{"id":6530,"date":"2019-08-19T15:15:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T19:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6530"},"modified":"2019-08-19T22:06:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T02:06:05","slug":"martha-over-the-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/08\/martha-over-the-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Over the Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring. <\/em>One of the Jacob’s Pillow casts (L to R): Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne Souder, So Young An, Laurel Dalley Smith, Marzia Memoli, Jacob Larsen, and Charlotte Landreau. Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, stepped through Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s front curtain to introduce the group\u2019s performance, she mentioned that this was the 94th<\/sup> year of the MGDC, which made it the oldest dance company in the United States. Actually Graham\u2019s history travels twistily backward even further, when she and the Pillow\u2019s founder, Ted Shawn, danced together on the road. In 1960, lecturing from the stage of the theater that now bears his name, she wore a long taffeta gown with wide horizontal stripes in green and gold, and Shawn, as I recall, all but knelt at her feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program shows something of the company\u2019s artistic lifespan. It opens with Appalachian Spring <\/em>(1944), flies forward to Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith\u2019s Deo<\/em> (2019) and three selections from the 2007 Lamentation Variations<\/em>, a project conceived by Eilber, to which fifteen choreographers have contributed over the years, then vaults back into a reconstruction of her 1936 Chronicle. <\/em>We the spectators zigzag through fierce, spare early modernism and the great narratives of the 1940s to today\u2019s different responses to time and space\u2014all, of course, linked to the almost unstoppable artist, who appeared in the last dance she made for herself at the age of sixty-five and choreographed her last work at ninety-one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Pillow, Appalachian Spring <\/em>made its own nod to\nhistory. The stage of the Ted Shawn Theater is not much larger than the very\nsmall one at Washington D.C.\u2019s Library of Congress Auditorium where this\nmasterwork made its debut. I love being so close to the performers, although\nthe recording of the beautiful score that Aaron Copland wrote for it sounds\nalmost abrasively loud. The lighting design is the one adapted years ago by\nBeverly Emmons from Jean Rosenthal\u2019s original vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As always, it\u2019s up to the\nperformers to make us envision the sparsely populated countryside on which\nstands the spare hint of the wooden house designed by Isamu Noguchi. There the\nBride and the Husbandman are wed and plan to start a farm and a family. The\nLibrary of Congress stage had only one exit, and that certainly influenced one\nof Graham\u2019s choices. The couple, the Pioneering Woman, the Preacher, and his\nfour Followers enter an empty stage and never leave it until the dance is\nending. Instead, they freeze in space when not active (a strategy Graham\ncontinued to use). When the Husbandman waves goodbye to his Bride and then\ntakes about six steps to a portion of fencing and, stays there while the dance\ncontinues, he might in reality have walked out to a corral. The performers\u2019\ngazes need to travel beyond the actual perimeters of their domain (My only\ncavil about Lloyd Mayor\u2019s performance is that he poses looking down at the\nfence, rather than far beyond the stage to the wilderness he expects to tame.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At prayer in Appalachian Spring. <\/em>Charlotte Landreau having instead a private moment. Photo: Grace Kathryn Landefeld<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another such detail\u2014or\nrather, the lack of it\u2014caught my eye. When the Bride is expressing both her\npiety and her memories of youthful gaiety, the others are kneeling in prayer at\nthe rear of the stage, their backs to us. When Graham (seen in the 1958 film)\ngoes toward them and stops, she deliberately puts her hands behind her back;\nit\u2019s clear that she\u2019s not quite ready to join them in prayer. I missed the\ntiming and expressive clarity of that gesture in Anne O\u2019Donnell\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the cast I saw (one of two), O\u2019Donnell portrayed the excited and delighted young Bride charmingly, Natasha M. Diamond-Walker projected the Pioneering Woman\u2019s serenity and neighborly concern, Lloyd Knight convincingly brought out the revivalist\u2019s fanaticism, and his four sprightly followers (So Young An, Laurel Dalley Smith, Marzia Memoli, and Anne Souder) expressed their devotion to the Lord (and their more earthly devotion to their leader) with great enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bobbi Jene Smith was once a\nmember of Israel\u2019s Batsheva Dance Company, but met Maxine Doyle, the associate\ndirector and choreographer of Punchdrunk\u2019s Sleep\nNo More, <\/em>when she performed in that work. Their Deo <\/em>tells no story, but behind its images of loss, separation,\ngrief, and fury lies the myth that fed the two choreographers: that of Demeter\nand Persephone. Smith and