{"id":1910,"date":"2013-08-31T11:37:14","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T15:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2013-09-03T13:50:30","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T17:50:30","slug":"another-rite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2013\/08\/another-rite\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Rite"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Martha Graham Dance Company dances <\/i>The Rite of Spring and Nacho Duato’s<\/i> Rust at Jacob\u2019s Pillow, August 21-25.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Five<\/a>

Five men of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Nacho Duato’s Rust<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u2019s masterpiece Le Sacre du Printemps<\/i>, Obviously, I\u2019m no statistician, but it does seem that, in 2013, the centenary of the scandal-cloaked Ballets Russes premiere of the music and Vaslav Nijinsky\u2019s choreography, <\/i>\u00a0numerous revivals and new dances set to the score have been performed, and many panels assembled.\u00a0 Or maybe I\u2019m just thinking of all the versions that have been created over the years\u2014by such choreographers as Pina Bausch, Maurice B\u00e9jart, Angelin Preljocaj, Molissa Fenley, Glen Tetley, Hans Van Manen, Yvonne Rainer, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, and by many others.<\/p>\n

Among these is Martha Graham\u2019s The Rite of Spring<\/i>, which premiered in February, 1984. It was perhaps inevitable that the Martha Graham Dance Company’s artistic director, Janet Eilber, would revive it during this year\u2019s Spring<\/i> fever. Why Graham was persuaded to undertake the work isn\u2019t clear, although she did have a noteworthy personal connection to the music. In 1930, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra presented in New York a program that paired Arnold Schoenberg\u2019s Die Gl\u00fcchliche Hand<\/i>, a \u201cdrama with music,\u201d and Leonide Massine\u2019s Sacre du Printemps<\/i>, choreographed for Les Ballets Russes in 1920 (the company\u2019s director, Serge Diaghilev, presumably having realized that, over the seven years that had passed since the work\u2019s premiere, audiences had become somewhat acclimated to dissonance and turned-in feet, and knowing that Nijinsky was sinking deeper into madness).\u00a0 Stokowski recruited Graham to dance the role of the \u201cChosen Maiden.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience was an unusually collegial one for New York\u2019s leading modern dancers. Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman mimed the leading roles in Die Gl\u00fcchliche Hand<\/i>, and the chorus of youths and maidens in Rite <\/i>was composed of dancers from Graham\u2019s company and the Humprey-Weidman group. Graham and Massine had their differences, but she was, by all accounts spectacular.<\/p>\n

\"Men<\/a>

Men and women of the Martha Graham Dance Company in her Rite of Spring<\/em>. Photo: Sinru Ku, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow<\/p><\/div>\n

She was 90 when her Rite <\/i>premiered. Into it went her memories\u2014not of that earlier version, but of her own dances over the decades. Woven into its powerful fabric and the Stravinsky music are steps you might recognize\u2014the Husbandman from Graham\u2019s Appalachian Spring<\/i>‘s stampings to pump himself into the air, the male acrobats\u2019 cartwheels in Diversion of Angels<\/i>, the women\u2019s hunched over leaps in Primitive Mysteries<\/i>, and all the caving-in falls, sailing turns, and impassioned gestures embedded in the vocabulary that Graham invented. One particular step is wonderfully effective. Striding repeatedly out on one leg, the dancers lift the other (bent) and grasp its foot, straining slightly forward to do this. When they take this move into the air in huge hops, they look both hobbled and predatory.<\/p>\n

The revival, as presented in the Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob\u2019s Pillow, does not make use of the original set (designed by Ron Protas); the ritual plays out on a stage backed only by a long, low set of steps (by Edward T. Morris) and a curious and enigmatic projection (by Paul Lieber) that resembles a huge arch of dark, ragged branches. The Shaman (Ben Schultz) no longer wields a staff. Pilar Limosnar has recreated (and somewhat re-envisioned) the original costumes (by Graham and Halston), with long, pale sarongs for the women, worn over flesh-colored leotards that give the impression of bare-breasted celebrants. Fortunately, the men wear trunks more substantial than the buttocks-baring originals.<\/p>\n

