2nd Place: $250 cash prize and a Martha Graham Dance Company T-Shirt:
SARA SARCUNI

3rd Place: $250 cash prize and a Martha Graham Dance Company T-Shirt:
PAUL MORALES

CONGRATULATIONS!

ON-LINE VOTING FOR THE TOP TEN “POPULAR CHOICE” VIDEOS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MAY 31ST!!!!

Watch All the entries here

Thanks to all of you who have participated!

This past week, we have been working through Clytemnestra, and have had many guests visit us during rehearsals. Another exciting event featured a performance and panel discussion with Janet Eilber, Deborah Jowitt, Bruce Altshule, and Gay Morris. The panel was moderated by Julie Malnig and included an insightful response by Sharon Friedman. A few people asked about the supertitles we are including in the production. In response, we will be posting the full text right here. Check back shortly.

Additionally, if you were at any of these events or showings, leave your impressions here.

We’d love to hear what you thought. 

Finally, take a look at our YouTube page. We recently redesigned it, in preparation for A VERY SPECIAL SURPRISE.

This video features Blakeley White McGuire performing the role of Cassandra during a rehearsal.

Peter Sparling in rehearsals

The following entries are from a journal kept by former Graham dancer, Peter Sparling, while teaching and coaching for the Clytemnestra Project at Skidmore College. Sparling is presently Thurnau Professor of Dance at University of Michigan; he performed with the Graham Company from 1973-87 and was artistic director of the Graham Centenary Festival in 1994, hosted by U-M and University Musical Society. His last company performance was in “Appalachian Spring” at The Library of Congress in 1998. He has set Graham works on companies all over the world.

June 19:
I find myself typing on my laptop, early morning sun warming my back, while sitting in my car outside the Dance Center at 6:40 a.m., on our last Thursday at Skidmore. I think of the Talking Heads lines, “Watching the days go by…”, and “How did I get here?” The pool opens in 20 minutes. Take me to the water. Perhaps my restlessness stems from the accumulation of evening showings, tonight’s student composition show, the anticipation of the final days, the big wind-up…with no time for a wind-down or celebratory resting on the collective laurels. Martha’s blessing and curse? Yesterday, we blocked out the entire Act 1 of Clytemnestra, as dancers aired their roles in the light of day for the first time. How amazing to witness these beautiful dancers! How well I remember that solitary, hermetic, process of learning a new role—hours in front of a TV monitor, picking up movement from low-resolution images of a past Orestes or Oedipus, re-composing in one’s own muscle memory the outlines of the moving form, then filling them in before the mirror, a step at a time.

I was reminded of the outrageous hubris of this endeavor–tempered by a reverence for the efforts of past performers and for Martha’s genius, the years of discipline and practice, and the limits of the human body to absorb only so much before exhaustion or injury temporarily overwhelm the effort. Company dancers rise and fall; injuries have plagued the cast for the past few weeks. Rehearsal directors negotiate a delicate balancing act of scheduling, casting, and protective ploys to preserve and maintain the ranks. I remember Linda Hodes in particular, watching over my generation of dancers, gently assuring us with her matter-of-fact, worldly-wise attitude. I recall the long tours, the classes in strange studios along the way, or preparations for a New York season, and visits to massage therapists, acupuncturists, suffering the tears, the terror of the prospect of missing a performance, of forfeiting a career.

Linda talked me off the ledge shortly before the company’s 1975 season at the Helen Hayes. Here was my big chance to shine, sharing the stage with Pearl Lang and Rudolf Nureyev in El Penitente, and my lower back went into spasm, making it impossible to bend over or perform the simplest task much less catch Rudi in my arms sideways as we fell together into my low lunge. That was on the Friday before the Tuesday opening, and I had to fly back to Michigan the next day to stand as best man in my older brother’s wedding before returning for Tuesday’s opening night performance. Linda, always the seasoned Graham veteran, (She’d started in Marthas’ company as a teenager.) and inveterate New Yorker, calmed me down and called Martha, who set me up to see her therapist, Dr. Kagan. I also made appointments to see the famous dance surgeon, Dr. Hamilton, and a favorite dance massage therapist, Ben Benjamin. Diagnoses: STOP dancing Graham. Stop dancing. You have lost all your lumbar curve. You have the lower body of an adult athlete and the upper body of an adolescent, with inadequate strength in between to sustain the imbalance. Eat plenty of potassium: bananas, potato skins! Swim on your back every day.

