{"id":4891,"date":"2017-02-19T18:09:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T23:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=4891"},"modified":"2017-02-21T19:34:49","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T00:34:49","slug":"martha-graham-rediviva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/02\/martha-graham-rediviva\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Graham Rediviva"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce Theater, February 14 through 26.<\/p>\n

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The women of Martha Graham’s Dark Meadow<\/em>. (L to R): Anne O\u2019Donnell, Laurel Dalley Smith, Leslie Andrea Williams, So Young An, Charlotte Landreau, and Marzia Memoli. Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve already written about the three new works that the Martha Graham Dance Company has acquired (https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/02\/the-martha-graham-dance-companys-new-visions\/<\/a>). Of the remaining pieces programmed for the company\u2019s season at the Joyce Theater, one is Nacho Duato\u2019s 2013 Rust <\/em>for five of the company\u2019s exceptional men, and the remaining six are by Graham. Captured on film or video, remembered by those who danced in them when Graham was alive, they require only dedicated coaching and performing. The 1931 Primitive Mysteries <\/em>was re-invented in 1964 by a cadre of its original performers foraging through their memories and Barbara Morgan\u2019s photographs, and that revival was filmed. Diversion of Angels<\/em> has been in and out of the repertory ever since it premiered in 1948 and was filmed in 1975. Maple Leaf Rag<\/em>, Graham\u2019s last dance, premiered in 1990, and the company may have footage of that as well as dancers\u2019 recollections.<\/p>\n

Because I love to see Graham\u2019s greatest works in their entirety, I don\u2019t always feel happy about creative choices that work against that, even though I\u2019m grateful that many of artistic director Janet Eilber\u2019s decisions have prolonged the life of the company Graham founded and brought new audiences to the choreography. During the Joyce season, only a portion of Graham\u2019s evening-long 1958 Clytemnestra <\/em>is programmed (as Clytemnestra Act 2<\/em>). Dark Meadow<\/em>, Graham\u2019s great, mysterious Jungian adventure of 1946, appears as Dark Meadow Suite<\/em>, minus its Noguchi d\u00e9cor of phallic pillars. And her 1933 solo Ekstasis <\/em>has been \u201cre-imagined\u201d by Virginie M\u00e9c\u00e8ne, director of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and artistic director of Graham 2 (I have not seen Rust, Diversion of Angels <\/em>or Clytemnestra<\/em>\u00a0Act 2<\/em> this season.)<\/p>\n

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Dark Meadow Suite<\/em>. (L to R): Marzia Memolia, Abdiel Jacobsen, Charlotte Landreau, and Lloyd Mayor. Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

For what could be considered a fertility ritual in terms of her artistic life, Graham created marvelous dances for a chorus of women and men. Slapping their hips, pounding their heels on the floor, springing into the air, they\u2019re intense celebrants. The circles in which they sometimes congregate suggest a ritual ground, and there\u2019s something totemic about their clarity. Several couples enact images that hint at something beyond mating. The men may lie briefly on top of their partners and carry them away hooked onto their backs, but they also sit and brace them as they lean out at a slant, like figureheads on a ship, both men and women swaying together.<\/p>\n

Eilber is credited for the \u201carrangement\u201d of Dark Meadow,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0 Carlos Chavez\u2019s score was edited and re-arranged to fit it, since she incorporated passages of movement belonging to two of the principal characters. Lloyd Mayor\u2019s big backward, almost staggering hops were once performed by Erick Hawkins as \u201cHe who summons,\u201d and Anne Souder may have been given movements that were Graham\u2019s as \u201cOne Who Seeks.\u201d All twelve dancers enact the intensely beautiful group passages as if they believed in the power of every step.<\/p>\n

The same is true of Primitive Mysteries<\/em>, but here something different is required of its all-female cast. Often shoulder-to-shoulder in their groups, they must move as one (a member of the original cast remembered Graham at rehearsals laying a broom across their shoulders like a yoke). The twelve women in their simple, deep blue gowns, must also strike sudden moves simultaneously in order to frame or respond to the woman in white, who both leads them and is guarded and succored by them. In making Primitive Mysteries<\/em>, Graham was inspired by the American Indian dances she had seen in the Southwest. This woman is a member of the community, chosen for the role of Mary as radiant mother and as mater dolorosa at the foot of the Cross. When Primitive Mysteries <\/em>was first revived in 1964, Graham told the cast to remember that any one of them could have been selected for this role by her village. Peiju Chien-Pott performs it very beautifully, but, to me (someone who finds this dance among the 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s greatest), she seems a little too concerned with Mary\u2019s personal ecstasy, instead of experiencing the feelings at one remove from that holy figure.<\/p>\n

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Martha Graham’s Primitive Mysteries<\/em>. PeiJu Chien-Pott, surrounded by (L to R): Laurel Dalley Smith, Anne O\u2019Donnell, So Young An, and Carley Marholin; Leslie Andrea Williams (seated rear). Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

The women perform with immense conviction, from the small, iconic gestures to the great gulps of leaps that they execute in a circle around the central figure in the final section. With their arms locked behind them, their bodies bent forward, they have the avidity of birds of prey, until the tempo of Louis Horst\u2019s simple music for flute, oboe, and piano speeds up so much that they are running.<\/p>\n

