Dance Review
Martha Graham Dance Company @ VPAC
By Phillip McAbee
Martha Graham Dance Company
Saturday April 18th 8PM Performance
California State University Northridge
Valley Performing Arts Center
Modern dance in America has a rich history. Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 — April 1, 1991) is an artist who contributed significantly to shaping this history. At the age of seventeen, Graham attended a vaudeville dance performance in downtown Los Angeles at the Mason Opera House. The headliner was Ruth Saint Denis of Denishawn Dance Company, and her performance inspired Graham. After dancing and teaching for Denishawn for eight years, in 1926, Graham moved to New York City and formed the Martha Graham Company, one of the most consequential expressions of art in the 20th and the 21st centuries.
On April 18, 2015, the Martha Graham Dance Company performed at the Valley Performing Arts Center located at California State University Northridge. The performance was part of a West Coast tour that included an April 25 performance in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Popejoy Hall and an April 22 performance in Carmel, California, at the Sunset Cultural Center. The program opened with “Appalachian Spring,” followed by “Lamentation Variations,” “Errand Into The Maze,” and concluded with “Echo.” This dance review is the first in a two-part series. The focus of this review is “Appalachian Spring” and “Lamentation Variations.”
“Appalachian Spring” premiered October 30, 1944, at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress, Washington DC. The choreography was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Aided by an inheritance from her father’s wholesale business, Coolidge supported commissioned works of music by Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, and Aaron Copland. Copeland was the composer of “Appalachian Spring.” He originally titled the piece “Ballet for Martha,” but Graham subsequently changed it to “Appalachian Spring.”
Graham’s artistic vision and creative processes are similar to those of the great impresario Serge Diaghilev.
Diaghilev surrounded himself with talented painters, dancers, set designers, and composers. A short list of these artists include George Rouault, Maurice Ravel, Anna Pavlova, Maurice Fokine, and George Balanchine. In Graham’s case, she combined her own choreographic skills with the artistic visions of Isamu Noguchi, Aaron Copland, Louis Horst, and Roy Halston Frowick (Halston). By the time of her death on April 1, 1991, Martha Graham had choreographed 181 dances and had enjoyed a performing career that extended well into her seventies.
“Appalachian Spring”
Choreography and Costumes: Martha Graham
Music: Aaron Copland
Original Lighting: Jean Rosenthal, adapted by Beverly Emmons
Set Design: Isamu Noguchi
At the age of fifteen, after having taken modern dance classes for six months, I came across PBS’s Great Performances, “Appalachian Spring,” while channel surfing. I told my mother that I wanted to become a dancer. She looked back at me and said, “Son, do whatever makes you happy!” As it was for me that first time I viewed the company, watching the Martha Graham Company today is a cathartic experience.
The opening movement of Appalachian Spring ironically does not originate from one the dancers. The opening movement belongs to the set design of Isamu Noguchi. The Noguchi’s set captures Americana with three simple structures organized in a triangle. Moving from stage right to stage left, we see first a collection of seven wooden beams that outline a simple prairie home. The home is composed of five structures: A two-stair entrance leads to a small wooden platform; the wooden platform supports a two dimensional high-back rocking chair, which supports The Pioneering Women. The rocking chair does not rock, but instead swivels. Behind the rocking chair, Noguchi frames out three doorways. The first two are separated by a simple clapboard wall, which is supported at its base by a four foot high rectangular pine box used for seating the characters of the four Followers. The center of the stage is dominated by a small raised platform for The Preacher. And finally downstage left we see a basic outline of a humble prairie fence blown dry by warm summer Appalachian winds. This piece constitutes the staging place for The Husbandman.
Isamu Noguchi was set designer for twenty of Graham’s dances. These include: “Cave of the Heart” (1946), “Errand into the Maze” (1947), “Night Journey” (1947), “Clytemnestra” (1958), “Alcestis” (1960), “Phaedra” (1962), “Circe” (1963), “Cortege of Eagles” (1966 including “Herodiade” (1944), “Judith” (1950), “Seraphic Dialogue” (1955), and “Embattled Garden” (1958).
The opening measures of Aaron Copland’s music introduces the dance with a stately procession. Each dancer/character enters the sacred space framed by Noguchi’s minimalist doorway. The procession starts with the character of the preacher, followed by the pioneer woman. Each take their specific places in the set: the preacher to his perch upstage stage center; the pioneering woman to her rocking chair inside the prairie home. Next the husbandman walks through the arch, pauses, reaches out, and caresses the prairie home. As I watch this at the Valley Performing Arts Center, small tears collect in my eyes. I am transported back to when I was a young dancer first watching “Appalachian Spring” on television. As the husbandman continues to walk toward the prairie fence, he hears the footsteps of the bride, and he turns sharply, raising his hands towards his new bride. The two close the space between their bodies moving in a perfect straight line as they look into one another’s eyes. It is love. Finally, “the followers” enter and inscribe a pious circle pattern on the stage before coming to a stop and facing the preacher. The bride moves up the two steps, turns, and waves at the husbandman. He does not acknowledge her salute, and he has moved to the prairie fence to survey his future. Copland ends this section with a simple flute solo that is both foreboding and inspiring.
