Author: Oberon
Tuesday, January 16th, 2018 - In their ongoing series of studio presentations entitled GrahamDeconstructed, the Martha Graham Dance Company tonight turned the spotlight on Graham's masterpiece RITE OF SPRING at the Company's home-space at Westbeth. Though billed as a 'rehearsal', the evening had a thrilling sense of immediacy that few dance companies could hope to achieve even in high-performance mode.
Martha Graham’s RITE OF SPRING premiered in 1984, some 70 years after Stravinsky's score and Nijinsky's original choreography touched off a riot at the Ballets Russes' first performance of the work at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, on May 29th, 1913.
This evening's presentation of the Graham RITE served as a warm-up for the Company's upcoming international tour performances of the ballet. And what a warm-up!: to some of the most physically demanding choreography imaginable, the dancers of the Graham Company brought the strength, passion, artistry, and personal commitment that set them in the highest echelon of the dance world.
Graham's RITE OF SPRING has two central characters: The Chosen One (tonight danced with striking intensity by PeiJu Chien-Pott) and The Shaman (an implacable force, danced by the magnetic Ben Schultz). The dancers of the corps de ballet have to be powerhouse stars in their own right, such is the level of technique and stamina that Graham requires of them. Watching them at such close range - at times I could have reached out and touched them - left me in a state of awe at their beauty and their boundless devotion to the dance. And so they shall all be named: the Annes (O'Donnell and Souder), Natasha M. Diamond-Walker, Leslie Andrea Williams, Laurel Dalley Smith, So Young An, and Marzia Memoli; the Lloyds (Knight and Mayor), Lorenzo Pagano, Abdiel Jacobsen, Ari Mayzick, Leon Cobb, Jacob Larsen, and Alessio Crognale.
While watching this ensemble in unison passages was exciting for their musicality and sense of unity, it was equally telling to focus on individual dancers or couples to savour both the steps and the detailed port de bras and hand gestures with which Graham tells the story of a community both entranced and enflamed by this ritual of death.
After tonight's RITE, the Company's artistic director Janet Eilber asked the dancers to introduce themselves and tell us where they are from. They are from everywhere: from Taiwan to Torino, from Bath, England, to the Ivory Coast. It struck me as eminently providential that these young people have gathered from near and far in this room in Gotham to carry on the work of a woman who was born at the end of the 19th century.
Here are some images by photographer Melissa Sherwood from this evening's presentation of RITE OF SPRING:
PeiJu Chien-Pott as The Chosen One and Ben Schultz as The Shaman
PeiJu Chien-Pott as The Chosen One and Ben Schultz as The Shaman, with Abdiel Jacobsen and Lloyd Knight
Lloyd Knight, Alessio Crognale, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Lorenzo Pagano, and Lloyd Mayor
Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne O'Donnell, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Ben Schultz
PeiJu Chien-Pott as The Chosen One
The Martha Graham Dance Company now embark on a tour that will take them to such far-away places as Key West, Luxembourg, Québec, and Taiwan. And then, from April 11th - 14th, 2018, they will be at New York's City Center for programs which feature Graham masterworks and rarities, and choreography by Lucinda Childs, Lar Lubovitch, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
With thanks to Ms. Sherwood for the images, and to Janet Eilber, Denise Vale, and Janet Stapleton for making it all happen.
~ Oberon
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