By Meredith Benjamin
Martha Graham is one of the most noteworthy pioneers of American modern dance. A prolific choreographer who revolutionized the art form, Graham created a new movement vocabulary when she began teaching and choreographing in 1926. The company that bears her name has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, including lawsuits over the ownership of her works, and most recently, devastating losses of sets, costumes, and artifacts during Superstorm Sandy. Despite these losses, the company returned to the Joyce Theatre for its annual spring season, February 20 to March 3, presenting three different programs as part of a series entitled Myth and Transformation. Like many other choreographer-centered modern dance companies formed in the twentieth century, the Graham company has in recent years faced the question of how to proceed after the death of its founder: function on a mub seum model, serving primarily to preserve the works and legacy of said founder? Or invite new choreographers to work with the company, and risk losing that central identity?
While the Graham company has not been known for forays into the contemporary, under the current artistic direction of former Graham dancer Janet Eilber, they have sought to find a middle ground. They continue to perform Graham’s works and preserve the technique she developed while also inviting contemporary choreographers to work with the company. Eilber has taken particular care to choose choreographers with some sort of connection to Graham or to the themes of her ballets—indeed, the themed seasons have been another way of linking these new works to that of the company’s founder. Program A, which I saw on March 3, exemplified this approach, pairing Graham’s 1962 Phaedra with The Show (Achilles Heels), choreographed and directed by Richard Move.
Graham was well known for her revisions and re-imaginings of Greek myths, often taking the woman’s point of view as central. One of her earliest forays into the realm of the mythic was her 1946 Cave of the Heart, a take on the jealousy which sits front and center in the Medea story. Phaedra, revived at the Joyce for its first performance in ten years, focuses on the title character’s desire for her stepson, Hippolytus. After he rebuffs her advances, she goes to her husband Theseus and accuses Hippolytus of rape, a lie which results in tragedy. Its explicit depiction of sexuality was met with cries of obscenity from members of Congress when it first premiered, and Phaedra was almost banned from touring internationally.
The curtain rises on a tableau of three women: Phaedra, in a long, glittering gold dress, is framed by the austere huntress Artemis on one pedestal, and the smiling and seductive Aphrodite on another. These two goddesses signal the opposing pulls of chastity and lust, with Phaedra caught agonizingly between them. The sets, by renowned artist and frequent Graham collaborator Isamu Noguchi, are as much a part of the choreography as the dancers’ movements: there is an oddly slanted bench on which Phaedra enacts erotic writhing and later anguished lament, a pedestal for Aphrodite enclosed by folding pink panels with a distinctly vulvic look (Graham was no stranger to Freud and sexual imagery), and a tall, two-columned structure of door-like panels which Aphrodite temptingly opens and closes, revealing the muscled legs and torso of Hippolytus piece-by-piece (reversal of the male gaze, anyone?).
Katherine Crockett, in the title role, is a Graham dancer in the grand tradition: tall and statuesque, and with a face capable of registering the deeply-felt emotions so integral to Graham’s psychologically-driven works. From her first convulsions of lust and desire, to her anguished backbends and leg extensions, there is drama in her every movement. Lloyd Knight, as Phaedra’s stepson, was a picture of Greek masculinity: muscled and forthright, although more nuance of expression would have improved his performance.
Toward the end of the piece, PeiJu Chien-Pott as Pasiphea (Phaedra’s mother) enters accompanied by four male “bull dancers,” dressed, like Hippolytus, in nothing but black and gold briefs. Pasiphea’s dance of exuberant and gleeful sexuality, supported by the men, is an allusion to her copulation with a bull. This insinuation that dangerous lustfulness is an inherited quality (apparent only if one is familiar with the story) is a confusing reference, lost amid the pageantry. Along with the overly-literal use of a dagger as a phallic symbol, the symbolism, once so shocking, now reads as too obvious and overwrought. In this sense, Phaedra has not retained the power of some of Graham’s other mythic ballets.
Richard Move tackles another classic figure of Greek mythology in The Show (Achilles Heel). Move is in many ways a clear choice as a choreographer to respect the company’s history while pushing it in new directions. His reverence for Graham is clear, as is the extent to which he is steeped in the history and philosophy of her work. He is best-known for his Martha@ series, in which he impersonates the grande dame of modern dance. Like Graham, he is intrigued by the power of Greek myth, and how it might be reimagined. Move’s preferred method of making his audience reexamine these tales includes a mash-up on genres and aheavy dose of camp—his title for instance, references a pair of gold stilettos donned by the hero.
The Show (Achilles Heels) was originally commissioned as part of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, with Baryshnikov himself playing Achilles (he remains a presence in this production, as the recorded voice of Achilles). When it was revived in 2006 at The Kitchen, the self-proclaimed “bad boy of ballet,” Rasta Thomas, danced the central role. Such predecessors leave large shoes to fill, but such was the task of dancer Lloyd Mayor, an apprentice making his debut with the company this season. Mayor is appropriately young, handsome, and confidently aloof, although hints of naiveté and vulnerability crept into his performance of the hero. He makes his first entrance, as if strutting down a catwalk, to Deborah Harry’s “Beautiful Creature” (who is also the recorded Voice of Athena). Following in Graham’s tradition of artistic collaborations, The Show includes an original score by Arto Lindsay that incorporates songs by Harry and Blondie, and striking art by painter Nicole Eisenman: two large panels at the back of the stage are covered with bodies clothed in white. Later, the panels are reversed to reveal kitschy mash-ups of pop-culture imagery, much of it sexually-charged, but some simply odd.
The piece teetered on the edge of hokey: Move uses a campy game show (It’s Greek to Me!), with Athena as the host and Achilles as the only guest (he never loses) as a device to reveal the intricacies of the myth. Just when you thought things might be getting too over-the-top however, the tone would shift, and various groupings of dancers crossing between styles—now earnest, now ironic—would provide welcome relief to the sometimes bombastic barrage of music, lighting, and recorded voices. Crockett was the glamorous Helen of Troy, bewildered by her position as “the face that launched a thousand ships,” when she knew all along they just needed an excuse for war. Natasha Diamond-Walker’s turn as Achilles’ horse was sinuous and evocative without being cheesy—no easy task.
In a poignant duet with his lover/attendant, Patroclus (Abdiel Jacobsen), Achilles dances and struts in an armored body-plate and a pair of gold heels (after rejecting a red pair first offered by Patroclus). This scene is both a re-imagining of what it meant for Achilles to be hidden away dressed as a girl (perhaps he reveled in it) and a peek into the tenderness the two share. After Patroclus admiringly snaps a number of photos of Achilles, the two stand with their arms around each other’s shoulders, gazing at their reflection in a mirror they hold together, crystalizing an image of the modern desire to watch ourselves performing love or coupledom.
While the piece’s conclusion—Mayor, center-stage, covered in a shower of gold glitter—may seem far from the heightened interiority of Graham’s work, the two approaches are not as distant as they seem on the surface. Both choreographers ask us to look at classic myths with new eyes and from new perspectives; it is only the methods of transformation that have changed. The company’s dancers proved strong and malleable, shifting easily from the structured pathos of Graham’s work to the more fluid demands of Move’s multi-genre work. While each of these pieces have their flaws, it is heartening to see this important company actively exploring new frontiers as it moves into an uncertain future.
