Graham at Rose
March 21, 2011
Graham is accessible, but more so with familiarity. I never saw the company live until now, but her vocabulary is still in my muscle memory. I will not be the one to say, ‘It isn’t like the old days.’ In fact, there will never be another Balanchine, Cunningham, or Martha Graham.
Cave of the Heart
March 19, 2011 evening at Lincoln Center Rose Hall began with Cave of the Heart, in which Blakeley White-McGuire twists our heartstrings as Medea. She goes mad watching Jason fall for a young, positioned Princess.
The Herculean Ben Shultz is wonderful as the feckless cad, Jason, suggesting that men are capable of anything. Compare portrayals of unfaithful women: hell-bound. Jason has dumped his wife yet he is composed as he flexes his muscles before the servile new mistress. The Princess is Xiaochuan Xie, a Chinese dancer new to the company. She emanates an aura of absolute beauty and allure; she is exempt from moral judgment.
However, the scorned Medea ends in Isamu Noguchi’s thorny copper wire ‘dress,’ a desperate substitute for the Princess’s beauty. Medea has murdered her in the wings, apparently, and drags her on stage in a tube-dress-for-two. Talk about ugly. Graham knew to embrace it.
The final background (in Jean Rosenthal’s original lighting plan) is blasting red, complementing Noguchi’s rock heart that is Medea’s pedestal. White-McGuire’s musicality, to the Samuel Barber score, is best seen in her solo with a red belt; afterward she stuffs it between her breasts and exits "doom eager" (Graham's term) to do her deed.
Graham was a master of props; she made them one with the story and movement. Indeed, this 85th Anniversary season is dedicated to collaboration. The Graham-Noguchi partnership lasted over fifty years. The Cave set still looks innovative. It is a gift to see the iconic Graham moves that informed all of modern dance, surviving with such integrity in this striking performance.
Deaths and Entrances
Antony Tudor is the obvious reference for Grahams 1943 Deaths and Entrances. Tudor’s ballet Pillar of Fire premiered in 1942; Jardin aux Lilas in 39. Graham called her dances ballets. She abhorred the conventions and containment of classical ballet but Tudor's works impressed her.
Deaths and Entrances is intense and humorless. The cast dances memories of the three Bronte sisters. Miki Orihara is fluid in the principal role, with White-McGuire and Katherine Crockett, who is very angular. Three dressed in children’s 19th century outfits dance childhood memories. The gorgeous period costumes are by Oscar de la Renta. Maurizio Nardi’s limber, expressive dancing delighted. He is spirit as The Poetic Beloved, to Brdnik’s corporeality as the Dark Beloved. Critics have compared Brdnik to Graham’s partner and lover Eric Hawkins.
Chasing premieres
Bulareyaung Pagarlava created a variation of Lamentations in 2009. The new Chasing is after Deaths and Entrances. Chasing lacks its gravity and emotion, but it is a welcome uplift. Call it Graham on speed. The moves are hi-NRG and they comment on Graham gesture and form with irreverence. Chasing also comprises memories; one, a wedding scene, recalls Pina Bausch as much as it recalls Graham.
The dancers enter and exit the stage running, an exaggerated treatment of the sisters “doom eager.” They speak and laugh, they group into trios, and a quartet is like a social clique. Chasing is silly, youthful, breezy. In a central section, breezy expands to tsunami proportions, to whooshing sounds in Michael Nyman’s music. (The score comprises mostly booming Mozart.) White-McGuire falls again and again. She and Brdnik are in their element. Apparently, he saved his energy for it. All the cast of six looked immensely satisfied; the kitsch inspired a sigh of release in the audience. Pagarlava took a dark dance and found jouissance in it, if it ventures over-the-top in places.
David Quinn’s fluorescent costumes match Judith M. Daitsman’s pointed lighting that changes to apple green at the end. Pagarlava has created a dialogue with Deaths and Entrances that enhances our appreciation of it, while presenting a stand-alone, dare I say, equal?
Suffice to say, we are lucky the Graham Company lives on.