At this point in the work, all the components of this masterpiece are in place — the set, the music, and the dancers. In the VPAC performance, Blakeley White-McGuire conquers the role of the the bride (originally danced by Martha Graham), with the help of Abdiel Jacobson, who dances the role of The Husbandman. Jacobson’s nuanced interpretation of the role was a virtuosic blend of dance and acting. When Mr. Jacobson leans on the prairie fence to survey the land, the expression in his eyes evoke memories of Steinbeck’s writings from the Grapes of Wrath,
Ma — “Why Tom — us people go on livin when all people is gone. Why, Tom we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people — we go on!”
Lloyd Night’s dancing the role of The Preacher contained so much fervor and religious zeal that his flock of Graham dancers Lauren Newman, Anne O’Donnell, Dani Stinger, and Ying Xin were pulled along as if they were chicks following a mother hen. For this reviewer, Ying Xin was a standout in doing what dancers refer to as “dancing in the moment.” Xin did not portray one of the Followers she was one of The Followers. Like a Jonestown parishioner, Xin seemed to “drink the Kool-Aid” from Knight.
Natasha Diamond-Walker, portraying the Pioneering Woman, danced a strong performance that matched Jacobson’s in both intensity and artistry. Though she might have been handicapped a bit by the enormous cuffs of her costume, she negotiated them perfectly during her solo passages. “Appalachian Spring” finishes with a stately procession by The Followers, The Preacher, and the The Pioneering Woman. They exit under Noguchi-designed triangular arches. All that remains on stage are The Bride and The Husbandman to create their future.
“Lamentation Variations” choreography: Kyle Abraham, Larry Keigwin, and Sonya Tayeh
Costumes: (Abraham and Tayeh) Barbara Erin Delo
Music: Frederic Chopin, Meredith Monk, Gabriella Montero
Lighting: (Keigwin) by Beverly Emmons
Lighting: (Abraham and Tayeh) by Nicholas Houfek
Conceived: Janet Eilber
The concept behind “Lamentation Variations” is that selected choreographers create their interpretation (movement studies) of Martha Graham’s seminal work “Lamentations.” Each “study” was created according to the following guidelines: ten hours of rehearsal time, the use of public domain music or silence, and simple lighting design and costumes. [I encourage those not familiar with Graham’s original piece to run an online search for images of “Graham Lamentations.” Among the images that show in the results is a classic photograph by Barbara Morgan showing Graham herself performing it. You can also view the dance on YouTube.]
The performance at Valley Performing Arts Center began with a large, silent projection of the original dance performed by Martha Graham. The forty-foot dancing Martha, with a blue stretch of fabric and the rocking motion of one of the sequences, overwhelmed a senior audience member sitting next to me. She exclaimed, “This is making me dizzy.” As the performance transitioned from the giant projection of Martha to “Keigwin Variation,” my senior audience member calmed down.
Larry Keigwin artistic director of Keigwin+Company was masterful in creating an emotionally impactful choreography with minimal use of focused movement and gestures. His performance demonstrated well the Graham dancer’s ability to project strong emotion with simple gestures and body épaulement. Similar to modern dance choreographer Paul Taylor’s usage of pedestrian movement in “Esplanade.” Watch the dance on YouTube.
The low point of the “Lamentation Variations” was the “Tayeh Variation” section. The performance didn’t meet my expectations or speak to my dance sensibilities. The dance lacked focus and choreographic structure. The costuming seemed like an afterthought — it did not support the dance. Similarly, I found it difficult to watch “Abraham Variation” because of dancer PeiJu Chien-Pott’s approach to the movements. While the audience expressed audible approval of her dance acrobatics, I found the swirling pony tail to be a distraction and I was put off by the gymnastic-like choreography.
Overall, the Company delivered a fine performance — one that transported me back to the moment of inspiration I felt the first time I watched “Appalachian Spring” on television so many years ago. The Graham Dance Company performance offers the audience not only a view into the mind of a great artist, it is also delivers portraits of each individual Graham dancer’s humanity. Under the clear and inspired guidance of Janet Eilber, artistic director since 2005, the Graham Company continues its founder’s legacy with vibrancy and focus of purpose.
End of Part One
Part Two: Back to Dry Land
Phillip McAbee is Artistic Director of AdultBalletLA. He holds an MA in Dance from UCLA; and he is the founder of the Echo Park Dance History Festival. Mr. McAbee studied dance with Alfredo Corvino, Mary Anthony, Mary Price. He presently teaches adult ballet classes in Los Angeles, California and writes. His current book “The Four Little Ones” is available on iOS and Kindle.
AdultBalletLA.com
Phil@AdultBalletLA.com
