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.

I hope this finds you and your families safe and sound after Hurricane Gustav pounded through Baton Rouge. It must have been a frightening experience. The power is most likely still out, but when you get this message I have an assignment for you.

In relating art to life and vice versa - were there any images or feelings which came up for you while preparing for the hurricane - a ritual or rhythm for the preparation? If so, did those rituals (boarding up the house, getting candles, filling sandbags etc.) give you inner strength to face the storm. Was there a sense of community and people coming together for a common goal? During the height of the storm, did you have to find ways to overcome your own fear or anxiety in order to stay strong for others?

The answers to these questions can be used to find new inroads to your work as a dance artist. Perhaps, examening your life experiences can inform and enrich your work. Via internet, I have attached a couple of images which, for me, evoke Panorama through the experience of Gustav.

The first is from the tall ladies section and the next is the whirlpool. When you all regain power, please take a little time to search for images which speak to you and relate to Panorama - then, share those with the rest of us.

Keep practicing and stay well. - Love, Blakeley

Dancers, please continue to develop your concentration and focus - not to mention pelvic initiated contractions. Write to me here and let me know how its going.

group-photo

They are beginning to feel the wear and tear of repetition and yesterday we had a pow-wow about massaging out tight spots on the feet, calves and front of hips. It is crucial that even on days off, they continue stretching and visualizing the dance. CRUCIAL DANCERS ! Today is our last day together and I am looking forward to seeing their progress from yesterday. I hope that conscious focuses will be part of it (hint, hint).

More later…

P.S. - in case I forget to tell you …  the East Baton Rouge Library on Goodwood should have  some copies of a Graham DVD set called the Criteron Collection. I highly recommend checking this out . There are films of Graham and her company demonstrating the techinque . Check it out !

circle

Next, we worked on the standing contraction and release. I am finding it difficult to transfer the importance of initiation from the pelvis

tall-ladies1

Rehearsal ended with a good run of Panorama. I noticed some of the “fire in the eyes” I’ve been looking for, possibly because it was Friday night and they wanted to get out of there.

Hey, I’ll take it where it comes.

Panorama | Baton Rouge

We’ve only had four rehearsals and they have learned the complete choreography. Now, the work begins. We will delve into the technique and philosophies which imbue Graham’s dances with the power and urgency they demand. My hope is that the dancers are enjoying dancing in this different way - even more, I hope that it gives them a new point of view.

Welcome to the world of Martha Graham! This is Janet Eilber - Blakeley tells me that you are doing a great job and have already mapped out all of Panorama! We thought you might like to visit this site and learn more about another production of Panorama that happened earlier this summer at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy the photos, video clips and comments from another group of young dancers who you are now related to in a way (if not by blood, at least by shin splints!)

And I would love to learn more about you! So what do you think about this Panorama experience? Is it what you expected? What’s the hardest thing about it for you? I’m sure it’s a lot different from other dances you have performed — could you describe that difference? Do you love it, hate it or are you not sure yet?! Please post a comment and let us in on your process. We would love to hear more about what’s going on down there with our newest branch of the extended Graham family.

With a big welcome to each of you!

Janet

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The Panorama Process

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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

Make some noise! We want to hear from you!

Hugs to each of you,

Janet

   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. 

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