Stories are an essential part of human civilization. Every person’s life is one’s own individual narrative. There are also stories that have been told and preserved for hundreds and even thousands of years. There is the story of Abraham and Isaac, Siddhartha Gautama and the Bohdi Tree, Achilles and Agamemnon, Arjuna and Krishna, Mohammad and the Angel. These stories preserve meanings that transcend what they immediately represent. Their meaning survives time and translation to communicate what is fundamental in human nature.
Martha Graham was one of the greatest story tellers of the 20th Century. As all great story tellers, she accomplished this not simply through the stories themselves, but in the way she told them. While retaining the essence of the expressions, she presents stories with new vitality and relevance, and affirmed their sustained significance. Through this, she not only demonstrated the enduring value of the stories themselves, but the enduring value of human nature.
On January 21, 22 and 23 a small audience has a special opportunity to take an intimate look at Martha Graham’s story telling technique. The company performs costumed rehearsals in Graham Deconstructed. The performances are conducted in the Graham Studio Space at the Westbeth Artist Community practically setting the audience on the stage with the dancers. The piece performed is Cave of the Heart depicting Medea and Jason in a tale of love, ambition, betrayal and revenge.
The personal performance allows the audience to experience the visceral expressiveness of Martha’s technique. Her dances transform the ordinary into the supernatural and the minimal into the overwhelming. Space becomes the severity of separation while also providing the liberation of allowance. The floor is leverage but also a nemesis in the grave impact of gravity. Time is the providence for the instance in which we live and also the unspooling inevitability of fate.
On the stage, a row of stones become an archipelago and the contrived steps of Jason’s ambition. Another stone becomes a snake rearing into a defensive dragon or devouring itself as the Ouroboros. The center piece becomes an anvil, an alter and a heart with severed arteries. These pieces, as the stage, are not only transformed, they are defined within the context of the dance, as the meaning of our own lives are defined through the context of our relations with one another and the circumstances of our lives culminating through history while boldly confronting the uncertainty of the future.
In Martha Graham’s performances, the stories are not simply told, neither do they simply describe. In Martha Graham’s performances, the stories come alive.
If you missed these performances, mark your calendar for March 19-22. The Martha Graham Dance Company will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the monumental piece, Appalachian Spring and also performing world premiers of new works by Andonis Foniadakis and Nacho Duato, among numerous other pieces. Check the listings at the New York City Center.
Photo of Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Garrett Buhl Robinson is a poet and novelist living in New York City. www.garrettrobinson.us
