Tomorrow and the Martha Graham Company: the legal nightmare over, the dancers are leaping into the future

Dance Magazine, July, 2005 by Doris Hering

Fourteen women, closely aligned, wait for tire piano to begin. Young and impossibly slender, the dancers bristle with contained energy. They cross the floor in a gait so sustained that poet Ben Belitt once called it "the heels' blow upon space." They are members of the Martha Graham Dance Company at work on Graham's Primitive Mysteries. The dance itself is 70 years old and very sturdy.

As they finish, a refrain from Graham's epic Clytemnestra comes to mind: "Rebirth, rebirth." It is 14 years since this great American choreographer's death, and after a period of unwonted chaos, the future of her company at last looms clear.

The costly and tedious court cases initiated by Ron Protas, Graham's legatee who contested ownership of her works, have now been constructively settled. It was all exasperating journey that prevented the company from staging any of Graham's 111 works and threatened their permanent loss to the dance world. Gradually, with the help of film and video, plus recollections by former Graham dancers, the major works (created especially between 1930 and 1960) are returning to the stage. And 2006, which marks the company's 80th anniversary, will be crowned by a revival of Letter to the World (1940), her poignant evocation of the life and art of poet Emily Dickinson.

Trained in the eclectic, storytelling dance of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Graham was a pioneer in every sense of the word. In 1926, her first year as an independent artist, she gave birth to 29 new dances. A number of them, with titles like Danse Languide and Maid with the Flaxen Hair, were in the chiffon style of the time. But she searched and she experimented, and a fresh way of moving began to emerge.

Her compact torso took on percussive variations of breathing, as if she were gripped by an inner storm. Instead of denying gravity, as ballet performers did, she embraced the earth in circling falls. Instead of softly curving, her elbows were angled or straight, her wrists flexed, her hands held like small, peaked roofs. This decisive new movement language was accentuated by Graham's own physical identity: her tightly molded cheeks; shining, deep-set eyes; and a cascade of straight black hair, later arranged with the strong sense of design that also characterized the costumes she devised.

By 1930 Graham had begun to hit her creative stride with the solo Lamentation. Encased in a stretch of tubular jersey, she sat on a bench and, with her torso deeply contracting, incarnated tragedy. She was not a specific woman weeping over a specific loved one, but the essence of all bereft people in all of time.

The 1930s were an era of rampant social conscience in American art. Graham's Chronicle, with its bold rhythms, and Deep Song, with its echo of the Spanish Civil War, were again not literal, but powerfully evocative. Her heroic period was on the way. The 1940s, with its dedicated female ensemble (soon augmented by a cadre of males), brought forth important works like Seraphic Dialogue, Appalachian Spring, Night Journey, and Clytemnestra.

By no means willingly, Graham retired from dancing in 1969. She was 74. For 22 more years she continued to shape the company. Now it is directed by two dancers who inherited some of her roles. Quite different from each other in style, they stand reassuringly of one mind about the future of the repertoire. Christine Dakin is the Apollonian. Her attack is heroic, her use of stillness meaningful. She entered the company 29 years ago. It's 26 years for Terese Capucilli, who is the Dionysian--swift and windswept. While both still love to perform, they limit their appearances and are more generous than Graham about delegating their roles to younger company members.

Since last year's New York season they have honed the company. The soloists now rise clearly above the impeccable ensemble, punctuating it like jewels in a setting. Katherine Crockett has become a truly commanding presence; with a single forceful gesture, Fang-Yi Sheu illuminates the entire action, while Miki Orihara's warmth adds welcome contrast. The other soloists, while not so consistent, have earned their positions at the apex of the company. Beginning to surge through the ranks are Erika Dankrneyer, Carrie Elhnore-Tallitsch, Maurizio Nardi, Heidi Stoeckley, and David Znrak.

What about the long-range future of the Graham company? Should the output of other choreographers be regularly added? If so, should they be philosophically related to the founder's, or should they strike out in unfamiliar directions?

Over the years, Graham trained many dancers who then left her to seek paths of their own. Some used her style as a creative base; others rebelled against it. Capucilli and Dakin may eventually consider existing works by some of these choreographers. Capucilli says, "We have an idea of putting oil the stage work by Graham alumni that is not seen anymore, that doesn't have a home, like Jane Dudley, Anna Sokolow, Bertam Ross, Erick Hawkins, and Pearl Lang."

In addition they will occasionally commission a choreographer whose style is compatible with Graham's. This season's choice, at City' Center in April, was Martha Clarke. Her new Suenos was inspired by the fiercely realistic 18th-century prints of Francisco Goya. Clarke, at one time a Graham student, creates theater pieces with a dance overlay, while Graham created dance with a theater overlay. In its intentional chaos, Suenos did not accumulate to a climax, even when Maurizio Nardi, as a hanged corpse, began to laugh hysterically. Followed by Grahaln's Sketches from Chronicle, with its taut, well-ordered bursts of action, Suenos appeared somewhat random.