Our residency at NYU will conclude this Friday with a very special showing of Clytemnestra. We’re very glad to say that seats are completely sold out. However, if you’re an NYU student, I would encourage you to try your luck - sometimes there are no-shows.
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.
Regards to all of you who were part of the Skidmore residency! Even though the Graham Company’s schedule was beyond full in the weeks following Skidmore, we have missed you and our time together. Many of us have commented on the remarkable synergy created at Skidmore — a combination of hard work, concentration, discovery, accomplishment and above all, creativity. This was all simmered in a wonderful connection between different levels of artistry — students, emerging artists, professional artists. Everyone involved in the residency fit under each of these categories at one point or another, and we were surrounded by this amazing creative energy and exchange.
Our work at Skidmore has inspired us to find new ways to connect with young artists and develop new possibilities with university students. We’re currently planning a residency at New York University — the next step in the Clytemnestra Project — and exploring ideas to involve students and audiences at other campuses. In the next few weeks, we’ll be alerting you to Clytemnestra ReMashed, an online competition that is based on your Name-calling projects (!)
We’d love to hear more about you and “Life After Skidmore” — what’s your perspective on your Graham experience now that you’ve had a few weeks to think about it? Has it inspired any changes in the way you dance, the way you think, the way you live? Do you miss us at all?
Also: Do you have any ideas for us about staying connected? Is anybody interested in participating in a Q&A with company members? Any projects that we might initiate online that would engage you and others? A live chat of some kind?
While we wait for the answers to roll in, check out some of your colleagues in this new video posted on YouTube and Carly’s blog for Dance Spirit
Yes, it has only been a day since the Martha Graham workshop ended, and my body’s going through contraction withdrawal. Maybe I’m being a bit melodramatic, but it was Martha who showed the world that the hysteria of one’s emotions is meant to be personafied into a public display of generalizations of humanity. Yet, unlike the foe poets and misguided artists, I’ve come to accept the honesty behind Martha’s works.
These past three weeks has been an interesting experience that unfolded in an elevated simplistic manor. What I mean by this is that my objective prior to the workshop was succeeded by the end of the program, but it was a padded-down process that forced me to go beyond a technical experience supported by a legend’s name and rethink my role as a dancer/ my role as an installation artist. As a dancer, you are requested to perform a variation of artistic expression in a confined space, and you are lucky enough to even be given the chance to perform, but most importantly you are lucky enough to understand why you are there.
The other night Peter Sparling conducted a presentation of his dance media works that he has been working on for the past few years, and he really caught my attention when he asked, “How do we as dancers document our portraits?” That was one of the first times that I ever felt invited to think of dance in a space separate from sprung floors and dusty curtains. As a dancer it is easy to fall into the pattern of bounding your thought to the hope of one day earning the accomplishment of performing in a “Major” dance company. But the idea that dancers are individuals portraying physical literature that deems the possibility of showcasing honest self-expression is completely liberating and once again invites the dancer to create and not just imitate. I realize that the great thing about doing Graham is the ability to reconstruct masterworks, but the most interesting thing that I took from doing Graham is gaining the courage to ask why I am here and an inspiration to create my own work.
Honestly, I hope I am making sense, because I’m just allowing my thoughts to sprinkle onto the page. So I sum this up with the contentment of surviving a legendary experience. The people I met were incredible, the work was intriguing, and I’m still thinking. It’s good to know that in my mind it is not over, because too often we conclude our experiences when a deadline is given. But I’m still regurgitating all this stuff that has accumulated in my mind the past three weeks. So Cheers to everyone who made this experience possible and I hope everyone gained somethings out of it.
One of the coolest things about this program was being able to sit in on rehearsals. To wittness the process of putting a show together, is an opportunity that doesn’t happen very often. To be able to see the Martha Graham Company’s Clytemnestra come together piece by piece has been really educational and inspiring. Especially since we learned pieces from the name-calling and watched the older version of the piece, we had a greater understanding and deeper connection to the work. Watching the open rehearsal for the prologue to Clytemnestra was amazing. At the end I wish I could have seen more!
