Above: Miki Orihara in Graham's Hérodiade
Wednesday November 20, 2013 - Two of today's foremost interpreters of the works of Martha Graham - Miki Orihara and Katherine Crockett - appeared tonight in a studio showing of the great choreographer's 1944 work Hérodiade. As a splendid prelude, Ms. Crockett also danced Spectre-1914. It was an evening that resonated for me in so many different ways.
Martha Graham Dance Company's artistic director Janet Eilber welcomed an overflow crowd to this second of three presentations of this programme. The Company's spacious studio/theater on the eleventh floor of the Westbeth complex had been hung with black drapes, and after Ms. Eilber's brief remarks, the majestic Katherine Crockett appeared to dance Spectre-1914, the opening solo from Martha Graham's Chronicle.
Above: Katherine Crockett, photographed by Matt Murphy
Chronicle, dating from 1936, is Graham's powerful statement on the devastation and futility of war; it is a great masterwork for female ensemble and it opens with a magnificent solo in which the dancer manipulates a voluminous skirt lined in red fabric to evoke both the bloodshed and the flames of war.
Spectre-1914 had all but passed from memory until 1994 when it was researched and reconstructed by Terese Capucilli and Carol Fried, using film clips and still photos by Barbara Morgan. May Terpsichore bless these women for their efforts, for Spectre-1914 is as powerful a dancework as may be found, and it was danced tonight with marvelous amplitude and a deep sense of consecration by the marvelous Katherine Crockett. The audience beheld the dance in an awed state of pin-drop silence.
Above: the Isamu Noguchi set pieces for Martha Graham's Hérodiade
After the Noguchi setting had been swiftly installed in the space, we watched a full performance of Graham's ballet Hérodiade. Set to music by Paul Hindemith and commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of Congress, the ballet was originally called Mirror Before Me, and was first seen on October 30, 1944, at the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Writing of that performance for the New York Times (November 1, 1944), critic John Martin said: "Miss Graham has created a powerful study of a woman awaiting a 'mysterious destiny' of which she has no knowledge...into it she has poured a somber tension that is relentless and altogether gripping. The music is rich and dark in color and the action on the stage meets it magnificently on its own terms."
That music, scored for chamber orchestra, was written by Paul Hindemith, a composer perhaps best-loved in the dance world for his superb Four Temperaments, choreographed by Balanchine.
When I received the announcement that Hérodiade would be performed this evening, I suppose my natural reaction as an opera-lover was that it would be a dance about the Biblical princess Herodias and her daughter Salome and their conspiracy to have the prophet John the Baptist executed. But that is not the case: there are no allusions to either the Strauss or Massenet operas, nor to the Bible, nor to Oscar Wilde who penned the famous play Salome - Salome does not figure in the Graham work at all.
Martha Graham had been interested in the poem Hérodiade by Stephane Mallarmé and in creating her ballet, the choreographer eschewed a specific narrative and instead turned to an abstraction of the character. Herodias is never named; she is simply referred to as 'A Woman'. In Graham's description, we see "a glimpse into the mirror of one's being," and she refers to this Woman as 'doom-eager', going forth with resolve to embrace her destiny.
The Hindemith score is in eleven short movements, and we watch with intense interest as the radiant Miki Orihara, as the Woman in a deep violet gown, and the more austere Ms. Cockett, her Attendant in simple grey, move about the space. The choreography is restless and urgent, the Woman clearly obsessed with whatever fate awaits her while the Attendant seeks to comfort or forestall her mistress. The two dancers were simply engrossing to behold: Miki often in rapid, complex combinations moving swiftly about the stage while Katherine deployed her uncanny extension with mind-boggling expressiveness.
In the end, Miki steps out of her rich gown and is revealed in virginal white; the Attendant withdraws and the Woman, taking up a black veil, contemplates her destiny. Mysterious, and all the more powerful for the unanswered questions it raises, Hérodiade is breath-taking.