Martha Graham’s modern dance coming to Colorado
The question is this: If you are the oldest dance company in America, with a repertoire of iconic dances, how do you keep it fresh — especially if you are a modern-dance company?
“Modern dance is all about revolt,” said Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. “We have a body of classics. But going into the 21st century, we needed to figure out the future.”
That future — which entails doing justice to Graham’s 181 dances and commissioning works from a wide range of new choreographers — will be on display in October in performances in Fort Collins, Boulder and Denver.
Eilber’s path has not been without controversy, as some critics have voiced unhappiness with the new dances and the execution of the old ones.
“It has been interesting,” Eilber, who danced with the company in the 1970s and became artistic director in 2005, said diplomatically. “But I can’t imagining doing it any other way. We are in a deep conservation with today’s artists ... to bring fresh eyes to the Graham legacy.” And quite a legacy it is. Modern dance in many ways began with Martha Graham in 1926. While there were earlier pioneers — Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis — Graham created a dancing technique that has been called the “cornerstone of modern dance.”
For decades, Graham plumbed Greek mythology, American traditions, native ritual, and themes of love and sex. Graham performed until she was 76 and continued to choreograph until
her death in 1991 at the age of 96.
And then, as if descending into its own Greek drama, the company passed through a series of trials. It skirted bankruptcy, postponed seasons, and had to go to court to keep the rights to Graham’s choreography. Finally, the company’s basement storeroom was flooded in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy, destroying sets and costumes. But that is now all in the rearview mirror.
“We are very happy now to have the same problems every non-profit has, because we were a special case for about 20 years,” Eilber said.
It was the threat of bankruptcy that really forced a hard look at the company and its future.
“Martha herself was all about the future, all about what would engage, shock, entreat the audience of today, whenever today was,” Eilber said.
The company is commissioning works from a wide range of dance-makers, from Lar Lubovitch, one of the most established choreographers of modern and ballet works, to Charles “Lil Buck” Riley, a virtuoso of the Memphis street dance called Jookin.
“When we commission, we don’t want Graham-lite,” Eilber said. Graham constructed her dances on a technique that focused on the core, on contrac- tion and release. Many of the new choreographers are asking completely different things of the company’s 15 full-time dancers.
“They are becoming more facile, moving from one style to another,” Eilber said.
The Graham company’s blend of old and new, in this season’s theme of “sacred and profane,” will be danced at University of Colorado Boulder’s Macky Auditorium, the Newman Center at the University of Denver and at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins.
On the sacred side of the bill is “Dark Meadow Suite,” a selec- tion of dances from Graham’s 1946 “Dark Meadows,” a work inspired by the rituals of Native Americans of the Southwest and Mexico, set to music by Mexican composer Carlos Chávez.
The Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui offers a contemporary take on the sacred. “Cherkaoui is associated with more spiritual works,” Eilber said. He has even collaborated with Chinese Shaolin monks. In “Mosaic,” Cherkaoui explores the world of Middle Eastern culture to a score by Felix Buxton, which also evokes the music of the region.
“Errand into the Maze,” a 1947 work choreographed and first danced by Graham, is part of the performance’s profane. It is loosely based on the Greek myth of Theseus, who must navigate a labyrinth to defeat the Minotaur, a half-man and half-beast.
The focal point of the dance, however, is Ariadne, the princess who is crucial to defeating the monster. “It is a story of a woman conquering her own fears,” Eilber said.
The music is by Gian Carlo Menotti, and the original sets were designed by Isamu Noguchi. Both the sets and costumes were victims of Hurricane Sandy. The company received a
grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to restore and replace sets and costumes, but this production is a stripped-down version.
The modern side of the profane is a piece by the Swedish choreographer, Pontus Lidberg, titled “Woodlands.” In the music by Irving Fine, Lidberg said he heard the imagery of woodland, moonlight and wandering creatures.
“It is dance where young men and women interact in a landscape,” Eilber said. “Maybe it is a woodland, or a woodland of the mind.”
Mark Jaffe is a former Denver Post writer.