From watching some of the rehearsals for Clytemnestra, I was able to see bits and pieces of the work in progress, and so it was really interesting to see all the pieces come together at the open rehearsal. I really hope I am able to see Clytemnestra when the company comes to NYC next year, I am really looking forward to seeing how the whole work comes together. To have the opportunity to see the inner workings of a company has been an amazing experience and really was one of the best parts of the program.
This is an interview with Blakeley White-Mcguire, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. This interview was conducted by the students learning the part of Elektra from Blakeley at Skidmore College’s Summer Dance Intensive.
Tonight, students and company members arrived at the spacious SPAC for our technical rehearsal. Students ran Panorama, while company members did Maple Leaf Rag.
While everyone was performing onstage, I took some video of the company members performing Maple Leaf Rag. You can watch the entirevideo 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!
This past week, I’ve received feedback on the design and layout of our site. The most common complaint? The navigation on the site was a obscure and hidden. In response, I’ve been looking at different layouts and design for the site, and have put together a new style.
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). ]
Seeing the company rehearse Clytemnestra and seeing it on DVD have really brought Graham technique and repertoire alive for me. I’ve seen many Graham works on video throughout college, but had never seen any performed live. In my first week here, I watched the company rehearse Night Journey, and I was in awe.
First of all, I never realized the costumes were green from the black and white videos I had seen of the piece. Second, the work study students and I got to help assemble the sets. But, lastly the intensity of the dancers was amazing. Seeing the company rehearse Diversions of Angels, I had the same reaction, I was almost in tears watching the dancers. And watching the company rehearse Clytemnestra, I really felt that it came alive for me. I was surprised seeing the dvd later that evening that the same intensity came across the screen.
What I’ve learned in the past weeks is that dancers have to be amazing movers and performers and have great technique, but they also have to be extremely intelligent in approaching their role. Learning Iphigenia’s name-calling from Miki and hearing the other company members talk about their roles, I am amazed by how much they think about their character–their backstory, their emotions, their movement, and how their emotions inform their movement. We are working on this in Panorama, and I think that watching the company rehearse can greatly inform our own performance.
After viewing the PBS version of Clytemnestra I was astounded by the technique of the dancers and the performance they each displayed. It occurred to me the next day in class how important every class is for a Graham dancer. Almost every step that was in the piece came from one of the basic combinations we use for class each day. I didn’t understand how important the movement was or how vital class is for any Martha Graham piece. I was always surprised by the choreography because all the movement was based from the core of the body and portrayed an emotion or action. Martha Graham created not only a technique but a language that is universal.
My second viewing of Clytemnestra was company rehearsal in the studios and there was such a difference between a live performance and a video. Being able to watch the whole company dance and not just a highlighted section of the piece was astounding, there were so many details that I missed out on in the video version. The emotion and energy that was presented, even at a rehearsal, was only an indication of how powerful a real performance of this dance could be. Also being able to watch the rehearsal process and see what goes into a video showing sheds new light on the difficulty of reconstructing her works for video. The one guarantee video has is the performance will never change, where as a live performance is new every night.
This site aims to show the Martha Graham Dance Company at work. This site will be a resource in illuminating Martha Graham’s work, aesthetic, and ideas. Using the paradigms of the social web, our work will be open, shareable, creative, and responsive.
Our residency at NYU will conclude this Friday with a very special showing of Clytemnestra. We’re very glad to say that seats are completely sold out. However, if you’re an NYU student, I would encourage you to try your luck - sometimes there are no-shows.
Tonight, at 7:30pm, we will be streaming all student composition work, as well as a LIVE rendition of Panorama, and a few special surprises.
Seeing the company rehearse Clytemnestra and seeing it on DVD have really brought Graham technique and repertoire alive for me. I’ve seen many Graham works on video throughout college, but had never seen any performed live. In my first week here, I watched the company rehearse Night Journey, and I was in awe.