For the Tuesday opening at the Helen Hayes, I somehow scraped myself off my back to perform. Linda commented after the performance that she’d never see me walk so straight in the processional entrance and interludes. And I did not drop Rudi.

I also immediately joined a health club and started swimming. I ate my bananas and potato skins. I did not stop dancing Graham. Instead, I retrained—returning with a vengeance to the Zina Rommett floor barre I’d learned under Zina’s meticulous attention during a grueling tour with the Limon Company to the Soviet Union in 1973). And I’m still re-training (and swimming and eating potassium-rich foods) at 57.

June 20:
I’m packed and ready to drive west into the setting sun following this afternoon’s final student show. Embrace tiger and return to mountain. In a post-production stupor filled with relief and disbelief, Jaki and I sat in our apartment last night and paused to ponder the breadth and depth of work accomplished in three short weeks. Is it that the field demands a multi-dimensional approach to educating young dancers? Or did we set our sights so high to compete with the other terrific summer intensives and meet their standard?

Students Performing

I’ll have plenty of time for further mental de-briefing on the long drive to Buffalo tonight. A stay at a Red Roof Inn, and onward to Ann Arbor tomorrow morning… There is a Paul Taylor Summer Dance Intensive taking place at University of Michigan this week and next; The Children of Martha (sounds like a religious cult) are everywhere! Paul actually played Aegisthus to Martha’s Clytemnestra, NOT her son. So I hold rights to “Son of Clytemnestra”—along with all those of the exclusive cult who have danced Orestes. Alas, what a bloody fate! Redemption? Somehow, I’m feeling a karmic cycle has played itself out and we are ushering in a new age for Martha and her offspring. If this three weeks has been any indication, the new approach is characterized by a more open investigation and acknowledgment of the timelessness of the work. Students of all levels are being given access from multiple vantage points, and the company experiences a full-out reconstruction of Martha’s most epic work—culled from various versions and led by two company members of the pivotal “TV generation”. (Janet and I learned our roles while the originators were still dancing them, and we reshaped those roles as part of Martha’s reconstruction for PSB in 1979.) The bridging has begun, and we by no means are the originators of this effort.

Every successive cast, every artistic director, every rehearsal director, every technical staff, every board member… the names of contributors from the past 50 years are too numerous to mention. Perhaps we will live to see a grand reunion, setting differences aside. The Greeks appealed to Apollo and Athena. The passion of Martha has always demanded fierce allegiance, making betrayals, intrigues and exiles—self-imposed and otherwise–a commonplace phenomenon. In the end, the work, the technique, and the vision will have to carry the day. We are all mere instruments of a dominion of dance. We embody this and give it unique life while we can. I am most grateful for this intense but reaffirming reminder of the glory of Graham.

Signing off.
Son of Clytemnestra

You can watch the video below, or follow the link here.

Check back at 7:30pm for this very exciting event!

While you’re waiting, you can check out some of our other videos.

Starting at 7:30pm, you’ll be able to watch the video Live on this website, or here

Clytemnestra Prologue

While you’re waiting for the stream to start, you can watch some of our other videos here.

UPDATE : The performances were fantastic, and we had a full house in the theater! We had a few audio issues, but resolved them for upcoming live streaming events. Thanks to all who came + watched!

Peter Sparling in rehearsals

Week 2:

June 11: The dancers have settled in, and the rhythm of classes and rehearsals has been established. Three weeks is a good timeline for such an endeavor—with the second Wednesday a clear mid-point and goals scaled to fit the accumulated momentum towards the final events scheduled for the end of the third week. A company performance—including Panorama danced by all 34 students—finishes off the second week, leaving the last week for rehearsals of company repertory for upcoming tours to American Dance Festival and Berlin. The new production of Clytemnestra looks further ahead to performances in Greece in late October and The Kennedy Center in December. I’m determined to find a way of being in the audience for either Athens or D.C. –or both! Frequent flyer miles? 

Jennifer DePalo in Prelude and Revolt

Open Rehearsals at Skidmore

My exhaustion tonight is not like that of the company members or students; theirs comes from grueling repetition of demanding physical feats. I look on, summoning the descriptive powers to enliven and enlighten issues of style, intention, and timing. Occasionally, I will recall words from Martha or original cast members spoken in rehearsal. I suppose my attendance at run-throughs serves as a kind of catalyzing agent for the dancers’ efforts and focus, since they imagine me as closer to those precious sources and thus able to direct them towards more fully realized embodiments of their roles. As I attend to the works I’ve been assigned to direct during this short visit, I begin to keep a mental account of the essentials necessary to shape and sustain them.