\"Martha<\/a>

Martha Graham’s The Rite of Spring<\/em>. Abdiel Jacobsen (L) and Lloyd Mayor lift Xiaochuan Xie as the Chosen One. The Shaman (Ben Schultz) watches. Photo: Charles Eilber, courtesy of the Martha Graham Dance Company.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first part of the dance is tremendously powerful. In keeping with the strident fervor of some of Stravinsky\u2019s musical passages, the men leap and pound the earth with their feet and hurl themselves to the ground\u2014all this regulated by spatial formations like phalanxes and circles that promote images of ritual. The women\u2014stepping out in a line, weaving among the men, or pairing off with them\u2014are equally assertive. No matter how quiet the music becomes, people in this society have been bred for angularity and thrust.<\/p>\n

The moment of choosing of the virgin to be sacrificed demonstrates Graham\u2019s theatricality at its most imaginative. Each of three men swings a woman onto his back and walks along bent over; the women\u2014belly-down, their legs swimming slowly in air\u2014rear their heads up to scan the space and wonder where they\u2019re going. The men are on their way offstage with their burdens when the Shaman\u2014who has been urging the proceedings along and prophesying the redemptive terror to come\u2014simply walks over and plucks the last of the women off her bearer. It seems that she had no inkling of all that she might be in for. (Graham once said, as I remember, that she didn\u2019t choose to be a dancer; she was chosen.)<\/p>\n

Another highly theatrical moment. The Shaman wraps the terrified Chosen One in coils of thick rope by running around and around her. Then he picks her up and places her on the steps. Yet his assistants (Tadej Brdnik and Mauricio Nardi) unwind her (maybe tying her up was just to show her that she couldn\u2019t back out). Then, on the music that, in 1913, ushered in the lumbering men in bearskins, the women bring a white skirt and crowd around her, quite tenderly dressing her and loosening her hair. The Shaman carries her around the space, she standing on his shoulders. Queen for a day.<\/p>\n

\"Ben<\/a>

Ben Schultz as the Shaman binds Xiaochuan Xie as the Chosen One. Photo: Charles Eilber, courtesy of the Martha Graham Dance Company<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the point at which Graham diverges from the Stravinsky-Nijinsky scenario. The young woman (I saw Blakeley White-McGuire, who alternated in the role with Xiaochuan Xie) doesn\u2019t dance herself to death by jumping a hundred or more times (with pauses for trembling).\u00a0 Graham\u2019s jumps in 1930, according to Bessie Sch\u00f6nberg, who saw the Massine Sacre <\/i>in rehearsal and onstage, were like \u201clittle screams.\u201d\u00a0 Instead, Graham\u2019s victim is brutalized both before and after she is garbed, and she\u2014hurling herself around, getting ever more exhausted\u2014dances grief and rage at the role fate has dealt her, with only a few interludes of brave resignation. Interestingly, Graham\u2019s Chosen Maiden is immobile on the music that Stravinsky wrote for her outbursts of dancing. In this society, the men appropriate those passages for their<\/i> jumps.<\/p>\n

The crowd doesn\u2019t stay around to watch, until the very end. They come and go\u2014always in their ranks and lines, always fiercely energetic. At time, even Brdnik and Nardi disappear, and the Shaman waits on the stairs with his back to the sacrificial victim (I believe that in 1984, he never took his eyes off her). No one is watching her but us. A curious, and rather intriguing choice on Graham\u2019s part, as if, two years before her death, she was symbolically divesting herself of her company, her lovers (much takes place between the Shaman and the Chosen One), and, eventually, her career. Blakely-White\u2019s eloquently performed suffering does seem to go on and on.<\/p>\n

In the end, the only \u201cSpring\u201d in sight are the pieces of green fabric that Brdnik and Nardi bring in, draped over their shoulders. And, although earlier, the Chosen One has been lifted high, as if being carried on a bier, in death she is hoisted up splayed and hanging at an angle. No reverence for those who kill themselves dancing. Is that what Graham found herself saying? In the end, her Rite<\/i> is more about the Chosen One than about the society for which she gives her life.<\/p>\n

\"Ben<\/a>

Ben Schultz (L) and Abdiel Jacobsen punish Lloyd Knight in Nacho Duato’s Rust<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow<\/p><\/div>\n

The company also offered a new work. Rust<\/i>, created this year for the Graham company by Nacho Duato, seems to be a condensation and re-consideration of elements in Herrumbre<\/i> (Rust), which he created in 2004 for Spain\u2019s Compa\u00f1ia Nacional de Danza. Like Herrumbre<\/i>, the 2013 Rust<\/i> deals with the evils of torture and humiliation.<\/p>\n

