Martha Graham Dance returns to Cleveland
Miki Orihara is shown in Martha
Graham Dance Company’s “Errand Into the
Maze.” Photo:
John Deane
By Roger Durbin
CLEVELAND — A few years ago, the odds would have been against DANCECleveland bringing back the Martha Graham Dance Company to Cleveland. However, the odds were in DANCECleveland’s favor and for the first time in more than 10 years, the company will perform in Cleveland at the Ohio Theatre Nov. 3-4.
After the legendary choreographer Martha Graham (1894-1991) died, her heir laid claim to all her works and shut down hopes of the company she’d founded to perform them. But, as Janet Eilber, Martha Graham Dance Company artistic director, said in a recent telephone interview, the company sued and won, gaining rights to perform 179 of the 181 Graham dances. Those in the public domain, she added, can of course be done, and have been. Eilber hopes the Graham Dance Company will be able one day to negotiate rights to perform the two hold-outs.
In the meantime, Eilber will
lead the group to perform as part of this year’s
DANCECleveland series. In sync with the company’s
endeavor to focus almost
exclusively on the repertoire of “one of the dance
geniuses of the 20th century,” or on works that
pay homage to her, Eilber said, the Graham Dance Company
will perform six of her creations, with four being performed
at the Saturday performance — “Errand Into
the Maze,” “Ardent Song (Redux),”
“Diversion of Angels” and “Acts
of Light.” The Sunday performance will repeat
“Diversion of Angels”
and add Graham’s “Embattled Garden”
and “Sketches From Chronicle.”
“Errand Into the Maze,” said Eilber, is a retelling of the Theseus and the Minotaur tale, only “Martha sends in a woman instead.” The work can be read on at least two levels, Eilber adds, as the myth itself of the woman facing the “creature of fear” or on a more modern psychological plain of doing battle with one’s emotional enemies and triumphing.
“Ardent Song (Redux)”
is a modern update by company members of a “lost”
Graham work that was first
performed in London in 1954. No videotape or other notation
was done, so Eilber and others put together the costumes,
scenery and musical score, which they had, and added
the memories of dancers from the past who had performed
the work. In the process, they had to update with a
modern edge, but always keeping this tale of variations
on the influence of the
moon in “primal rituals” during its presence
from nightfall until sunrise within the Graham technique
and style.
“Acts of Light” is
special in the dance company’s repertoire because
it is basically a “theatricalization of the famous
Martha Graham technique,” said Eilber, much as
dancers would experience in a typical Graham dance class.
The work, in fact, celebrates
dancers as instruments of expression, she said. The
second section, “Lament,” shows the body
of a woman encased in an elastic white fabric as though
it is a membrane being reshaped as expressions of various
strong emotions.
Although “Diversion of
Angels” is set on a large cast of 11, the principal
focus is on three women (one in white, the others in
red and yellow) with their
partners to represent respectively mature love in perfect
balance, erotic love and adolescent love.
In the title “Embattled
Garden,” Eilber said “you can pretty much
guess which garden Graham is thinking of,” especially
with Adam, Eve and the legendary “first wife”
of Adam, Lilith, listed as the characters. The dance
introduces a Stranger (read serpent)
and the hi-jinks surrounding love, lust and betrayal
begin.
“Only 16 years after women
got the right to vote,” Eilber said, Graham created
a work for women in protest of the rise of Nazi Germany
three years before the outbreak of World War II. In
fact, Graham had been invited to perform at the 1936
Olympics Games in Germany but refused to participate
when they were sponsored
by a government that had persecuted so many of her friends
and associates. The work isn’t so much about war,
but about the consequences on the human spirit —
one more “tragedy of war” as Graham said.
Performances will take place
at 8 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets
are $18 to $60 and can be purchased by calling (216)
241-6000 or at www.playhouse
square.com.
Roger Durbin is associate dean
and professor of bibliography for University Libraries
at The University of Akron and board director of the
Dance Critics Association. To contact him, e-mail r.durbin@sbc
global.net.
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