Blue New York

這學期舞蹈歷史課的第一個作業。

Time: 8 pm, 2008/2/1
Venue: Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, NY (2242 seats)
Group: Martha Graham Dance Company
Repertories: Appalachian Spring, Ardent Song (Redux), Diversion of Angels, Sketches from Chronicle

On the night of Friday, February 1, 2008, raining, thousands of the audience gathered at the 2242-seat North Fork Hall of Tilles Center, Long Island’s primary concert hall, for the performance of Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest modern dance company in the world.

Before the curtain rose, instead of feeling particularly excited, I was feeling more curious about what I was about to see onstage in that I had ever watched two live performances that had different pieces presented by Martha Graham Dance Company in the March of 2006 at National Theater in Taipei, Taiwan, and the troupe’s performance at that time seemed unstable and lacked energetic spirit—even though it was still an extremely thrilling experience to see part of the “dance history” performed onstage and to feel the force of Graham’s choreography.  Approximately two years passed.  Has the company changed?

Among the four pieces shown at Tilles Center, Ardent Song (Redux) is the most appealing one to me; the others are Appalachian Spring (1944), Diversion of Angels (1948), and Sketches from Chronicle (1936).

In Ardent Song (Redux), five male dancers and five female dancers shift and dance in the different numbers of the combinations, and there is hardly a dancer keeping still for a while in a sculpture-like shape which is usually seen in Graham’s other dances.  The piece begins with four male dancer’s masculine movement then comes a female dancer who enters the stage in the relevé position very slowly, elegantly and femininely, and soon becomes the center of the male dancer’s attention as if she were a goddess to the men—which represents two of the features of Graham’s choreography: women’s power and sexuality.

In the midst this Redux, a piece of silver and shimmering cloth covers the whole stage, and a male dancer wears it from the center then makes it like a gorgeous skirt.  Afterwards two light coral orange swaths of fabric cross at the center of the stage, and a duet by a female and a male dancers is developed in the spaces separated by the fabric.  Finally, it ends with the powerful section full of jumping by the five male dancers.  Thus, visually, Ardent Song (Redux) creates the sense of flow and the images of abundance for the spectators.

By reading the introduction of the four repertories in the program after the performance, I realized why Ardent Song (Redux) looked more contemporary than the others: it is a reconstruction of Martha Graham’s 1954 Ardent Song, reconceived by the former principal dancer Susan McLain in 2006, and premiered on June 21, 2007 at Shubert Theater, New Haven, CT.

The reconstructive process was based on the original cast’s memories, the limited archival photos and reviews because Ardent Song “is a ballet we consider to be lost,” said by Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of Martha Graham Center.  Unlike Diversion of Angels, for example, has been in the company repertory since the day it was made, Ardent Song had not been performed since the 1950s, even though a critic once called it as “one of the most magical rituals” long time ago.  Therefore, Susan McLain re-envisioned the dance on the basis of Martha Graham’s movement and vocabulary, and made Ardent Song (Redux) a more contemporary piece for the present dancers and the audience.

Ardent Song (Redux) was the piece that interested me most on the program that night because of its choreography and visual images.  On the other hand, however, I also felt it was unlike Martha Graham’s other work; though it is actually not, and only was inspired by Graham’s original concept.  As the oldest modern dance company named after Martha Graham, Mother of Modern Dance, if the essentials of the newly-choreographed contemporary pieces and of the originally-made traditional (compared to now) pieces conflict, how would the company see it? Furthermore, how would the audience of the different generations see it?

In the search for the dance reviews on Ardent Song (Redux), I found a few critics such as the Plain Dealer dance critic Donald Rosenberg, wrote much more on the introduction and achievements of Martha Graham and the company, past and present, but gave less directly descriptions and comments on the re-envisioned work.  By contrast, the New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco commented austerely, “This ‘Redux’ does not quite fly… The effect is like that of reading a famous author’s unfinished novel, completed by an expert — someone with a wealth of knowledge but lacking an essential grasp of tone.”

An interesting discovery I found in Part Real — Part Dream online, the unpublished memoir of Stuart Hodes, who was a former principal dancer of Martha Graham Dance Company, reveals a backstage story of 1954 premiere of Ardent Song in London: the choreography had not been finished by Graham on the first few performances since the premiere night, and some dancers kept improvising while performing it.  After several nights, Graham finally went to watch how her dancers performed Ardent Song and decided to complete the choreography because she could not stand the chaos shown onstage.  Then the work got highly praised by the critics at the time soon.

After gaining the knowledge mentioned above, here comes a question in my mind: Why did the Company choose Ardent Song as their first reconstructive work and stage it in 2006? It was just after the time that the Company won the lawsuit against Ron Protas, who argued that he had inherited the rights to all of Graham's dances, and that the Company paid off all of their debt.  Since the piece has been reconceived, the contexts of the reconstruction have also simultaneously become a subject in dance history.

By the end of this paper, let’s go back to the night Martha Graham Dance Company at Tilles Center on February 1, 2008.  The audience members primarily comprised of the cultivated elderly.  Some of them might experience the social contexts in 1940s and 1950s when Appalachian Spring, Ardent Song (not Redux), Diversion of Angels, and Sketches from Chronicle were created; even a few of them had ever gone to the premiere at the time.  Dance history is born from the process, from the work, from the people, from the venues, from the time, and, from anything concerning the object.  It is the point of view of the minority history makers, but it is also the collective memories belonging to a certain generation or community.

When I was on my way out of Tilles Center, I heard a decent middle-age lady talking to her friend, “I really love Appalachian Spring. It’s so beautiful.”

Where is Martha Graham Dance Company’s next blossoming spring?  What is the road the company should take?

Today, five current dancers out of twenty-two have joined Martha Graham Dance Company since 2005.  Undoubtedly, they have shown their fairly nice dance techniques onstage.  However, the uniqueness of the physical aesthetics and of the spiritual gradations created by Martha Graham in the twentieth century seem to be seen little from the performance of those dancers of the new generation.  What’s the future of the oldest modern dance company?  We are keeping our eyes on it.