This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 13, 2011 - Back in St. Louis this weekend for the first time in 20 years, the Martha Graham Dance Company will perform an array of dances at the Touhill that span the choreographer's illustrious eight-decade career.
The program opens with "Prelude and Revolt," a multi-media montage of dances that chart Graham's formative influences and early days as a choreographer. The first section is a trio of works, two of which were choreographed by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Graham's mentors at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles, where she studied and performed from 1916 to 1924.
St. Denis' "The Incense," 1906, and Ted Shawn's "Gnossienne (A Priest of Knossos)," 1919, are two dances that evoke a private, yet exotic ritual. Although they are rarely performed today, excerpts are featured in "Prelude and Revolt" to demonstrate aspects of the Denishawn style that were fundamental to Graham's choreography, even as she distanced herself from her mentors' influence in the early 1930s.
"Graham learned theatrical magic from St. Denis and Shawn," said artistic director Janet Eilber, who was a principal dancer in the Graham company and for whom the choreographer created numerous roles. "She also learned the importance of moving fabric as an integral component of choreography. Graham became a genius of fabric, and this is recognizable in all of her works."
"Lamentation," a solo Graham premiered in New York City in 1930, demonstrates the choreographer's first radical break from her Denishawn past, as well as from the conventions of ballet and traditional theater. The dance is a pared down expression of a woman's grief. The soloist is encased in a tube of stretching fabric and performs almost entirely from a seated position, creating tensions and diagonals that create a moving sculpture of sorrow.
"'Lamentation' is a total stripping away of decoration and an articulation of grief through movement," Eilber said. It marks the beginning of Graham's development as a groundbreaking choreographer." The works that followed -- whether inspired by Greek tragedy, modern painting or the American frontier -- were revolutionary in their expression of concentrated emotion.
When describing her work, Graham once said, "I wanted to begin not with the characters or ideas, but with movements. ... I did not want it to be beautiful or fluid. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge."
Pioneer Of American Modern Dance
Graham continued to develop her distinctive choreographic style in the early 1930s, after parting from the Denishawn company and relocating to New York City. Central to her movement technique is the principle of "contraction and release."
Elizabeth Auclair, one of two teaching specialists invited by Dance St. Louis to lead a three-week Graham residency in St. Louis schools, describes "contraction and release" as a way for the dancer to convey acute emotional realities with the body.
"By creating a contraction in the body, especially in the pelvis and torso, the dancer can articulate a variety of emotions, such as ecstasy, pain, fear, panic or softening of the heart," said Auclair, who danced with the Graham company for more than 15 years and who performed many of Graham's most challenging roles. "By releasing these contracted muscles through breath and the uplifted state of the spine, the dancer conveys a sense of expansiveness, which can express feelings such as confidence, anger, and aggression." (article continues below photo)
While living in New York, Graham collaborated with leading visual artists, musicians, and designers of her day, including the composer Aaron Copeland and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The magic of both of these artists is ever-present in Graham's joyful classic "Appalachian Spring," choreographed in 1944, at time when World War II was showing signs of drawing to an end.
Copland, who named his score "Ballet for Martha," drew from American folk tunes, including the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts," to complement Graham's dance narrative of a young pioneer couple on their marriage day.
Both the music and the choreography, which features square-dance patterns and joyful leaps, in addition to Graham's more characteristic moves, convey the optimism that many Americans were beginning to feel about an era of well-being and prosperity.
Noguchi's stage design for "Appalachian Spring" was, like Graham's choreography, revolutionary in its sparseness.
He replaced the standard flat backdrop of the time with a minimum of geometrically arranged objects that would best capture the organic essence of a homestead on the frontier.
"Graham found a willing collaborator in Noguchi," Eilber said. "They were working in New York at the same time. Noguchi's sister was in the company, and his mother designed costumes. Most important, they were both advocates of sparsity, desiring to evoke with the smallest amount possible the shock of recognition."
Graham In The 21st Century
After Graham's death in 1991, the Martha Graham Dance Center nearly shut down as a result of severe financial hardship and a three-year lawsuit over who owned the rights to her vast repertory of 181 works. Through careful budgeting and innovative programming initiatives, however, the company and school are once again flourishing. The company's tour schedule is indicative of this success. After St. Louis, the dancers will be traveling on to Fairfax, Va., Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Milan.
Eilber, who has served as artistic director since 2005, figured out that it was no longer enough to simply "[get] the Picassos out of the attic and [dust] them off beautifully," as she phrased it in a 2006 New York Times piece about the company. Funding, audiences and dance presenting had changed over time, and it became crucial for the company to help make Graham's works accessible, both within a context of history and as part of our contemporary world.
Examples of the Graham Center's contextual programming are "Prelude and Revolt" and "Lamentation Variations," which will also be performed as part of the St. Louis program. The early dances featured in "Prelude and Revolt" are presented within their historical context through film footage, photographs, and with the help of a narrator, who will be played by Eilber.
"Lamentation Variations" is a suite of three contemporary works choreographed by Richard Move, Larry Keigwin and Bulareyaung Pagarlava. For this project, the choreographers were commissioned to commemorate 9/11 by creating works inspired by the original "Lamentation" by Graham. Audience response has been so overwhelmingly positive that all three dances have been added to the permanent repertory of the Graham company.
Sydney Norton is a freelance writer who focuses on dance and visual arts.