In case you’re not online today, or don’t use Google as a search engine, someone has generously recorded and posted a YouTube clip of Google’s excellent Martha Graham doodle, in honor of what would be her 117th birthday. I don’t remember seeing such an intricately designed doodle for anyone or anything else. Do you guys? How awesome for the dance world!
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“Well I’ve only been twice,” Margret answered, realizing her mouth wasn’t working so well. “I mean, the one about Oedip … Oedipus.”
The wine was warping her consonants.
“Night Journey,” he prompted.
“Is that the one? It was like an Assyrian,” she said slowly, “bas-relief. Those little palms and things in profile.”
Her face was hot. Why did he keep looking at her?
“What I want to know,” Emily said, pointing a pretty finger at Azam, “is why Graham men are always in such skimpy costumes? I mean, really, Azam, it’s jockstraps and loincloths. Do you guys ever, among yourselves, admit she was sexist?”
“Noooo.” He smiled lazily. “She just liked to see men’s bodies. You know the famous line?” He squared his shoulders. “Walk like you carry the seed.”
“What seed?” Nan called from the far end.
“Sperm,” Fred said.
“What are you talking about?” Ollie demanded.
“Martha Graham,” Emily, Fred, and Azam said in unison.
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Above text from The Bird Catcher, by Laura Jacobs.
Photo from Night Journey (with requisite male dancer in loincloth) by John Deane, taken from here.
I’d really liked dance critic Laura Jacobs’ first novel, Women About Town, so I was really excited for her second one to come out. She writes fiction like she writes about dance (for the New Criterion; she also has a collection of her dance writings): lyrically, beautifully, poetically.
The Bird Catcher is the story of Margret Snow, a young New York artist working as a window-dresser at Saks, and her attempts to overcome the grief caused by her husband’s untimely death. She and her late husband, Charles, a Columbia professor several years her elder, had loved to bird-watch together in Cape May, New Jersey. So one of the ways she salvages his memory and pulls herself back into life is to go down to lower Manhattan and collect various birds who, during their migration, were felled by the glass skyscrapers. She retrieves their bodies and performs taxidermy on them — and, really, I never knew how poetic this practice could be, how artistic! And this project of hers eventually figures, rather dangerously, into her job.
There are lighter moments in the novel as well, like the scene above, where she’s at a dinner party and meets this young, sexy Martha Graham dancer named, fittingly, Azam, who ends up figuring rather prominently into things as well.
It’s a really beautiful book. One of those you want to read slowly and really savor the language. And she has a way of making you really feel for her characters. It’s also rather educational. I didn’t know much about different bird species and their migration patterns, or the variety of bird-life passing through New York City and how dangerous those skyscrapers can be to them.
Anyway, Emdashes currently has a contest on, through which you can win a free copy of the book. You have to enter by this Friday. You can do that if you’re on Twitter by responding to @emdashes and giving the name of your favorite bird. If you don’t tweet, then visit James Wolcott’s blog for more details.
And if you don’t yet have a favorite bird (as I didn’t — I mean aside from the obvious), this site seems to be pretty informative.
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.
Continue reading “HAUNTING "LAMENTATION" VARIATIONS AT MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY”
Last night Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest dance company in the U.S. — and one of the most esteemed — opened at Skirball Center at NYU. I love opening nights because they’re so perfect for people watching. Practically all the critics were there as well as several bloggers (Philip has some beautiful pictures), as well as many dancers, from Merce Cunningham (two of whom I met through gracious Apollinaire Scherr!), Jose Limon, and Paul Taylor. And Damian Woetzel from NYCB was there. Happily, I nearly smacked right into the mesmerizing Jonathan Frederickson of Limon a couple of times in the lobby — at least I think it was him — (and, like most dancers and actors, he is far more petite in person than onstage!). And I spotted Michael Apuzzo dashing upstairs to the balcony at the end of the intermission. If you didn’t see it, he actually commented here — how sweet! — but I was still far too shy to say hello, though my friend Alyssa told me I should have…
Over the past week, Rioult (formerly called Pascal Rioult Dance Theater) has become one of my favorite modern dance companies. Artistic director and choreographer Pascal Rioult’s work is like a visual opera, or an opera told all in dance (since opera is already visual). It’s so breathtaking. And his movement style is like a combination of Balanchine and Martha Graham (he danced with Martha Graham’s company). His dances are very expressionistic and full of drama and intensity and his dancers, most of whom are excellent movers, know how to convey that drama by dancing with a real sense of urgency and specificity of purpose. Every movement they make, there seems to be a specific thought behind it. If only all dancers would dance like this…
I saw four pieces over the past week at the Joyce (Chelsea): the world premiere of The Great Mass, set to Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor; and three of Rioult’s classics: Views of the Fleeting World, Les Noces, and Wien. I loved all of them.
The Great Mass, Rioult’s only full-length evening work, is dedicated to Marguerite Rioult, Rioult’s mother, who passed away this year. She was a musician — a piano teacher and choir director, and a lover of Mozart. It’s so much harder to describe works that you really like than works that you don’t, particularly when they’re abstract, but suffice it to say this was really beautiful, and, again, very operatic. I don’t know much about Mozart unfortunately, but the music is choral, and known as his greatest Mass (go here to listen to the “Kyrie” section), and the dance included all sections of the music: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Hosanna. Through much of it dancers wore richly embroidered white bodices with white tulle skirts and danced as if taken by the spirit, in passionate praise and glory.
