p>\n

\"Like<\/a>

Like most Graham’s heroes, this one (Lloyd Mayor as Richard Move’s Achilles) marches forth. And dies. Photo: Paula Court<\/p><\/div>\n

Amid the muscular goings-on of a trio of men and a softer trio of women, Helen of Troy (Crockett) parades her beauty and her quandary in homage-to-Graham steps. Diamond-Walker, bare-breasted, appears briefly as Achilles\u2019s loving horse, Xanthus. The Show<\/i> does have some dead-air moments and judicious editing wouldn\u2019t be amiss, but there are many pungently theatrical moments, as well as poignant ones. After Patroclus (Jacobsen) has toweled off Achilles, he rubs his own face against the towel, and the two, cheek-to-cheek, hold up a golden mirror to share a reflection the way modern lovers pose for a cell-phone memory. A white paper bird flaps its wings on the dead Patroclus\u2019s chest (the performer invisibly manipulates it), as if his spirit were calling out to the grieving Achilles, who dance around the corpse, then lies on top of Patroclus and transfers the bird to his own breast to join them both. The show however, must go on, and heroes never really die. Mayor, a handsome, boyish newcomer to the company, moves into a center spotlight, and glittering confetti rains down on him.<\/p>\n

Glitter brings me to a quibble. I can tolerate (barely) the sequins that, at some point were added to Medea\u2019s costume in Cave of the Heart<\/i> (Graham in her later years had exceedingly poor eyesight). The gleaming particles in the \u201csnake\u201d are less bearable. And the glitter that Diamond-Walker appeared to have stuck to her eyelashes for Diversion of Angels<\/i>? \u00a0<\/i>Definitely out of place.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve seen a lot of Graham works many times, you develop a jealous eye. I\u2019m open to performer\u2019s varying interpretations, although bothered by, say, a leg extension so high that it detracts from the important message sent out by the dancer\u2019s contracting torso, and by additions to, or subtractions from, crucial passages in the choreography. In the gorgeous Diversion of Angels <\/i>(Graham\u2019s paean to her dancers), there\u2019s a strange, enigmatic moment when the woman of the Couple in White (seen as the most serene of the three leading pairs) steps\u2014almost unseeingly\u2014onto the thighs of her partner who is lying face down; he bends his knees, and, for a few seconds, she sits enthroned on the upraised soles of his feet. Diamond-Walker simply placed her feet beside Jacobsen and then bent her knees to appear to sit on air. In a charitable mood, I might wonder if Jacobsen had a injured leg to which Diamond-Walker was accommodating, or whether she was covering a misstep, but if what she did (or didn\u2019t do) represents an option, I\u2019m distressed.<\/p>\n

At the very end of Diversion<\/i>, the passionate woman of the Couple in Red streaks across the stage on a diagonal, giving a physical presence to the exultant cries in Norman Dello Joio\u2019s score before her trajectory takes her into the wings. Her passage is just a fleet, wide-striding run, her arms and upper body swinging from side to side. It\u2019s like seeing a cardinal flash past your bird feeder. At the Joyce, White-McGuire broke the pattern by inserting a couple of moderately-scaled leaps. Was this a delaying tactic because the stage is relatively small?\u00a0 Whatever the reason, the change isn\u2019t a minor matter akin to that of a ballet star doing an extra pirouette in Le Corsaire<\/i>; that run, as Graham conceived it, makes a powerful emotional and musical climax seconds before the lights go out.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll now cycle back to sentence that I wrote at the beginning of this long review: \u201cIn the end, the important thing is that Graham\u2019s choreography stays in the public eye, and that her masterworks be staged and performed as scrupulously and meaningfully as possible.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m grateful that during the company\u2019s 2013 New York season, the directors, guest choreographers, collaborators, and dancers, by and large, succeeded in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Martha Graham Company, aged 87, is a determined survivor. It has soldiered on past the death of its sole choreographer in 1991, the sale of its 63rd Street building, and a lawsuit over its rights to Graham\u2019s dances. Then, not long after the company took over the Merce Cunningham Dance Company\u2019s studios in Westbeth, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[660,652,658,653,656,283,659,654,185,282,651,657,284,655],"class_list":{"0":"post-1417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-classic-modern-dance","8":"tag-ben-schultz","9":"tag-blakely-white-mcguire","10":"tag-cave-of-the-heart","11":"tag-doug-varone","12":"tag-errand-into-the-maze-night-journey","13":"tag-janet-eilber","14":"tag-katherine-crockett","15":"tag-lloyd-major","16":"tag-luca-veggetti","17":"tag-martha-graham","18":"tag-miki-orihara","19":"tag-phaedra","20":"tag-richard-move","21":"tag-tadej-brdnik","22":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}