Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY unveils a pair of world premieres in a well-balanced program at The Joyce

• By drediman
• April 19, 2023
• No Comments

Last night at The Joyce Theater, the storied Martha Graham Dance Company settled into a two-week run at the Chelsea dance venue, kicking off a busy spring season of dance in the city (this week alone, I’m also looking forward to attending performances by New York City Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and CCN Ballet de Lorraine). The opening night program featured two Graham classics, in addition to the anticipated unveiling of a pair of world premieres. Altogether, the evening was a well-balanced display of the company’s past and future, chronologically taking the audience on a journey from abstraction to more concrete dance theater.

First let’s cover the program’s two premieres, starting with Annie Rigney’s urgently performed Get Up, My Daughter. Set to an emotive Bulgarian folk-influenced score by Marco Rosano, the piece is an empowering if restless testament to the ferocity of feminity and sisterhood. There’s a wildness to the dance that contrasts beautifully with Graham’s typically controlled, statuesque aesthetic. Then there was Cortege 2023, Baye & Asa’s moody, stylized homage to Graham’s Cortege of Eagles. Comprised of a fluidly morphing parade of violent, phantasmagorical stage pictures (think Goya), the work also features gothic, noirish lighting (kudos to designer Yi-Chung Chen) and a relentlessly menacing score by Aidan Elias. Altogether, the dance-making duo has created a haunting, haunted work that segued beautifully into the psychological terrors of Cave of the Heart.

First up amongst the Graham classics was Dark Meadow Suite (a full length ballet from 1946 that reformatted into a more succinct suite format in 2016), which opened the program. An abstract, rigorously-choreographed meditation on the notion of yearning (set to music by Carlos Chávez), the dance is notable for creating clear tableaus through a ritualistic choreographic vocabulary. Then closing out the evening was Cave of the Heart, also from 1946. Featuring spare yet evocative designs by visual artist Isamu Noguchi (who collaborated regularly with Graham, including her seminal Appalachian Spring), the dance theater piece is a representational choreographic retelling of the Medea tragedy. Its gestural movents remain strikingly modern to this day, especially as performed by the opening night cast. Indeed, throughout the evening, the MGDC dancers were focused and sharp, effortlessly at home in the different modes of dance required of them.

RECOMMENDED

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Dance
The Joyce Theater
Approximately 2 hours (with one intermission)
Through April 3