But my favorite part was the darkest, a middle section from Gloria in which the dancers wore skin-toned leotards and appeared to be either spirits in hell reaching desperately upward toward a light shining brightly from above, or else humans still on earth praying desperately for salvation. They looked almost animalistic, serpentine, as they writhed around on the ground, then crawled about each other, trying to lift themselves upward toward the light. In the following section, three of my favorite dancers in the troupe — Robert Robinson (who looks like a smaller version of Clifton Brown), Jane Sato and Marianna Tsartolia — danced a pas de trois, each woman wrapping her arms and legs snake-like around Robinson, as if they were by turns trying to tempt him and hold onto him for dear life, as if he’d lead the way to salvation. Tsartolia had a more tormented look on her face, and seemed more desperate, while Sato gave her movement a more tempting and seductive feel. Robinson looked like he was trying to retain inner strength. That’s what I loved about these dancers — everyone was so specific in their movement and intent, like they were always playing character.
The second program began with Views of the Fleeting World (pictured above), a long piece set to Bach’s The Art of Fugue, that consisted of many different sections: Orchard (shown above, with the dancers in the gorgeous red skirts), Gathering Storm, Wild Horses, Dusk, Sudden Rain, Night Ride, Summer Wind, Moonlight, and Flowing River. Each section had a different theme and mood and each was accompanied by a different background impressionistic painting. My favorite section was Moonlight, when the magnificient Penelope Gonzalez danced a very sexy, almost entirely floor-bound duet with Brian Flynn. When I was reading up on the company, I read a lot about Gonzalez, and I see why so many critics love her. She is a tiny powerhouse, one of the most remarkable movers I’ve ever seen.
My friend Mika and I were mesmerized by the way they snaked their limbs in, out, over and around each other’s bodies, sometimes a flexed foot, sometimes a pointed toe, how they lifted themselves up from the ground, upper body, then lower body, touching the floor at times only with one small part of their back (talk about a work-out!), how they’d dramatically arch their backs, how she’d slowly climb onto him, he’d lift her with his arms, on his back (that’s hard work too). I was so blown away; this is one of the most brilliantly choreographed, mesmerizingly, tantalizing, beautiful “sex scenes” I’ve ever seen in dance.
Then was Les Noces, Mika’s favorite of the night. It’s set, just like Jerome Robbins’ ballet of the same name, to Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and, like Robbins’, depicts the marriage rite of passage. Whereas Robbins’ (which I wrote about here, near the end) depicted a Russian peasant wedding set about a century ago, Rioult’s is contemporary, and the curtain opens on four women dressed in bras and underwear dancing intensely atop a set of four chairs, kind of Mein Herr-like, the emotion they convey by turns fearful and seductive. After they dance, they help each other into a pair of bloomers and a corset-like waistband. The lights then dim on them and turn to a set of four men, dressed only in underwear, who dance atop four chairs of their own, the emotion similar but more masculine, more angry (perhaps some don’t want to get married, feel like they’re being pressured) At the end of their dance, then don black, tuxedo-like pants. The two groups then turn chairs toward each other, break into four separate male / female pairs, and each pair really goes at each other, an intense battle of the sexes. The consummation scene begins, as in Robbins’, fraught with fear and trepidation and is rather horrifying, but eventually softens and grows sensual. The couples have overcome the storm.
And the evening ended with Wien (Vienna), set to Maurice Ravel’s La Valse (which was originally titled Wien), which has become one of my favorite pieces of music, the same that Balanchine used for his La Valse (which I wrote about here). Rioult’s version carries the same dark themes as Balanchine’s — beauty turned bad, encroaching tragedy, social refinement embodied in the Viennese Waltz disintegrating in the face of human violence and destruction. But here, a small group of several huddle around each other, walking to the waltz in small steps, one right after the other, almost mechanically, or Charlie Chaplin-like. There is something inhuman and distorted about their movement, their need to huddle in a group, and follow the others. As the music swells, they move faster, but they’re moving so quickly, and in circles, that they can’t retain their balance. One in the group will try to reach up to the sky, only to go crashing to the floor. The others, far from helping the fallen one up, simply walk over him or her, making an effort not to trip, but to keep their steps — it’s like they’re in a militaristic march and they can’t step out of line. At points they waltz with each other — men with women, women with women and men with men — but it’s a very grotesque kind of waltzing. The women often look like rag dolls, dead; the men viciously throw them about. The movement is very different from Balanchine’s, but the piece has that same intensely haunting, world-gone-mad quality.
I strongly recommend this company! They’re at the Joyce through the 19th. Go here for info and to see an excerpt from Views of the Fleeting World.
Today I, along with several other bloggers, was invited to a studio rehearsal of Pascal Rioult’s The Great Mass, which will premiere at the Joyce Chelsea in two weeks. Set to Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, it looks like it will be really glorious. Today all the dancers were in workout clothes, and Rioult (who is from France, and a former Martha Graham dancer) gave them instructions, but I can’t wait to see the fully costumed final product onstage.
I really like these rehearsals and am so glad dance companies are inviting us to view the process. First to begin inviting (that I know of anyway) was Cedar Lake Contemporary Dance, then TAKE Dance, Elisa Monte Dance Co., now Rioult, and perhaps Dances Patrelle, upcoming in two weeks as well. The process of dance-making is, I feel, unlike the creation of any other art because of its collaborative nature, and I feel like being allowed into the process a bit allows me to understand the art form better. I wish choreographers would let us to watch even earlier on, when they’re very first conceiving a work! As long as my schedule is flexible, I love coming to these things. I feel like Edwin Denby watching Balanchine! đŸ™‚
Anyway, more to come on Rioult as soon as their season begins in two weeks. In the meantime, visit their website for info and a video of his dance set to Maurice Ravel music.