Doyle multiply the mother and child: Demeter, who\nravaged the earth after Hades kidnapped her daughter, and Persephone, who was\nrestored to her for six months of the year, so she could to make the earth\nbloom before it returned to winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music by Lesley Flanagan begins by blasting out several siren calls. Yi-Chun Chen\u2019s lighting, punctuated by blackouts, often shows the scenes only dimly. We first see seven of the cast\u2019s eight women, garbed in pale, flimsy gowns and lying supine on the floor. Leslie Andrea Williams, down right, swings an arm fiercely, her feet getting wider apart so that her entire body seems to be sinking into the ground; her gaze, however, stays upward. Blackout. Then a trace of light. The women on the floor raise their heads off the floor, lift their feet too, shifting in their strange sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Members of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith’s Deo. <\/em>Photo: Michele Ballantini<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This kingdom of the dead is divided from that of the living. The women may exit the stage, leaving it to a solitary one of them, or stay and cluster on another side of the stage. In various ways, they kneel and convulse in unheard sobs. Often we perceive the stage as a place divided\u2014a desperate individual in one part, a ghost army in the other or a tight clump, or paired embraces. Once, the women sit with their backs to us holding hands; pulling and leaning, they make that line ripple like a restless snake. When they exit in a line, they leave Diamond-Walker behind, still struggling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\nintermission, we see a film of Graham performing her 1930 Lamentation <\/em>in the 1940s. In this iconic solo, she\u2019s shrouded and\nsitting on a small bench. She strains against her tubular costume as if it were\ngrief itself; only once, at the very end does she stand up for a second before bending\neven more deeply over. In her introductory speech, Eilber mentioned the Lamentation Variations<\/em> in connection\nwith September 11, 2001, that terrible day when the twin towers fell. Its first\nperformance occurred on an anniversary of that terrorist attack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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L to R: So Young An, Xin Ying, Alessio Crognale, and Natasha Diamond-Walker in Liz Gerring’s contribution to Lamentation Variations. <\/em>Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Like\nall these variations, Liz Gerring\u2019s (set to Michael J. Schumacher\u2019s \u201cZoltan\u2019s\nGhost\u201d) is short. It\u2019s also very austere. Wearing a form-fitting black sheath,\nLloyd Knight performs a series of expansive or curled-in moves, while So Young\nAn, Alessio Crognale, and Diamond-Walker form a small chorus, leaping at times\nacross the space. Knight\u2019s gestures are sometimes in synch with theirs, but\nonce he holds his hands about a foot apart in a way that could be related to\nGraham\u2019s way of holding wide the fabric that encases her. Now it seems an\naperture through which he can view the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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L to R: Charlotte Landreau, Jacob Larsen, Lloyd Knight, and Lloyd Mayor of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Michelle Dorrance’s contribution to Lamentation Variations<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many\nmembers of the company perform Michelle Dorrance\u2019s variation, but I\u2019m not sure\nwhether all seventeen who came to Jacob\u2019s Pillow are onstage. We hear jazz bass\nplayer Jaco Pastorius\u2019s \u201cPortrait of Tracy,\u201d arranged by the tap artist\nDorrance to include her unseen rhythmic footsteps against the floor. The crowd\nwalks toward us, some turning to walk in the opposite direction. That kind of\nregimented walking seems to be their way of life in a city of right-angled\nstreets. Sometimes a person kneels or squats. There are sudden stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\nthe center of the stage and never ceding that place, is Knight, wearing a suit\nand tie and standing between Jacob Larsen and Mayor. They crowd him, support\nhim\u2014even cradle him on their raised flexed feet. But all three are in crisis.\nLarsen and Mayor drag their mouths open in a silent yell, while Knight covers\nhis with his hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laurel Dalley Smith and Anne O’Donnell in another cast of Aszure Barton’s contribution to Lamentation Variations. <\/em>Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Aszure Barton\u2019s variation is a duet, performed at the performance I attended by Ann Souder and Xing Ying. The music that accompanies them is \u201cApparition,\u201d with its lamenting soprano voice, from George Crumb\u2019s The Night in Silence Under Many a Star. <\/em>They face us and move almost always in perfect unison. Twin towers indeed. You see traces of Graham\u2019s Lamentation<\/em>: the foot that clubs as it\u2019s raised, the hands that plunge down into an invisible shroud or lift to wipe an eye. But the two look at each other at times, and small differences emerge between them. In the end, Souder walks away, and Ying is left sitting there alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

