Above: from Paul Hindemith's score for Martha Graham's Hérodiade
~ Author: Oberon
Tuesday January 15th, 2019 - Let me begin by saying: if you have never been to the Noguchi Museum in Queens, it is a fascinating destination. I suggest adding a Spring or Summertime visit your calendar.
Tonight, at the Martha Graham Studio Theatre, the Graham Company's Artistic Director Janet Eilber welcomed us to this presentation in the ongoing GrahamDeconstructed series. Ms. Eilber spoke of the Company's EVE Project, which spans a two-year period and will culminate in 2020, marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which guarantees all American women the right to vote.
Both of the Graham works shown this evening - El Penitente (1940) and Hérodiade (1944) - will be performed during the Graham Company's 2019 season at The Joyce. Details here.
Danced to music by longtime Graham collaborator Louis Horst, El Penitente was premiered on August 11, 1940, at the Bennington College Theater in Bennington, Vermont. The original set was by Arch Lauterer; Isamu Noguchi later designed new stage decor.
In a sunbaked village in the American Southwest, sometime between then and now, a small troupe of itinerant players present a series of Bible-story vignettes, centering on themes of penance. In the first of these, Lloyd Knight gave a devastating performance in a dance of redemption from sin by self-flagellation. Ever the most alluring of dancers, Lloyd's performance lingered on the edge of the danger zone: his striking physique drenched in sweat from his self-inflicted torture.
His fellow rustic thespians then join: Ben Schultz as a Christ figure, robed all in black with a hooded mask and a Crown of Thorns, and Anne O'Donnell embodying in turn the Virgin, the Magdalen, and the Mother. In their stylized dance and story-telling, culminating in the Crucifixion, all three dancers were perfect; at the end, they discard their props and bits of costuming and perform a celebratory trio.
Images from El Penitente, photos by Melissa Sherwood:
Temptation: Lloyd Knight and Anne O'Donnell
Final trio: Ben Schultz, Anne O'Donnell, Lloyd Knight
Isamo Noguchi and Martha Graham formed an artistic alliance on a par with that of Mozart and Da Ponte, or Balanchine and Stravinsky. As the Noguchi set pieces for Graham's ballet Hérodiade were moved into place tonight, their utter simplicity spoke volumes: can a stage set resonate, all on its own? During the ballet's musical prelude, before the dancers entered, a feeling of anticipation and mystery filled the space, conjured up by the sight of these bone-white sculptures: a chair made from nothing, an armoire that is only a standing X, a mirror unlike any other. This is the magic of Noguchi, which Graham understood and utilized to make her danceworks radiate with timeless meaning.
Hérodiade, set to marvelously moody music by Paul Hindemith. was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of Congress. Originally titled Mirror Before Me, it was premiered on October 30th, 1944, at the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The music of Paul Hindemith is best-known in the dance world for his fascinating Four Temperaments, choreographed by Balanchine. Martha Graham sidestepped allusions to the Biblical queen Herodias and her daughter Salome and their conspiracy to have the prophet John the Baptist executed (on which operas by Strauss and Massenet operas dwelt). Instead, Graham - drawing on the poem Hérodiade by Stephane Mallarmé - has set aside a specific narrative and presents instead an intimate scene of 'A Woman', alone with her attendant, preparing for some unspecified public event. The atmosphere tingles with anticipation and dread, the movement is vividly stylized, with passages of urgency and of contemplation. Martha Graham described it as "...a glimpse into the mirror of one's being..." and described The Woman as 'doom-eager', going forth with resolve to meet whatever fate has in store for her.
Images from Hérodiade, photos by Melissa Sherwood:
Anne Souder, Xin Ying
Anne Souder, Xin Ying
I first saw Hérodiade in this very space, fully-costumed, in November 2013; Miki Orihara and Katherine Crockett were the dancers. This evening, in practice clothes, Xin Ying (The Woman) and Anne Souder (The Attendant) made the roles their own with intense poetry of movement and gestures that grew naturally out of the music. Both women dance with every fiber of their being; along with Ms. O'Donnell in El Penitente, they embody the power and beauty of the eternal feminine spirit thru their personal commitment.
~ Oberon