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IMPRESSIONS: Martha Graham Dance Company- Dances of the Mind- at The Joyce Theater
By Henning Rübsam
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Published on April 18, 2025
Martha Graham’s "Deaths and Entrances." Photo: Brian Pollock
Dancers: Lloyd Knight, Xin Ying, Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne Souder, Laurel Dalley-Smith, So Young An, Richard Villaverde, Devin Loh, Antonio Leone,Meagan King, Ane Arrieta, Zachary Jeppsen, Amanda Moreira, Jai Perez, Ethan Palma
Choreographers: Martha Graham and Baye and Asa
Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, is a class act. Before the curtain opens at The Joyce Theater, on April 2, she welcomes the audience and shares the exciting news that the country’s oldest dance company (founded in 1926) and school will move to a new home, a six-studio dance center in the heart of New York’s theater district.
The current season, part two of a three-year-long, 100th-anniver
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As a point of departure for Program A, Eilber briefly introduces the characters for Act 2 of Clytemnestra, the evening’s curtain-raiser. Graham’s ballet recalls the bloody events described in the ancient Greek tragedies known collectively as The Ores
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Grateful for Eilber’s briefing, I can make out who is who, and I understand Clytemnestra’s choice once my eye catches her lover, Aegisthus (Antonio Leone), asleep on their bed. However, the ghost is the one who gets to dance; and he (Jai Perez) does so with clear focus, while he maneuvers two spears bound in the center to form an X-shape. Good to know he is just an apparition in Clytemnestra’s dream. The props and the set designed by Isamu Noguchi might clutter the smallish stage that serves as the heroine’s bedroom, but they are a feast for the eyes.
Clytemnestra’s agony comes through in Leslie Andrea Williams’ sculptural, angular rendering. Her vengeful children, Orestes (Richard Villaverde) and Elektra (Laurel Dalley Smith), add their anger to the proceedings; and, as if that ancient world wasn’t irate enough, a trio of Furies (Meagan King, Devin Loh, Amanda Moreira) tear ferociously through the space. Their fleet traveling patterns give the work a much-needed, space-eating counterpoint to the protagonists’ mostly stationary gestural drama. Is it Agamemnon’s spirit that directs Elektra’s focused mission to do away with her mother? Orestes does not quite possess his sister’s assurance. His inner conflict over whether to avenge the murder of his father and to commit matricide seems to leave him momentarily in a pickle, before he gets out the ax.
Clytemnestra herself undergoes transformations experiencing different moods. When she faces terror, I seem to detect emotional fragility and grief. Perhaps she is thinking of her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed
Seeing this second act of Graham’s only evening-length opus whets my appetite to take a look at the whole work on a bigger stage, and to get a better perspective on Noguchi’s set. It also makes me curious to explore the music of the late, Egyptian-born composer, Halim El-Dabh. After this first collaboration, he and Graham joined forces on another three works.
The other “dance of the mind” ensemble this season features more recent historical figures, namely the Brontë sisters. In contrast to the story-telling of Clytemnestra, the 1943 Deaths and Entrances is often referred to as the first “stream of consciousness” ballet. With music by Hunter Johnson and a set by Arch Lauterer, the current production features costumes by Oscar de la Renta. It also has a lighting design by Judith M. Daitsman that captures “those moments of doubt, loneliness, (and) fear” which Martha Graham described in a letter to a former company member who served in the Air Force during World War II.
In this work one never knows what is the mind’s projection, as it shifts from childhood memories to subconscious cogency, and produces dance sequences with partners who appear to be real. In addition to the three sisters, danced by Xin Ying with So Young Ahn and Ane Arrieta, the cast features “The Three Remembered Children" — Meagan King, Devin Loh, and Amanda Moreira evoke these “Mini-Me’s.”
I connect to Deaths and Entrances on the level of basic instinct. When a series of powerful contractions moves through Yin
When “The Cavaliers” (Ethan Palma and Jai Perez) dance with the other sisters, the partnering wants to distinguish each couple by its individual push, pull, and entanglement. Since all three relationships could be labeled “it’s complicated,” however, one does not quite care to see them resolve one way or the other. In the end, the women find themselves once again playing at the chessboard of memories. Are they in the same positions as when the dance began?
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While these company works (on Programs A and C respectively) engage me in different ways, Graham’s duet Errand Into The Maze (featured on Program C) firmly grips my heart and soul. Graham based the work on the Greek legend of Theseus whose mission through the labyrinth brought him face to face with the Minotaur. In her ballet, however, Graham altered the sex of the hero. She replaced him her
The new works on these two programs intrigue the mind with theatrical imagery. In Xin Ying’s solo Letter To Nobody (co-choreographed by Mimi Yin), Graham moves onscreen behind Ying in a film of her 1940 Letter to the World. Later, artificial intelligence transforms Graham
The choreographic duo Baye & Asa have reworked and expanded their 2023 Cortege, inspired by Graham’s 1967 Cortege of Eagles and the perils of war.
A black piece of cloth first covers and — once removed — reveals dancers kneeling in a long, diagonal line across the stage space. Quickly the dancers spring into action and resemble fighting battalions. They put on vests that make me think of bulletproof protection, and move with agile force across the space. Groupings expand and retract in a way that connotes amoeboid movement under a microscope. Even if the high-energy dancing doesn’t fluctuate much in its dynamics, it shows how strong and fit the dancers of the company really are. Nothing seems too hard for them, and they emerge as the heroes of the evening. The piece ends as it started. As the fabric is once again pulled over the warriors, we are left to contemplate if people ever emerge from a war as winners.
