MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY

Martha Graham’s rich and long lasting legacy, her powerful and original technique, strong voice, and revolutionary vision were evident during the GALA performance at City Center, “American Legacies,” celebrating one hundred years since her first work on three women. 

Company dancer, Lloyd Knight introduced the evening which began with the lively, eccentric solo Satyric Festival Song (1932), originally danced and costumed by Graham herself. Guest artist FKA twigs, recognized widely as a pioneer in the music industry as well as a ballet and modern dancer who trained in the Graham technique in her early years, channeled Graham’s perfectionism and wild abandon in this dance. Original music by Imre Weisshaus, was reconstructed by Fernando Palacios, and the original choreography was reconstructed in 1994 by Diane Gray and Janet Eilber. With asymmetrical upper and lower body contortions, angles, playful and teasing, FKA twigs, hinges at the waist, flops her head and hair forward and back. She flirts with sequential jiggling that rises from her legs up to her head, jumps high in the air; a spright, offering humor and delight, her movement seducing the audience to wait for more. 

Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the company introduced the next dance, Maple Leaf Rag, (1990), which Graham choreographed at the age of ninety six, the last dance she created before her death in 1991. Eilber is wise to educate the audience on these historical notes, adding gravitas and respect to the significance of these performances. With music by Scott Joplin performed live on piano by Siouan Zhang, nineteen dancers in pastel skirts and leggings (Calvin Klein), cavort and tease around an elongated bench that resembles a ballet barre. 

The stage is set for one, then two, then three, then more dancers entering and leaving with strong phases of movement. Attitude marches, flexed foot skips, big leaps, proceed over the enjoyable Joplin score. Intermittently the proceedings are interrupted by the entrance of the ominous Graham-like figure in white flowing skirt, moving grandly across the stage to dirge-like base notes, as if to say, “Don’t have too much fun;” the voice of the stern task-mistress. Seeing this piece and knowing it was her last work, brought poignancy and reverence for Graham who was able to face her own end with lightness and mirth. 

Before the final performance of the evening, Janet Eilber, as an advocate of Graham’s early pioneering influence on gender equality, recognized three outstanding women, leaders in their fields of endeavor: Donna Shalela, who among other many achievements in government, human services, and education, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008; Adrienne Holder, for her war on poverty as a lawyer with Legal Aid Society; and FKA twigs, tonight’s guest artist, for her groundbreaking career in music and theater. 

Rite of Spring (1984) brought down the house. Graham who created this work at the age of 90, met her creative match with the astonishing musical score by Igor Stravinsky, composed in 1913 for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Revolutionary in its day, the music plays with pulsating rhythms, atonal, raw and instinctual musical choices that tell the story of a primitive culture that sacrifices a virgin to appease the gods and bring spring forward after the “death” of winter, ensuring continuity of the tribe. 

Janet Eilber conceived the new production concept; costumed by Pilar Limner, projection by Paul Lieber. The stand out of this performance was Xin Ying (The Chosen One), the sacrificed virgin. Once she is chosen by the Shaman, (Alessio Crognole Roberts), the anguish, resistance, and eventual acceptance of her fate, is passionately, brilliantly embodied in her relentless appeal to hang on to life until the very end. Stravinsky’s plaintive score (performed live by The Mannes Orchestra under the direction of David Hayes) underscores her drama. 

Photos by Isabella Pagano

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Mary Seidman