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By Catherine Tharin
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Published on January 29, 2025
THE DRAMA. Photo: Works & Process/Titus Ogilvie-Laing
THE DRAMA
Written and Performed by Lloyd Knight
Directed and Choreographed by Jack Ferver
Video and Production Designed by Jeremy Jacob
A Works & Process Commission
Underground Uptown Dance Festival
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Monday, January 13, 2025
Lloyd Knight, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, presented THE DRAMA, an autobiographical work he created with Jack Ferver (choreography) and Jeremy Jacob (film and music), as part of the Underground Uptown Dance Festival, Works & Process, at the Guggenheim Museum. An homage to Graham (and to Knight’s mother), the piece incorporates excerpts of Graham dances, spoken word, and film. Overlong at one hour, with many false endings, THE DRAMA nevertheless offers an honest, and often fascinating, investigation into Knight’s life as a dancer and artist. Knight, a queer, Black man, intertwines his and Graham’s aesthetics to touching and powerful affect. At one point, Knight holds a photo of Graham’s face in front of his own, as if to suggest that she inhabits his body, and he inhabits her mind.
In the black-and-white film that opens THE DRAMA, Knight stands at the precipice of a cliff with the ocean roiling behind him, and his long, black skirt ruffling in the wind. Filling the screen are giant close-ups of Knight’s pierced ear, his lips, and his hands (clasped in front of his bare chest adorned with a swinging gold medallion). These images provide the backdrop for his live performance of danced phrases from Graham’s repertoire including Errand into the Maze, Deep Song, Clytemnestra, and Seraphic Dialogue. Skittering on his knees, he crosses the stage and then rubs his thigh. He spirals to the floor, only to rise and walk in an oval lifting his knees high. Up and down he goes, while the film illuminates Knight’s statuesque shapes. Graham’s own words from her iconic 1957 film A Dancer’s World, accompany the dancing: “Perhaps you have not done quite enough work. Perhaps, you should have gone back to the studio and worked again.” One imagines that Knight has followed this directive for his entire 20-year career with the company.
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Wearing little black shorts and sitting in a center spotlight, Knight recounts his daily grind: “Wake up. Meditate to center. Stretch. Eat. Seven hours of rehearsal. Thirty-minute lunch-break to try to stay current on social media. Dinner. Cross-train. Go to bed. Repeat, repeat, repeat for the rest of the week.” Knight tells us that he pushes himself to the edge, and that his body is sore all the time. Famously, in A Dancer’s World Graham declares that it takes 10 years to make a dancer. Knight responds with an impish grin, “Well, I’ve been doing this since 2005.” We visit Knight on screen in his dressing room applying makeup. This scene references Graham in A Dancer’s World sitting in her dressing room in front of the mirror applying makeup. She admits to fear, but Knight cheers himself on, “You got this, bitch!” THE DRAMA is not without humor.
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In a relaxed and decidedly undramatic film, Knight introduces his family by gently exhibiting their photos and recounting their stories. Nicknamed Juneboy as a child, Knight was “known for crying a lot,” much to the dismay of his father. He always felt different, but it was his mother, Yvonne, who loved him “and all his desires,” from his crush on Shirley Temple to his crush on Martha Graham. Knight confesses that he would talk like Martha, and talk to Martha (Graham died in 1991), and he wonders what she would have thought of him. We surmise that she, like Knight’s enthusiastic followers, would approve. In the words of Graham, Knight dances “beautifully and clearly and with inevitability.”
The evening also included excerpts from BalletCollective’s The Night Falls by Karen Russell, Ellis Ludwig-Leone and Troy Schumacher (reviewed in The Dance Enthusiast), and a Rotunda Party with Princess Lockerooo’s Winter Waack Battle.