Some day, I’ll write my own “A Dancer’s Guide to Graham Repertory”, including notes on Embattled Garden, Clytemnestra, Diversion of Angels, Errand Into the Maze, Cave of the Heart, Night Journey, El Penitente, Acts of Light, and many more. Contributions from the many different generations and casts would allow for certain constants to assert themselves while also revealing the range of interpretations. 

June 12:

Thoughts on the art and craft of a Graham performer: 

Watching Martha “mark” the title role in the black-and-white early 60’s rehearsal film of Clytemnestra, (involving halting indications of stumbling and staggering, leg lifts and falls to floor, but all the while exhibiting an indomitable force at the center of her nightmarish vision), I am struck by the instinct and intelligence in her solo presence that go beyond intellectual plotting of character or choreographic ingenuity. I’m reminded of something Darrell Wilkins mentions in a recent article in Ballet Review about Lincoln Kirstein concerning Martha’s “synthesis of diverse sources in a new dance language”, “…culled from the motley sources of her private readings and life experience. It was nonetheless rich for all that (and nonetheless indebted to outside sources), but it was, by nature, a potpourri, not pure, singular, and consanguineous essence.” He identifies “her tremendous discipline and restraint that went into (her) technique, and the wealth of traditions (East Indian, Greek, Japanese, American Indian, and otherwise) upon which her work in fact drew.” 

National Museum of Dance

She seized the NEA’s Dance Touring Program and numerous USIS/State Department-sponsored tours to provide us an unprecedented number of performances. Riding this extraordinary dance wave, she had the opportunity to provide us the necessary experience and show us off to the world. Certain critics were willing to assist her in this endeavor. Ah, the nights during New York seasons anxiously waiting for the next day’s Times to hit the stands! Will I get a good mention? Do I have a career? Am I a star yet? 

Years later–and with a tenured position at a major research university earned partly via that star power and credential–I can begin to remove my own performance persona from the picture to ponder the matter of Martha’s artistry as an actor/interpreter. Granted, that artistry was indivisibly linked to the roles that she herself originated. (Regretfully, I never saw her perform on stage, although she could light up the studio at E. 63rd Street when she occasionally stepped onto the floor to demonstrate a pivotal dramatic moment for we “wretched beasts” if we were not giving her what she wanted.) The women who assume her roles today have an unusual challenge and, like stage actors, must find their own unique fusion of technique, instinct, and intelligence through which to make the movement “speak” with eloquence and power.

Presently on a Proust kick, I am tempted to draw parallels to his hypersensitive young narrator’s theories of artistry. Upon seeing the actress La Berma for the second time on stage and acknowledging of her talents apart from his pre-conceived notions of what those talents should consist of, the narrator of In Search of Lost Time finds a new admiration for her genius.  From “The Guermantes Way”, Volume Three, In Search of Lost Time (Mark Treharne, translator):

“Her stage presence: “…(based upon) motivations that had lost their initial self-consciousness, melted into a kind of radiance, and set throbbing around the character of Phedre rich and complex elements which the fascinated spectator took not for accomplished acting but for real life.” 

The Graham dancer must strive to disguise, submerge or completely lose the technique in the heat of a performance. Her task is to suspend the audience member’s belief in anything approaching datedness or artifice, historical portrayal or mere illustration of a concept or dramatic role. Proust’s “real life” becomes that moment on stage, more real than mere real life. Clytemnestra’s pyrotechnics risk defeating her if not entirely “melded into a kind of radiance”, or, in her case, into a kind of absolute terror, gnawing sickness, then plea for redemption that radiate from the core of her emotion-ravaged body.  

Back to Proust:

“The impression made upon us by a person or a work of strong character (or its interpretation) is intrinsic to them. We have brought along with us the ideas of “beauty”, “breadth of style”, “pathos”, which we might just possibly think we recognize in the banality of a passable talent or face, but our critical mind is confronted in fact with the nagging presence of a form for which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, the unknown part of which it needs to extricate. And for this reason, really fine works of art, if they are given genuine attention, are the ones that disappoint us most, because in the sum total of our ideas there is none that responds to an individual impression.” 

