Choreographer Luca Veggetti (above) is creating a new work for the Martha Graham Dance Company. One afternoon last week, I asked photographer Matt Murphy to meet me at the Graham company's vast space on the eleventh floor of the famed Westbeth building down on Bethune Street to take some pictures of Luca's rehearsal. I was delighted to find Miki Orihara there, assisting the choreographer and working with the individual dancers.
Blakeley White-McGuire looked striking in a sapphire leotard that set off her brilliant blue eyes. She's taking to the Veggetti style with compelling intensity; I loved watching her throughout the rehearsal.
Luca has three Asian beauties in his cast: Ying Xin (above, with Blakeley)...
...Xiaochuan Xie...
...and PeiJu Chien-Potts...
...as well as the radiant Mariya Dashkina Maddux (with Luca, above).
The new work is set to a score entitled From the Grammar of Dreams by Kaija Saariaho, the contemporary Finnish composer. In Autumn 2010 Luca staged Saariaho's ballet MAA at the Miller Theater; his movement style and the composer's sonic dreamscapes seem made for one another. In the passages from the new work that I heard in the studio, the composer's vocal uulations, whirls and trills evoke images of restless nymphs darting about in a long-lost forest, pausing magically in awareness of the voices of nature.
Here are some more of Matt's images from the rehearsal:
Ying Xin, Luca and Blakeley
Pei-Ju Chien Potts
Xiaochuan Xie
Blakeley, Ying Xin
Xiaochuan Xie
Blakeley White-McGuire
All photographs by Matt Murphy.