Graham’s Heroines Revel in Reflection

Martha Graham’s heroines think; they take stock, look ahead, and look back. And she makes sure that we know they do by having them spend a considerable amount of time standing or sitting still, dwelling within their reflections. Their long and complex dance passages can also be construed as interior monologues, but Graham realized that action will always, first and foremost, connote action. Her characters exist almost equally in movement and repose, and they are situated within a local, as well as within an epic, framework.In “Appalachian Spring,” which the Martha Graham Dance Company performed Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater, the dancers begin the piece by walking out procession style, imparting a ritualistic flavor to all that follows. The piece both specifically alludes to the waves of settlers who appropriated the American wilderness and also imparts timeless reverberations of new worlds and societies being born.Graham was in a mellow mood when she composed “Appalachian Spring,” which was first performed in 1944, with its score commissioned from Aaron Copland. Given Graham’s interest in American Indian culture, one wonders at times why we don’t see in the work any members of the native population that the settlers are in the process of displacing. As it turns out, however, Graham had included an Indian in preliminary drafts of the ballet, a fact the troupe’s artistic director, Janet Eilber, disclosed in a post-performance question-and-answer session. But putting an Indian on-stage here would have distracted from Graham’s lyrical but unsentimental romanticizing of the settlement of the West and the pioneer spirit she wanted to extol.In “Appalachian Spring,” the bride and husbandman are welcomed by a serene, authoritative, sagacious pioneering woman, and a revivalist, who is something of a study in American Gothic, and is attended by a flock of adoring young women congregants. These four major coordinates sometimes intersect, and sometimes three are still while one takes center stage. Graham differentiates each coordinate down to the way that he or she clasps hands or rest them in their laps.The pioneering woman and the revivalist project confidence arising from life experience or doctrinal certitude. But the newlyweds are more skittish, best by hopes and doubts. Sometimes they are eager to forge ahead, and sometimes it seems as though they must muster bravado to propel themselves forward. Their series of solos are ongoing series of stops, surges, and vacillations; what is never in doubt is their attachment to each other.On Tuesday night, the bride role was danced by Blakeley White-McGuire; David Zurak was the husbandman; Katherine Crockett was the pioneering woman, and Maruizio Nardi the revivalist. All four danced splendidly and understood exactly who they were meant to be; they remained as true in the moments when each recedes as during the times when each is meant to engage our attention. They sustained thebreadth of the piece, arising from Graham’s evocation of the wide-open space surrounding the characters; the space is as much the subject of the work as they are. The dancers part the space before them; they gaze into a limitless expanse. Their forays and retreats keep us always aware of psychically charged space between the individuals as well as of the larger surround.In “Errand into the Maze,” which followed the intermission, Graham appropriates for herself a hero’s journey from ancient mythology: Theseus’s venture into the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur. The external mission is also a journey through the psychological interior. The Minotaur is monstrous, garbed in war paint and antlers, but he’s more than an ogre: He’s an athletic man scantily dressed, and it seems Graham intends for him to represent sex and her fear of it. The struggle and eventual victory of Theseus, here played by a woman, is ambiguous, and that helps to make this duet ever-intriguing. The heroine is not entirely sympathetic because she clings to buffering inhibitions that provide a safe haven. As a result, we sometimes root for the creature, hoping he will break through her defenses. She vanquishes him three times, the last time for good, and following his final exit she does now seem to have made a real breakthrough. Her arms, which she’s held protectively over her waist, now open out expansively.Miki Orihara was the traveler into the labyrinth and Tadej Brdnik the creature. They were eloquent and equally formidable combatants. Mr. Brdnik was even able to suggest qualities beyond brutishness, and Ms. Orihara, as tiny, dainty, and delicate as she is, was able to rise to the seismic and stentorian frequencies of her heroine’s plight.Wednesday’s performance concluded with a searing performance of “Sketches from ‘Chronicle,'” led by Elizabeth Auclair, explicitly but not entirely martial, and Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch, defender of the disposed and dispossessed.

Graham’s Heroines Revel in Reflection

Graham’s Heroines Revel in Reflection

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