 

My greatest satisfaction as teacher and witness is to have my expectations constantly subverted by a student, choreographer or performer until a pattern or unified imagination emerges that has claimed its own inner logic, defied my tired ego’s assumptions and dragged me kicking and screaming to acknowledge it and see it anew. One might call it the “shock of recognition”. Even if that person might be loathsome and unbearably obnoxious to me as a personality off stage, I must be grateful for his or her gift to me.  

Is there such thing a dancer’s diction, or verses and metrical structure of her choreography? Is there an equivalency between words, sentences and whole speeches of an actor’s performance and Clytemnestra’s steps, phrases, solo movement passages? A significant element of a dance artist’s performance is in her ability to create a complete portrayal in the transitions from one step or unit of movement (pitch turn, dart, knee crawl, leg lifted on a contraction, knee vibration) to the next—without blurring a step. It would be fascinating to hear Proust’s narrator carry on about Martha, had she been of that earlier era. One might simply replace Graham for La Berma in the following passage to imagine a Proustian critique of the essense of Martha’s personal masterpieces as both performer– AND her own modern playwright. 

 “…La Berma spread great sheets of terror or tenderness over the words, which were equally blended, all smoothed down or heightened, and which a mediocre performer would have painstakingly detached from one another. Of course, each line had its own inflection, and La Berma’s diction did not blur the distinction between the lines of verse. Is it not already a first element of ordered complexity, of beauty, to hear a rhyme—that is to say, something that is at once similar to and distinct from the preceding rhyme-word, something that is prompted by it, yet which introduces the variation of a new idea—and to have the sense of two systems superimposed, one intellectual, the other metrical? But La Berma also integrated the words, the lines, and even whole speeches into ensembles that were vast than themselves, at the margins of which it was magical to see them obliged to stop, to break off; in the same way, a poet will delight in momentarily delaying at a rhyme break the next word to come, and a composer in merging the various words of the libretto into a single rhythm which both runs counter to them  and carries them along. Thus, into the prose of the modern playwright as into the verse of Racine, La Berma had the ability to introduce those vast images of suffering, nobility, and passion that were her personal masterpieces, and which bore her hallmark in the same way as the portraits a painter has made of different sitters.”

June 13:

Tonight’s performances promise their share of fulfilled expectations and hopefully, shocking revelations. Until then, I float on a cloud of sheer exhilaration from the experience of having taught company class today. I cannot remember the last time I gave a Graham (or any style, for that matter) class when my requests for classroom sequences were immediately executed by the entire class to my exact specifications—including the proper inflections, rhythms, diction, and relationship to the music. What a shock, a gift, a long-awaited return from self-imposed exile to the house of Martha! It’s all possible after all…not just something I hold deeply in my bones or recall from the glory days as I annually introduce the Graham Technique to class after class of university freshmen. 

Highlights of tonight’s performance:

SPAC: Saratoga Performing Arts Center

A Chronicle every bit as powerful as the rehearsal run the other night, with Miki Orihara as the knowing witness and aide de camp to Jennifer DePalo’s palpating, muscular leader/revolutionary. The chorus was a wonder of coordinated passions. I wonder what makes this work different from a rallying cry for fascism, socialism, or any movement, for that matter? Without knowing its context or Martha’s intention, how would one know that the work specifically suggested revolt against tyranny and a cry for freedom or democracy? Where are human values or specific political or ethical beliefs embodied beyond a marvelous display of collective behaviors?  As moved as the work left me, I was puzzled by these thoughts. 

The enemy is very present in Errand Into the Maze, embodied as the Minotaur and danced by a predatory hunk of a man in briefs with a crescent of horns strapped to his brow and a bone across his shoulders like a yoke.  Errand has the spare elegance of the very best of 50’s design, and of Miro, Klee, even de Chirico. Noguchi’s set is an absolute knockout, creating strong vertical vectors and a surreal constellation of objects for the dancer to navigate within. The curtain opens with the solo figure placed upstage center at the base of a tautly strung rope disappearing upwards, a white Miro bird or moon with tongue pulled off to its right, or to stage left. Noguchi and Graham immediately define the scale of the dancer to the void and to her endeavor, with the string to her destination (and destiny) laid on a winding path to the portal or pelvic bone planted downstage right. Elizabeth Auclair has her antennae tuned on high, probing a moonscape of fear with skin-prickling precision and a pelvis swiveling and pulsating like a highly activated satellite dish. This is the stuff of deja-vu, having seen so many performances over a period of 34 years. The dance is a perfect narrative/archetype—one that every poet, storyteller and choreographer of solos emulates and strives to access, even if through its denial and deconstruction. Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A soloist is an Ariadne seeking a path to her true self, battling her fear by saying “No” to theatricality with every simple task (errand) and pedestrian move. 

