New York City — Thirteen years after the death of Martha Graham, the great pioneering modern dancer and choreographer, her works look fresher than they have in years as the Martha Graham Dance Company is performing them at City Center. The engagement concludes tomorrow.
Although Miss Graham’s powerful works, among the most precious of the 20th century, have appeared endangered until recently by prolonged legal wrangling over control of her artistic estate, the company has been reborn, with new spirit and many new dancers added to its ranks.
Her powerfully dramatic dances are always a challenge. Some of the newer dancers already have the understanding but not yet the necessary power. Others are excellent, and the amazing Fang-Yi Sheu danced with an intensity reminiscent of Miss Graham herself. High praise indeed.
After many years of using recordings of the original commissioned music by the likes of Paul Hindemith, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti and Alan Hovhaness, the company is accompanied by scores played live by a 35-piece orchestra (unfortunately amplified).
The unique look of Miss Graham’s stage is enhanced by Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural sets and wonderful costumes by Miss Graham herself as well as such high-fashion designers as Halston, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Their presence points up, perhaps inadvertently, the strengths and foibles, the highs and lows of Miss Graham’s long, remarkable career.
The company is alternating just two programs in its two-week season, a tantalizing glimpse of a larger repertoire that contains at least two dozen genuine masterpieces. The dances being shown, however, are enough to sketch out the arc of Miss Graham’s creative path.
In the early 1930s, after years of developing her own distinctive movement style — the foundation of the great works that followed — she began turning out strong, arresting dances for a company that was then all female.
Today, the 1932 “Sketches From Chronicle” looks astonishingly modern because of its vivid simplicity. Miss Graham referred to the early ’30s as her “long woolen underwear” period because of the taut knitted sheaths she sometimes wore. “Chronicle,” however, with its galvanizing figure (Miss Sheu) standing on a platform manipulating a long red-and-black skirt, revealed Miss Graham’s incipient theatrical flair, which would express itself in stage pictures enlivened by barbaric gold jewelry and swirling capes in royal purple and scarlet.
In the ’40s and ’50s men entered the company, expanding the possibilities for drama. Miss Graham’s innate theatricality came to the fore as she reinterpreted Greek myths from the woman’s viewpoint and with a Freudian slant. Most of her fame rests on works made during this period.
The company is dancing three — “Herodiade,” “Errand Into the Maze” and “Cave of the Heart.” The first two are duets, exploring an important moment of self-awareness, a favorite theme of Miss Graham’s.
In “Herodiade,” Miss Sheu was electric as the woman who is “doom-eager,” to use the choreographer’s phrase. The other character is her attendant, who seeks to comfort or calm her, but the life fully lived is the one Miss Graham is after, and hang the consequences.
“Errand Into the Maze,” the other duet, has aged less well, perhaps because Miss Graham used men principally as phallic symbols, a stance that looks foolish rather than daring today.
One of her most searing roles was in “Cave of the Heart,” in which she played Medea, half-crazed by jealousy as her husband fell in love with a younger woman. No one has created a more demonic picture, as Medea appears to eat her own entrails (suggested by a red ribbon) and disgorges them, mercilessly kills the younger woman and then staggers around the stage inside golden branches Mr. Noguchi has designed that radiate outward like devouring flames.
The fourth figure in this drama is a woman who acts as a Greek chorus, watching the tragedy unfold, powerless to forestall it.
Christine Dakin, co-director of the company with Terese Capucilli, is a senior dancer who performed Medea with understanding, but it would be good to see Miss Sheu in the role. Kenneth Topping was the agonized husband; Yuko Suzuki was all luminous innocence as his young love; and Heidi Stoeckley was more gracious than implacable as the Chorus.
After more than three decades of white-hot inspiration came lesser works, a growing focus on males as studs, a recycling of earlier material, and at times an uncomfortable sense of self-parody.
Two from these later years also are on view: the lighthearted “Maple Street Rag” and “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which features Andre Leon Talley, editor-at-large for Vogue magazine. A portly sight in natty clothes by Ralph Lauren, he is neither dancer nor actor, but he at least ensured that plenty of monied designers turned up for the opening-night gala.
The reinvigorated Martha Graham Dance Company will perform at the Kennedy Center next February.
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