by Leigh Witchel
Martha Graham’s company has long since passed out of the frail state it was in following her death, when its heritage and continued existence was in doubt. The group now seems healthy and stable; it’s dancing well and at the City Center Dance Festival, performed to live music. Even so, the quest for a purpose after the genius it was named for passed into history never ends. The company performed a triple bill with varying degrees of Graham.
“Chronicle” is sold as canon, but that’s a reach. The parts of the 1936 work were reconstructed in 1989 or 1994; the outer movements from film clips and photographs. Still, the company performs it with commitment and weight, as if it were gospel.
Canon or no, it isn’t bad. The opening “Spectre – 1914,” to martial music by Wallingford Riegger, is a work of elemental but skilled stage craft, performed by a soloist in an enormous skirt that covers a platform the soloist dances atop, giving her an illusion of being outsized. Graham heroines should be dramatic and larger than life, and Xin Ying is. She had the focus, the economy of strength . . . and the hair to put it over, knowing exactly how to work the skirt designed by Graham, or shuffling back as if she were rolling on wheels.
The central section, “Steps in the Street” is almost all entry and exit, a daringly slow march of all the women, backing in laboriously in a slide: elbow out, hand on shoulders. In the middle there is some solo work, and then the march again to leave. It’s wildly effective, and if only the Trocks would parody it as a modern version of “La Bayadère” in reverse.
The final “Prelude to Action” featured two women springing repeatedly into splits, never faltering. The company is filled with jumpers; it’s no coincidence that Graham danced the Chosen One in Massine’s 1930 “The Rite of Spring,” the first American production of the work.
Ying returned to move from a defiant stance to one more tender, with the leader of the second movement, Anne Souder, acting as leader of the chorus. The piece gets a second wind as the music rose, with the corps leaping and cartwheeling. It was a frenzy, one woman almost stumbled from all the exertion.
“Canticle for Innocent Comedians” was a single remove from Graham. She created a work in 1952 with that title. The only section recoverable was a duet, “Moon,” the other sections were parceled out to guest choreographers, with Sonya Tayeh creating connections to suture the work into a whole. Jazz pianist Jason Moran created a new, recorded, score.
The title didn’t give you any clues to what the work would be about; it was more cosmic than comic. At the start, steam rose from three crouched groups, working largely in unison. The mood was fraught, it wasn’t clear why.
Leslie Andrea Williams danced a solo by Tayeh as the others backed out: an invocation, perhaps? She collapsed at center stage as if in agony, the others surrounded her, then she left past them. Lloyd Knight was borne aloft by Richard Villaverde in a duet by Alleyne Dance. These were the world’s most lugubrious comedians; there was so much drama, and so many variants of a cradle lift.
Anne O’Donnell danced a solo in silence by Robert Cohan, and you would have expected him to reference Graham. He did. He quoted the striding walk from Graham’s original version; the one Paul Taylor wrote that he stole to become one of his seven steps.
The music picked up again in arpeggios. Couples embraced and spun, then Souder and Ying danced together in a section by Juliano Nunes and raced off on a big glissando. The score became more insistent, with lines of three dancers in deep plié; that segued to a male trio by Yin Yue, with the three crouching, slapping their thighs and being butch. What was fascinating were they alternated performing the section with three women.
Lloyd Knight and O’Donnell did Graham’s duet; he whipped her around without making her look as if she were being manhandled. Micaela Taylor’s duet was done by Lloyd Mayor with Laurel Dalley Smith; Mayor was both forceful and sharp, as well as a strong partner. Ying did the final solo by Jenn Freeman, everyone came swirling back in exalted unison to a circle, and the work ended with the cast spinning as the curtain fell.
With each section done by a different choreographer, it was to be expected, even with one choreographer making the transitions, that “Canticle” felt disjointed. It didn’t look as if it were made by eight choreographers, but it also didn’t feel like one idea.
“CAVE” by Hofesh Shechter was a co-commission with Studio Simkin, that was a complete departure from Graham. It also contained almost every visceral pleasure in dance, without a single intellectual one. It was a sweaty, balls-to-the-wall workout, “Boléro” with a lobotomy, that left the audience thrilled while giving them nothing they couldn’t see at an aerobics class.
The music, by Âme and Shechter, began with low ominous rumbling. Four dancers moved forward from a line, then one after another added in to incessant pounding. Everything was done with an almost tribal, visceral attack. The cast danced a long phrase that wasn’t really a phrase, in the same way a bunch of random words isn’t a sentence no matter how many you add.
The music switched to low, fast drumming, but the choreography remained one damn step after another. There was no exposition, no development, no build of any kind. “CAVE” started dialed to 11 and stayed there. It did get louder, though, and the cast broke into groups. Each group came forward, freaked out, and on to the next group. It must have felt great to dance this. It was sensational to watch. It was nothing but sensation.
About here you’d notice that Daniil Simkin was somewhere in the ensemble, doing en dedans piqué turns. It was a disappointment, because he didn’t do 540s. Come on, dude, if there ever were a place for egregious but exciting tricks, it was here. But alas, he just did turns and brisés volés.
The music got louder and pounded harder, the dancing stayed in slamming unison, catching everyone, including the audience, up into it as if in a Two Minutes Hate. And like the Energizer Bunny, it just kept going.
Finally, the dancers stood there for several moments grooving, arms up, as if it were a rave. Everyone left but Williams, who jumped repeatedly and fell into splits as if she were lipsynching for her life. Then she walked off. End.
The most irritating thing about “CAVE” is that the Graham company is doing it. There’s no Graham in it. There’s no specific vocabulary at all. It’s generic modern, and when Simkin danced it switched over to ballet, because it didn’t matter, as long as he moved full-tilt.
The dancers looked great, of course. “CAVE” gave them the opportunity to cut loose and show how fierce they are. But so does a nightclub, and so does “Chronicle.” “CAVE” could be done by any group of dancers. If the Graham company is looking for something that justifies its existence while expanding its repertory, “CAVE” isn’t it.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Chronicle,” “Canticle for Innocent Comedians,” “CAVE” – Martha Graham Dance Company
New York City Center, New York, NY
April 9, 2022
Cover: Martha Graham Dance Company in “CAVE.” Photo credit © Brian Pollock.
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