I love working with smart dancers. Coaching Elizabeth and her beast, David Martinez, in rehearsal and contrasting those rehearsals with tonight’s performance, I am reminded of the never-ending process of formula vs. calculated risk that drives performers to never be satisfied, or to only be satisfied with risking the utterly new, as if stepping into that universe for the first time ever. These dancers took great risks, and they all paid off. Elizabeth’s “formula”, i.e. her own understanding of her sheer strength relative to the forms and sustained tension required for the role, become her default for forays into uncharted territories.  

But how can I really, if at all, separate these dancers from their dance, now that I’ve been allowed into their sacred process and been granted a certain power to suggest slight changes or clarifications? Or does my vantage point grant me a particular advantage were I to pursue dance criticism? I think of Deborah Jowitt, Jill Johnson, and other dancer-turned-writers who have somehow struck a balance between their own experience-based empathies as ex-dancers and the rigors of descriptive evaluation and yes, of passing judgment. The Society of Dance History Scholars has invaded Skidmore’s campus this weekend for their annual conference. Many attendees were at tonight’s performance. I would be curious to hear their readings of these works and of the performances, and of Janet’s generous and well-plotted contextual narrative introducing each of the works as part of a century-long chronology of Martha’s creative genius.  

Performing Maple Leaf Rag

The time will arrive soon when dance scholars will be compelled to compare and contrast the late works of choreographers who, when nearly immobile and no longer able to evolve the movement themselves or demonstrate it, are dependent upon their assistants, on computer programs, on their own codified technique or vocabulary of moves, and, most of all, on their stable of young and able dancers to suggest and embody their visions. 

End of Week 2. Major accomplishments: Re-staging of Clytemnestra Prologue and end of Act 2, the skeleton of a very exciting student composition show for the last week, and my second round of laundry. 

P.S. I just attended the most inspiring SDHS lecture-demonstration entitled Jane Dudley: Time is Money, with re-constructions of a 1930’s solo by Jane movingly performed by three former Graham Company dancers.  A truly cross-generational transmission of “meaning in motion”, the process, as described by Martin Lofsnes and given cultural and personal context by Henrietta Brannerman and Jane’s son, Tom Hurwitz, was a shocking (that word again) wake-up call for the value and necessity of rescuing and maintaining these precious gems of dance. It also confirmed my belief in the power of performance in such scholarly presentations not merely to illustrate points made by a scholar but to initiate and ground the dialogue in muscle, sinew and the immediacy of the dancing body. These dancers brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to protect them, keep them warm in the overly chilled lecture hall; I was reminded that the vulnerability of these dances is in direct relationship to the vulnerability of the dancer’s instrument and his or her limited life span—both as dancer/choreographer and as living carrier of history long after the last performance. 

RELATED VIDEO :

Watch the entire performance of Maple Leaf Rag in under 1 minute

While everyone was performing onstage, I took some video of the company members performing Maple Leaf Rag. You can watch the entire video of Maple Leaf Rag here. The night really flew by – before I knew it, we were back home. I believe the performance captured on video reflects that swift quality.

Feel free to add your own thoughts on tech rehearsals! Looking forward to a great evening of performances!

I would love to hear feedback on how this new layout compares to the old layout, and what you would like to see developed further.

It would be very helpful to hear your comments during this redesign process.

[ For those receiving this in an email, follow the link to see the new site (in progress). ]

The following entries are from a journal kept by former Graham dancer, Peter Sparling, while teaching and coaching for the Clytemnestra Project at Skidmore College. Sparling is presently Thurnau Professor of Dance at University of Michigan; he performed with the Graham Company from 1973-87 and was artistic director of the Graham Centenary Festival in 1994, hosted by U-M and University Musical Society. His last company performance was in “Appalachian Spring” at The Library of Congress in 1998. He has set Graham works on companies all over the world.