To music by Arvo P\u00e4rt and Pedro Alcalde, five terrific men (Brdnik, Nardi, Schultz, Abdiel Jacobsen, and Lloyd Knight) grapple with images that evoke Guantanamo and the war in Iraq. Brad Fields\u2019 superb lighting creates an interplay of darkness and harsh glare and smoke. Brdnik is back-lit when he strides forward to begin the piece, marking him as temporarily sinister and in charge. It is he to whom Knight crawls on his belly after a bout of punishment.<\/p>\n

Schultz and Jacobsen brutalize Knight. They twist him and yank his limbs. On every percussive sound, they strike him or bang his head on the floor. But as the viciousness shifts and escalates, and others tangle in other ways, it\u2019s tragically easy for solicitousness to seem punitive, and for violence to appear to initiate camaraderie. When the five cluster, they resemble the sculptured figures in battle monuments.<\/p>\n

\"Graham<\/a>

Graham dancers (L to R), Abdiel Jacobsen, Maurizio Nardi, Lloyd Knight, and Ben Schultz hold Tadej Brdnik in Rust<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow<\/p><\/div>\n

Sometimes they lie like fallen soldiers or victims of a bombing. At other times they hurtle around, shot in mid-air or diving for cover. Brdnik vaults and crashes to the floor from a formidable height. When they kneel in sepulchral light, their hands behind their backs, you see that they\u2019ve pulled their tee-shirts back over their heads to hood their faces. An accusatory light beam moves over them and over us, the spectators. Brdnik uncovers his head and walks to his original place; a light makes his shadow on the back wall immense. Everyone else falls, one by one.<\/p>\n

Rite of Spring <\/i>ended a program that included the 2007 Lamentation Variations<\/i>\u2014visions based on Graham\u2019s iconic 1931 solo by Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Richard Move, and Larry Keigwin. The opener was Graham\u2019s deeply beautiful and uplifting Diversion of Angels<\/i> (1948). By and large, it was finely performed. Katherine Crockett has found more nuances in her role as the mature woman of the White Couple, with Schultz as her attentive partner. Xie is lovely and frisky as the youthful woman in yellow, vaulting onto the shoulder of her partner (Knight) as if blown there by a breeze. (This iteration of her costume, alas, is more white than yellow.)<\/p>\n

At the performance I saw, the dancers personifying the Couple in Red, were Ying Xin and Abdiel Jacobsen. These two are meant to represent lovers in the heat of passion.\u00a0 Xin is, clearly, an excellent dancer, but she performs the role as if she\u2019d rather be playing the Woman in Yellow. Too, that first iconic passage across the stage, when she steps out onto one leg and, tilting to the side, raises the other, has become for her (as for many other dancers) more about quickly lifting the leg as high as it will go and holding it there, instead of about the voyage along that horizontal path. I miss the\u00a0 occasional contraction of the dancer’s upper body (now invisible, or masked by a movement of the raised leg) that once registered as an ecstatic gasp or exhalation.<\/p>\n

The four additional women (Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Iris Florentiny, Lucy Postel, and Lauren Newman) and the four men (Schultz, Jacobsen, Knight, and Lloyd Mayor) perform the ensemble passages with fervor. \u201cStrenuous and tender\u201d are words from the Ben Belitt poem that gave Graham her title and some of her inspiration. The choreography reflects those words and much more. Had we seen Diversion of Angels<\/i> after Rite<\/i>, we could well have believed that Spring had come.<\/p>\n

\"Katherine<\/a>

Katherine Crockett in Richard Move’s Lamentation Variation<\/em>. Photo: Em Watson, courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Martha Graham Dance Company dances The Rite of Spring and Nacho Duato’s Rust at Jacob\u2019s 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\u2019s masterpiece Le Sacre du Printemps, Obviously, I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[921,660,652,917,121,283,924,659,920,282,915,922,916,923,655,919,918],"class_list":{"0":"post-1910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-classic-modern-dance","7":"tag-arvo-part","8":"tag-ben-schultz","9":"tag-blakely-white-mcguire","10":"tag-diversion-of-angels","11":"tag-igor-stravinsky","12":"tag-janet-eilber","13":"tag-katherine-crocket","14":"tag-katherine-crockett","15":"tag-leonide-massine","16":"tag-martha-graham","17":"tag-martha-graham-dance-company","18":"tag-nacho-duato","19":"tag-rite-of-spring","20":"tag-rust","21":"tag-tadej-brdnik","22":"tag-vaslav-nijinsky","23":"tag-xiaochuan-xie","24":"entry","25":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","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=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}