None\nof the three variations tells a story, but all are controlled, symbolic, and\nsomehow cloaked in dread and apprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martha Graham choreographed Chronicle <\/em>in 1936, the year of the Spanish Civil War, in whose fight against fascism many young Americans participated. But she focused on images of fear and courage. All its three sections have subtitles. The one for the first, \u201cSpectre\u20131914,\u201d is \u201cDrums\u2014Red Shroud\u2013\u2013Lament.\u201d  Terese Capucilli and Carol Fried reconstructed this in 1994 from photos and film clips. In it, a woman (Leslie Andrea Williams in the performance I saw), sits on a low structure, her hair loose. She wears a black skirt so long that when she stands on the platform, it barely reaches the ground. When she lashes it furiously or turns it into wings or lifts it and lets it fall, it reveals its blood-red lining. When she raises its back hem over her head to form a hood and wraps the rest around her, she becomes even more fateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An earlier cast of Graham dancers in “Steps in the Street” from Martha Graham’s Chronicle<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\noriginal score by Wallingford Riegger was lost at the time Chronicle <\/em>was reconstructed, and its strongest section \u201cSteps in\nthe Street\u201d is (ironically, I\u2019d say) performed to the finale of Riegger\u2019s score\nfor New Dance <\/em>by Graham\u2019s rival Doris\nHumphrey. \u201cSteps in the Street\u201d was revived in 1989 by former Graham dancer\nYuriko Kikuchi with the help of film clips by Julien Bryan and input from\nGraham herself. The subtitles for this are \u201cDevastation\u2013Homelessness\u00ad\u2013\u2013Exile.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe striking beginning, the twelve women back onto the stage from various\nplaces in silence, their bodies contracting, their arms wrapped around them,\ntheir steps sharp but halting. They never turn and walk forward. There are many\nstunning images like this. These black-clad women jump over and over, one leg\nbent, travelling across the stage as they do so. They can march in two lines,\nstraight arms stretched forward, heads up, while attempting to force a woman\nwalking backward at a slant between their ranks to go with them It\u2019s a triumph\nthat they can\u2019t mow her down; they leave the stage and she\u2019s still in place and\nready to summon them to battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrelude to Action\u201d (\u201cUnity\u2013Pledge to the Future\u201d) was the most recently reconstructed of the three parts. In 1994, Capucilli, Fried, and Diane Gray assisted the decades-before Graham dancer Sophie Maslow in reviving this section from photographs and film clips. The section isn\u2019t as powerful as \u201cSteps in the Streets,\u201d but it\u2019s still galvanizing. It brings back the platform and introduces a leader in a white dress with black trim (I saw Williams). She summons up an acolyte (Marzia Memoli), and then another, and pretty soon the entire army of women is rushing on and off the stage and, goaded by the percussive music, mobilizing into a unit under her direction.  Whoa!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\n1926 to 1938, Martha Graham\u2019s first small group and the larger company that\nfollowed consisted only of women. Powerful women. Deo<\/em> is part of the ongoing Eve Project that refers back to works\nlike Chronicle. <\/em>What strikes me about\nthe company now is how intense, intelligent, and, yes, empowering, today\u2019s\nsuperb dancers\u2019 commitment is to works made before they were born in addition\nto those created for them. I may find fault with some small aspects of their\nperforming in Graham works, but I applaud them all, as well as Eilber and\nexecutive director LaRue Allen, for keeping these pieces alive, even as they\nfuel the repertory with new, but related pieces. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, stepped through Jacob\u2019s Pillow\u2019s front curtain to introduce the group\u2019s 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\u2019s history travels twistily backward even further, when she and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6531,"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":[109,2472,1],"tags":[451,2558,1024,3191,3196,283,3194,2069,390,1111,2559,282,915,2996,3190,581,1429,3193,3197,3192],"class_list":{"0":"post-6530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"category-political-performance","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"tag-aaron-copland","11":"tag-anne-souder","12":"tag-aszure-barton","13":"tag-bobbi-jene-smith","14":"tag-jacob-larsen","15":"tag-janet-eilber","16":"tag-lesley-flanigan","17":"tag-leslie-andrea-williams","18":"tag-liz-gerring","19":"tag-lloyd-knight","20":"tag-lloyd-mayor","21":"tag-martha-graham","22":"tag-martha-graham-dance-company","23":"tag-marzia-memoli","24":"tag-maxine-doyle","25":"tag-michelle-dorrance","26":"tag-natasha-m-diamond-walker","27":"tag-wallingford-riegger","28":"tag-xing-ying","29":"tag-yuriko","30":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530","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=6530"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6543,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6530\/revisions\/6543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}