Prologue
June 1, 2008:
Skidmore College lies nestled at the north end of an outrageous display of ornate mansions lining Saratoga Springs’ Gold Coast. Majestic and ostentageous, solid yet somehow tasteless in their eccentric juxtapositions, these beached behemoths loom as a surreal reminder of old-style wealth and a pocket of American history that harbored some our country’s earliest dynasties. What dark family dramas and repressed intrigues were played out on their sprawling summer lawns or behind the brick-laced, columned facades?

My mind reeled as I took the slow crawl up Broadway towards the college’s entrance after the 10-hour drive from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I struggled to remain in my bone-weary, restless body… like sitting on the uncomfortably sloped Noguchi throne in Act II of Martha Graham’s “Clytemnestra”, hunched in contraction with palms pressed up into my eye sockets, awaiting Orestes’ cue to awaken from his deranged meditations and confront his violent destiny. Countless dancer’s lifetimes and 30 years later, I was returning to Martha’s house, to the domain of gnashing teeth and exquisite contortions.

I was reclaiming my password to her temple of visceral truth that had permitted me entry into its elite membership 35 years ago. In return, I was to impart the wisdom, perspectives and stories I’d carried with me and nurtured, like Ishmael surviving the Great American Whale, or the grateful kid from the Rustbelt who’d been dubbed worthy by the master and was miraculously still here, ready to give back to a generation of younger disciples.

The welcome later that night was significant. I’d found the apartment that housed the company and staff, and was greeted by my roommate, Jaki Levy, our young and brainy media guru for the workshop. After a long soak in the bathtub, I lay in my dorm-style bed re-wiring my brain circuitry with a volume of Proust. Suddenly the entire apartment complex and surrounding campus were wracked with the echoing crack of explosions. A child of the 50’s, my atom-bomb scenario immediately kicked in– and then I remembered it was Alumni Weekend at Skidmore. Fireworks! The Graham Company dancers in the adjoining unit had already gathered outside and were squealing with delight as the projectiles rocketed from the distant athletic field and cascaded in dazzling blossoms of light over the bank of trees to the south. It was a wonderful way to first meet and greet these young dancers, as we witnessed together this stroboscopic spectacle of a scale we all aspired towards in our own personal repertoires of pyrotechnics and drama. In their witty, fond repartee, they identified each burst of illumination with a particular dancer’s mode of dynamic display, casting their own stage personalities to fit the grand ballet of special effects. My kind of people… and a fitting prologue to the next three weeks in Martha’s House.

Issues I’m pondering in anticipation of the first day observing and coaching rehearsals:
Which version of a dance do we reference when coaching style, interpretation, phrasing? The words, images and movements in the memories of its last surviving members of its original cast? The earliest evidence on video? A composite of many versions to reflect and acknowledge the accumulated wisdom of a succession of interpretations and stagings? How do we remain true to the spirit and look of a work while making it legible to a contemporary audience? What does it mean for a dance make 50-60 years ago to “look dated” or “show its age”? Or do the rehearsal director and dancers not concern themselves with critics’ opinions or the accusation of providing museum pieces or reconstructed historical dioramas, but instead seek the power and authority of the achieved balance between intention, shape, impulse, shift of weight, dramatic portrayal, phrasing (in itself and as it relates to the musical frame)… and the absolute dominion of embodiment: a confidence, conviction, an elastic outer restraint—sometimes mask-like, other times utterly undone–always in dynamic relationship with inner force? Call it character? Artistry? Can we also ground ourselves in the assumption that the work has an enduring greatness—has already achieved such a balance and holds inherent in its structure and movement map the genetics to return it to life yet again? Yes, and can we also assume that the work offers new casts the opportunity to reveal greater revelations or wonders through sheer force of individual and collective spirit, will, talent, and outrageous, radically new interpretation?

