Martha Graham Company @ The Joyce 2019

At Martha Graham Company performances, Artistic Director Janet Eilber bring audiences closer to Graham.  Her very informal welcome at the foot of the stage gives the lay person the breakdown of the masterworks to be performed, and then she makes connections to newer works and why, or how they may, or may not relate to Graham’s dance-making legacy. For the Company’s Joyce Theater season (April 2 -14), the Graham masterworks on Program B, Secular Games/Men’s Section (1962) and El Penitente (1940) were well received, so too was Laurel Dalley Smith and Lloyd Mayor’s sweet  rendition of Lucinda Childs’ Histoire (1999).  A nice balance was the premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s Untitled (Souvenir), a daring reimagining of Graham’s signature movement language, complete with borrowed set pieces from Graham works and runway-style costumes by Ryan Lobo and Ramon Martin of TOME, that complimented Tanowitz’s standout solos among the large cast. But in true form, the women of Graham commanded the stage in Graham’s Chronicle, the 1936 showstopper.  There are three sections: I. Spectre-1914 (Drums—Red Shroud—Lament) in which Xin Ying is transfixing as the lead; II. Steps in the Street (Devastation—Homelessness—Exile) when a growing army of eleven dancers, led by Anne Souder (4/13) enter backwards, and in many entrance and exits throw their bodies forward and back, stomp the floor or lift their chests with outreached arms; and then in III. Prelude to Action (Unity—Pledge to the Future) Ying returns then beckons the others and together, repeating portions of the other sections, they powerfully, and in true dramatic Graham fashion, their movement grew to a crescendo to close the program.

The Graham dancers are: Peiju Chien-Pott, Lloyd Knight, Ben Schultz, Xin Ying, Natasha M. Diamond-Walker, Charlotte Landreau, Mayor, Lorenzo Pagano, Souder, So Young An, Smith, Jacob Larsen, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Leslie Andrea Williams, Alyssa Cebulski, Alessio Crognale and Cara McManus.