Saturday afternoon my friend Alyssa and I went to the second of Martha Graham Dance Company’s programs this season: this one including several of her works spanning her 70-year career. The matinee began, though, with one of the most compelling set of dances I have honestly ever seen. The company had commissioned three different modern choreographers — Aszure Barton, Richard Move, and Larry Keigwin — each to make a dance honoring Martha Graham’s famous Lamentation, an immensely compelling evocation of grief. This set of dances was called Lamentation Variations and premiered on September 11, 2007, in commemoration of the terrorist attacks. I had missed it then, but saw it on Saturday — the only difference being that they’d taken out the Barton and substitued a new Variation by Bulareyaung Pagarlava, a Taiwanese choreographer who happens to be married to guest dancer with the company, Fang-Yi Sheu (who danced Clytemnestra).
Before the dances began, they showed a film of Graham herself dancing portions of her original Lamentation, her body reaching, stretching, contorting in that constricting fabric. Then they showed these three contemporary variations on her theme of grief.
All three Variations completely blew me away – -most especially the first, by Keigwin. I usually find Keigwin’s work humorous and clever, but this was absolutely haunting. A large group of dancers, mostly dressed in business attire, or casual sports coats, or, in the case of some women, cocktail dresses, took the stage. At first they all looked out at the audience, but it was as if they were looking at themselves in a mirror, primping themselves, putting in contact lenses, checking their hair, makeup. As some continued doing this, others turned their backs to the audience, then slowly raised their arms, and slowly fell to the ground almost as if being shot. In the end, one couple is left standing, a woman and a man, the woman holding onto the man with all her might, he slowly falling, out of her grasp, out of her reach. It was so reminiscent of 9/11 and loved it. I’ll never forget it.
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