June 2, 2008
Today’s rehearsals ran like a series of Blakean visions—stunning, monstrous and fierce. The young dancers in today’s Graham Company manifest the primal hunger inherent in the repertory with an extraordinary physicality and courage. Often characterized by a gnawing pain or dread–interrupted with bursts of revelation, recognition, and momentary stillness– this hunger takes on a nobility in the dancers’ ruthless pursuit for the truth at the core of their roles. As I sit in the place of privilege as rehearsal director, (the sole witness of this masque of scenes), and frantically scribble notes on my pad while trying not to miss a move, I feel my emotions rise in me and threaten to break. But I steel myself, and move back from them to let them subside. I do not allow them to interrupt my assigned task, which is to be as ruthless in my observations as they are in their dancing. Jocasta, Oedipus, Tiresius, Adam, Eve, the Stranger/Serpent, Lilith, Medea, Jason, Electra, Orestes. The procession of eternal ancestors moves through my first day as if to remind me of the wonders of my inheritance. I humbly acknowledge the wisdom they have printed onto my own marrow by welcoming them into my life once again.

Lessons from today: As a rehearsal director, my approach must be direct and sure in order to give back to the dancers what they deserve and what they have earned. Questions of how it was done back when or what I remember being taught 35 years ago become secondary to the matter at hand: Is the performance complete and stylistically accurate and appropriate? Is it shockingly honest? Is it flat or multi-dimensional? Does it trace a line of inevitability, laced with near deviations, abrupt obstacles, and choices to be made that temporarily threaten to derail or alter its course but fall invariably back like the certainly of gravity towards doom, fate, resolution, discovery, freedom? I must trust myself to be able to respond with useful and/or necessary information, tempering suggestion with insistence.

June 4, 2008
Last night, we screened the 1979 PBS Dance in America version of “Clytemnestra” for 35 students and a small group from of local community. Janet Eilber, the company’s present artistic director (and Cassandra in this production), introduced the work with a brief summary of the history of the House of Atreus and placed Martha’s 1958 danced distillation/interpretation in context of her repertory. I spoke about the process of translating the work from stage to screen, and of our experiences on the immense soundstage at Opryland in Nashville during the videotaping. As the lights dimmed and the Prologue reared up on the theater’s large projection screen, I was struck by the audacity of Martha’s choreographic vision and the colossal risk of both the original production and this made-for-TV extravaganza.

In livid color, this translation has an element of Fellini meet Martha in 80’s Disco Hell, compliments of Halston, Exxon and the NEA. Dated? Not the question, really… nor is it about authenticity. Rather, are the modifications justified for this high-art Rocky Horror Show, this Kabuki fusion ballet? Has the work been made newly legible and dynamic, taking full advantage of the video medium and televised format? We must remember, as well, that the Dance in America production team’s mission was not only to preserve masterworks of living American choreographers but to scale them down for the home TV screen in order to promote accessibility and visibility for the sorely underrated and underexposed art form. I would propose, then, the following question: Has Martha successfully re-created the essential nightmare of the stage version via 80’s television camera and editing technology? Does the production retain its epic sweep, its stark grandeur in this newly storyboarded format of multiple cuts on action, cross-dissolves, and superimpositions?

Perhaps the most radical departure from the stage version is the use of close-ups, which, of all the camera or editing effects, casts the director as master of ceremonies. He becomes the puppeteer whose will we viewers must yield to if we are to follow the narrative and fully submit to the action. I’m certain Martha was aware of all of this as she sat behind the glass wall in the control room surveying the sound stage while eyeing the various cameras’ framings on a bank of monitors. With director Merrill Brockway and editor, Girish Bhargava, she was compelled to make quick decisions regarding point of view and narrative cohesion, often at the exclusion of parts of the overall action. She must have reveled in placing the viewer at the center of the Furies circle, figures rearing up like images in flames, and then suspending us high over the throne, looking down into the maelstrom.

Sitting in Skidmore’s Dance Theater, I was totally taken in by the production’s unabashed hyperdrama, the sharp, incisive performances, and the total commitment of our cast of dancers. Yuriko Kimura’s performance in the title role was mind-boggling. Her perfect technique was matched by the daring of her transitions from one death-defying shape to the next, and her upper torso, neck and head performed their own narrative while her lower body and hips cut with low, razor-sharp precision through the dense gravitational mire of her own inferno. Watching myself dance the role of Orestes, I experienced a visceral “sock of recognition”—one that was thrilling and unexpected. My body memory of those long, trying days under the lights, riddled with insecurities about my own performance, were being usurped by what I was witnessing on the screen: a sure command of character, technique and ruthless attack. Those hours at the studio on 316 E. 63rd Street–of classes, rehearsals, replaying the old, brittle films until they literally melted or fell apart on the reel—had paid off after all. We’d met the camera on its own terms and conquered, avoiding Martha’s curse of the Original Sin, which, in her terms, was to take aim and miss the mark. I realized I had not seen myself dance this role since the production’s initial airing in 1979!

