Xiaochuan Xie and Ben Schultz in Rite of Spring;
photo by Hibbard Nash Photography
THOROUGHLY
MODERN MARTHA
True to the vision of its forward-thinking founder,
Martha Graham Dance Company is embracing the future.
By Michelle Vellucci
Katherine Crockett is dancing in her living room during our phone interview. She
explains that moving is helping her to
formulate her thoughts about Clytemnestra, Martha Graham’s masterwork about
the notorious murderess of Greek myth.
Crockett, who has been dancing with Martha Graham Dance Company since 1993,
will perform the title role in a condensed,
one-act version of Clytemnestra during the
company’s engagement here at New York
City Center this month.
“The goal is to find an arrangement that
has a freshness but that maintains the
structure and beauty of Martha’s vision,”
Crockett says.
She might as well be describing the goal
of the company itself. In the two decades
since Martha Graham’s death, the company has weathered financial troubles, a legal battle over the rights to Graham’s work,
and the Hurricane Sandy–related loss
of historic sets and costumes. Now, the
company is focused on charging fearlessly
into the future while continuing to honor
Graham’s legacy as the founding mother of
Katherine Crockett as Clytemnestra in Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra; photo by Hibbard Nash Photography
American modern dance.
Leading this effort is Janet Eilber, who
has been artistic director since 2005.
“Martha had a great intuition about the future. She was astute about how the audience was changing and what they wanted,”
says Eilber, who worked closely with Graham during her time as a principal dancer
with the company in the 1970s. “Although
I try to say that I don’t know what Martha
would have wanted, I do know what she
would not have wanted. She would not have
wanted us to freeze her dances in time.”
The company’s City Center season offers evidence that they are doing no such
thing. In addition to Graham’s Appalachian
Spring (celebrating its 70 th anniversary
this year) and Rite of Spring (celebrating
its 30th), the program includes the new
version of Clytemnestra, as well as two
brand-new works by contemporary choreographers Nacho Duato and Andonis Foniadakis.
“It’s been a slow build, bringing new
works into our repertory,” Eilber says.
“Just in the last year or so we’ve really felt
the combination of new works and Graham
works coalescing, and audiences seeing
how the new work frames and resonates
with the Graham work and vice versa. It
gives people a perspective on the legacy of
American modern dance.”
Eilber says the company was eager to
work with Duato again after collaborating
with him last season on Rust, a dance for
five men. Duato had not yet begun setting
the new work at the time of our interview,
but the company had already performed a
few sneak previews of Foniadakis’s piece,
Echo, which is based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. “He took the idea of one’s
other self, of echoes in movement, and
created an abstract work out of that,” Eilber explains. “It’s very high-energy dancing.
And to have this flowing, constantly moving work is a great complement to Martha’s
very structural Greek works.”
“We’re absolutely excited to have these
diverse choreographers,” Crockett adds.
“Because we are mostly Graham-trained,
it’s definitely stepping out into the unknown. But that is precisely what is important to growth. Martha Graham is not
alive anymore, but the creative process is
essential to the life of a company, and you
have these living dancers who need a living
choreographer to explore with. And how
exciting to see what the offspring of these
marriages will be.”
In addition to the new dances, the classic
Graham works also will get a fresh spin in
one form or another. In the case of Rite of
Spring, whose sets and costumes were lost
in the flooding of Hurricane Sandy, much
of the set will now be created with projection. “We had to look at the opportunities
that came along with the destruction, and
one was to create a production of Rite of
Spring that would be easier for us to tour
with,” Eilber says.
Works that are easier to tour means the
company can perform for more audiences,
and this was in part the impetus for creating the distilled version of Clytemnestra.
And, Eilber adds, “bringing it down to one
hour means there can be more works on
the program.”
Clytemnestra is a favorite role for
Crockett. “First off, what a juicy, fabulous
character to play,” she says. “There are so
many layers to Clytemnestra. She’s this
murderess, but she’s attempting to show
what led her to do what she did. You feel
for her.
“I feel like Martha’s work touches something really deep inside of the person who’s
doing it and the person who’s watching it.
She said that ‘my work is not necessarily
meant to be understood; it’s meant to be
experienced.’”
Rounding out the City Center season is
Appalachian Spring, Graham’s 1944 paean
to the spirit of the American frontier, set
to Aaron Copland’s iconic score. And Ma-
ple Leaf Rag, Graham’s final work, shows
the choreographer’s humorous side. “It’s
about a choreographer who is blocked, so
she asks her pianist to play the ‘Maple Leaf
Rag’ to get her out of the doldrums, which
is what Martha used to do back in the day,”
Eilber says. “It’s a joke about her entire
career. She makes fun of herself and how
serious she was.”
Eilber is happy to be bringing the company back to City Center, where it has a
long history. “When I was a dancer back in
the ’70s, of the things I remember is that
Martha knew the names of most of the
technical staff and she would come into
the theater and personally say hello to the
crew. And of course they adored her for it.
“The combination of new works and
Graham classics look so beautiful on that
stage,” she continues. “It’s great for us to
return to City Center and to let audiences
see how new choreography frames and
resonates with the Graham masterworks
in a state-of-the-art operatic setting.
And at the same time they’ll see that we
have a lot of momentum and that we’re
doing new and interesting things.”
Michelle Vellucci, New York City Center’s
communications associate, has written about
dance for Dance Magazine, The Brooklyn
Rail, amNewYork, and Flavorwire.
(left) Mariya Dashkina Maddux in Appalachian Spring; photo by Hibbard Nash Photography
(right) Martha Graham Dance Company in Rite of Spring; photo by Sinru Ku