Martha Graham Dance Company @ Peak Performances

At Martha Graham Company performances, Artistic Director Janet Eilber bring audiences closer to Graham.  Her informal welcome at the top of the show gives a breakdown of the masterwork 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 recent season (November 14-17 at Peak Performances), part of their conversation series, the Graham masterwork was Appalachian Spring (1944), celebrating its 75th anniversary, and the work in response to Appalachian Spring was Troy Schumacher’s The Auditions.  To be clear, any attempt to be aligned with a Graham masterwork is a bit unfair, but Schumacher went boldly into creating this contemporary conversation.  As Graham did with Aaron Copeland, Schumacher called on the composer Augusta Read Thomas to make an original score.  Also, as Graham did, Schumacher dared to hope for normalcy in a complicated world, like then, now. Graham’s slower-moving work echoes the vicissitudes of wartime (think World War II and Japanese internment camps) and a need for the comfort of family. Time is given to hold hands in prayer, or support the back of the preacher, gently rock an imagined baby, unite through unison movement across the stage, or bowing heads in agreement while seated closely on a high-back bench.  Conversely, Schumacher’s present-day world is fast-paced, and driven by a dogged competition to exist.  Schumacher’s ethereal response steps into the now and takes the dancers on an all-out, current–day-chorus-line competition (audition) to get to a sought after place. A light, center stage that came and went, was the marker. In sneakers, colorful contemporary wear, hair flying, feet moving fast, there is barely time to breathe, but they do as they dart through their real and imagined space, vying to outdo each other.  Schumacher version is definitely a good try, but maybe too ephemeral.  

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