As I watched the progression of my fellow company members on the screen, I was momentarily overwhelmed by the realization that, of the 10 or so men in the cast, only a few of us had been spared from the plague of AIDS that decimated the population of male dancers a decade later. This was our generation’s own curse, both biblical and Homeric in its unforgiving scale and magnitude. It marked the evening’s experience with a deeply sad poignancy. I left the theater shaken, ennobled and strangely humbled by the impact of so many memories.

June 5
As the coffee works its way into my brain circuitry and I consider the tasks of my fourth day here, I am mindful of the opportunity before me to practice a bit of pop self-help: Why not use the carefully proscribed schedule as a means ceding control and falling forward into a kind of inevitability—not really a freefall but rather a willingness to yield to the demands of my assignments? That said, teaching a 9 a.m. class is a particular kind of challenge for a middle-aged body. We folk in our 50’s feel compelled to pull out all the stops and demonstrate what we want the students to emulate if we can still summon most of the old tricks. But alas, the recovery is significantly longer due to limited resilience and the cumulative effects of wear-and-tear. Having taught once earlier this week, I can assume the class has seen me perform the movement once and will forgive me if I sit on my behind and dictate this morning’s sequences! I remember Martha, Linda Hodes, Helen McGehee, Bert Ross, Mary Hinkson, Jose Limon, Antony Tudor, and so many more who, in their 50’s, 60’s, 70s, or 80’s, were still formidable presences in the studio, urging us on gently, insistently or with great, cutting wit.

June 7, 2008
It’s the end of a long, densely packed week, and Orestes does his laundry.
As the coffee brews, I think what a rare, precious thing it is for a dance company to spend three weeks of concentrated rehearsal and performance in a setting that provides room, board, studio space and administrative staff! The legacy of Jacob’s Pillow, Steamboat Springs, of Martha Hill and the various American Dance Festival summer homes at Bennington, Connecticut College, Duke University—and now Skidmore College, Bates… Far from the world’s woes and the usual everyday multi-tasking, our typical survival instincts and coping mechanisms shift to the background as we immerse ourselves in the work. Not that it is always easy: sore muscles and exhaustion, a miserable rehearsal when nothing you do seems to please the rehearsal director, the body memory’s struggle to retain new steps and make sense of them before exposing them to the scrutiny of peers and artistic director… But the satisfaction of consistent work without interruption somehow compensates for such discomforts or the moments of loneliness, away from partners, family, and the familiar creature comforts of home.

We ran the Prologue from “Clytemnestra” yesterday for the first time: a rough, cut-and-paste job of segments rehearsed in isolation over the week. Watching it, I am acutely aware of the composition of the central figures to Clytemnestra to the chorus, and am reminded of the ingenious use of transitions that Martha employed—like a film editor crafting cross-dissolves, superimpositions and cuts on action. More than ever before in her choreographic process, Martha was dealing with an attenuated sense of theatrical time. Confronted with the challenge of presenting a panoramic sweep of characters, a compression of a complex set of relationships and her own sustained portrayal of a protagonist in agony, she must have spent many sleepless nights plotting and re-calibrating her map of action—seaming together the results of the day’s rehearsals and stretching her vision further along her story’s time line.

This is the tilting point that will challenge this company of younger disciples to prove their weight in gold Noguchi dagger, sinew and guts. The weight is different in this work, and portrayals must remain in high relief among so many narrative threads and over such a long, operatic trajectory. In microcosm, each thrashing torso must trace the full arc of its circular path then finish with a deep contracted spasm, like bile rising from the gut and timed with a gesture that spews venom…. all while traversing the stage and plumbing the depths with each pummeling of the ground as the feet land from their scissors-sharp side step in fifth position on the high arch, inner thighs gripped to cushion the shock of the contraction. Movements cannot look rushed; bodies must feel lived-in, ancient, and primeval. No place for lightweights.

Orestes saves the document describing his first week at Skidmore, then stands to remove his hot clothes from the dryer. Curtain. End of Week One.

We took 2 cameras, 37 dancers, and just had a blast. The video below features original choreography from each individual dancer.

Dancing in the Fields from Jaki Levy on Vimeo.

Students will be posting their own videos in the coming week, so make sure to check back!