One thing disturbed me about Primitive Mysteries <\/em>as it was performed at the gala on February 15th<\/sup>. In varying formations, the women process gravely onto the stage and off it for each of the work\u2019s three sections (\u201cHymn to the Virgin,\u201d \u201cCrucifixus,\u201d and \u201cHosanna\u201d). This revival was coached, I believe, by Denise Vale, the company\u2019s senior artistic associate and rehearsal director, but I don\u2019t know for sure the source of the timing for their walks. In the 1964 performance, the way in which each woman stepped onto one reaching foot, then brought the other foot together with it before taking the next step was measured and deliberate, but you never lost the feeling that they were progressing together toward a destination. Members of this cast pause for approximately five seconds between steps. This, I suppose, enhances an image of them as iconic figures, but diminishes the importance of their journey to and from the dancing place.<\/p>\n

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Peiji Chien-Pott in Martha Graham’s Ekstasis<\/em>. Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

Ekstasis<\/em> is not the first solo to be reimagined through photographs and written descriptions, and there\u2019s no way to prove how faithful to the original M\u00e9c\u00e8ne\u2019s version can be, even though she has done extensive research. It is not performed to Lehman Engel\u2019s original score, but to the spare and mystical \u201cInterludis meditatius \u2013 VII,\u201d one of the interludes that punctuate the songs that comprise Ram\u00f3n Humet\u2019s Homenaje a Martha Graham <\/em>(an inspired choice). <\/em>What M\u00e9c\u00e8ne focused on is the counterbalance between the dancer\u2019s jutting hip and the shoulders that pull the opposite way. Confined to a spotlight, Chien-Pott, slender and lithe, dreamily accentuates this S curve in sculptural ways. You can\u2019t take your eyes off her. The costume helps focus our intention on her torso; she wears a form-fitting, ankle-length sheath that keeps her legs fairly close together (I wish the costume could be made of a fabric as textured as that of the knitted one that Graham wore).<\/p>\n

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Martha Graham’s Maple Leaf Rag<\/em>. (L to R): Jacob Larsen, Charlotte Landreau, and Lorenzo Pagano. Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

Program B closes with the company dancing to pre-existing music, a selection of piano rags written by Scott Joplin (\u201cElite Syncopations,\u201d \u201cBethena,\u201d and \u201cMaple Leaf Rag\u201d). Graham was 96 when she choreographed Maple Leaf Rag<\/em>, and, as you might have expected, she recycled and transformed many images and movements from earlier dances. It\u2019s a light-hearted, gently satirical piece whose ancestry can be traced back to her 1939 Every Soul is a Circus<\/em>, 1941 Punch and the Judy<\/em>, and 1960 Acrobats of God<\/em>. The main difference is that she was not its heroine\u2014in the earlier works a woman distractedly, but slyly weighing her options with an arrogant man (in two of these cracking a whip).<\/p>\n

One of the structural forces controlling Maple Leaf Rag<\/em> is its set\u2014no Noguchi sculpture, but a \u201cjoggling board\u201d like those that had fascinated Graham on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. Not only does this bench stretch between legs on rockers, it\u2019s made of springy, bendable wood. Depending on how many people sit on it, it can sag quite a lot. Sitting on one and joggling was once considered exercise for those avoiding a strenuous workout. Or perhaps doing so soothed the nerves like time spent in a rocking chair.<\/p>\n

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Konstantina Xintara in Martha Graham\u2019s Maple Leaf Rag<\/em>. Photo: Brigid Pierce<\/p><\/div>\n

Graham\u2019s choreography gives that structure itself a workout. Men face each other holding onto its opposite ends and kick their legs in the air. The playfully flirting principal couple (Charlotte Landreau and Mayor) sits on it and cuddles; he crawls naughtily beneath her skirt as she lounges there. A bit later, he whips that skirt off and carries it away like a trophy. At one point, three men stand on the apparatus, while their partners lie on the floor in front of them, legs in the air. The performers (eighteen in all) leap through, stop and rest a while, pair up. Intermittently, Konstantina Xintara, wearing a long dress with a circular skirt, wheels across the front of the stage, as if she has emigrated from another dance and wants nothing to do with these athletic youngsters. The dancers have a thoroughly good time with Maple Leaf Rag <\/em>and show off not only their impressive skills but their (fortunately) good balance on that unstable board. I was especially impressed by Landreau; her clarity, her timing, and her focus drew my eye in every work she graced.<\/p>\n

Anyone who could mastermind a light-hearted, impudent piece like this in her 97th<\/sup> year on earth was surely a match for death, hoping her final bow to that spectral visitor waiting in the wings would be a gracious one.<\/p>\n

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Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce Theater, February 14 through 26. I\u2019ve already written about the three new works that the Martha Graham Dance Company has acquired (https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2017\/02\/the-martha-graham-dance-companys-new-visions\/). Of the remaining pieces programmed for the company\u2019s season at the Joyce Theater, one is Nacho Duato\u2019s 2013 Rust for five of the company\u2019s exceptional men, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4894,"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":[2564,2067,283,1409,2565,2559,2566,915,1113,2563],"class_list":{"0":"post-4891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-classic-modern-dance","8":"tag-anne-souter","9":"tag-charlotte-landreau","10":"tag-janet-eilber","11":"tag-joyce-theater","12":"tag-konstantina-xintara","13":"tag-lloyd-mayor","14":"tag-louis-horst","15":"tag-martha-graham-dance-company","16":"tag-peiju-chien-pott","17":"tag-virginie-mecene","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891","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=4891"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4906,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891\/revisions\/4906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}