Oberon's Glade

Tag: Katherine Crockett

  • Martha Graham @ City Center 2014 #2

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    Above: Katherine Crockett, photo by Matthew Murphy

    Friday March 21st, 2014 – Gods and goddesses never leave us, but they do sometimes move from one sphere to another, the better to bring light to the entire universe. Tonight at City Center I watched two of the great Graham dancers of our day – Katherine Crockett and Maurizio Nardi – in their final performances as members of the Martha Graham Dance Company. (Maurizio actually bids farewell on Saturday evening, but I am unable to be there). Both of them – I hope – will come back as guests in future Graham seasons; or perhaps we will see them in different contexts in the months ahead.

    This evening’s performance was brilliant in every regard: the Company danced to perfection and the two contrasting Graham works framed an Andonis Foniadakis creation to which the word ‘gorgeous’ can be most aptly applied.

    Ms. Crockett, as Clytemnestra in a one-act distillation of the 1958 Graham classic, was beyond the beyond. To be tall, shapely of limb, and fair of face is all well and good, and to put these gifts at the service of art and music with such total conviction is Katherine Crockett’s great achievement. Her performance was so clear of focus and so striking in every step and gesture and expression that it seemed impossible that we might be seeing her in this role for the last time. Katherine has always seemed to me to be the incarnation of an ancient goddess, alive and speaking to us today of the luminous vitality of the feminine spirit. As the audience and her fellow dancers hailed her with flowers and waves of applause at her curtain calls, she seemed to have attained iconic status. And yet, we were to see her again in a subtle encore, wafting across the stage in an angelic white gown in MAPLE LEAF RAG, the evening’s closing work.

    CLYTEMNESTRA, to a musical score by Halim El Dahm with sets by Isamu Noguchi and costumes by Ms. Graham and Helen McGehee, affords many solo-character opportunities for the Graham dancers and so we are able to bask in the power and poetry of the individual personalities in this fascinating Company.  Starting at curtain-rise, Lloyd Knight as the Messenger of Death set the tone for the whole work with his natural armor of musculature set off in a flowing royal-purple skirt. Martha Graham unabashedly admired the male form, and a veritable parade of masculine marvels strode before us: Ben Schultz as the towering King Hades – armed and epically dangerous – and Abdiel Jacobsen with a handsome mixture of vulnerability and resolve as Orestes (Abdiel is having quite a season!); Maurizio Nardi’s drunken lout of an Agisthes was personified by his slender strength and Hollywood cheekbones, and Lorenzo Pagano – already a valuable asset to the Company – gave a powerful rendering of the Night Watchman’s solo. As the hapless Agamemnon, Tadej Brdnik was perfect – and, after his character’s death, Tadej reappears in high platform shoes and the ballet becomes a ghost story.

    The women are equally superb, with the calculating urgency of Electra brought vividly to life by that impeccable Graham priestess, Blakeley White-McGuire. Natasha Diamond Walker (Helen of Troy), Mariya Dashkina Maddux (Iphigenia), PeiJu Chien-Pott (Cassandra) and Xiaochuan Xie (Athena) were distinctive as these mythic females, and the blessed assurance of their dancing and of their commitment augur well for the future of the Company.

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    Above: rehearsal image from Andonis Foniadakis’ ECHO, photo by Christopher Jones

    In their quest to bring new choreography into the Graham repertoire, the Company have struck gold with Andonis Foniadakis’ ECHO. Drawing inspiration from the ancient tale of Narcissus and Echo, this work fits like a glove into the Company’s scheme of things, where myth, magic and mystery are their daily bread.

    Andonis, who in 2008 brought his mind-blowing solo version of RITE OF SPRING – danced by the divine Joanna Toumpakari – to Joyce SoHo, is now becoming more widely known here in Gotham (his ballet GLORY will be seen the The Joyce this coming week, performed by Ballet du Grand Theatre Geneve…details here). 

    ECHO opens in silence in a foggy landscape with a shallow circular pool. It is here that the beautiful Narcissus is held captive by his own reflection. Andonis uses two of the Graham company’s handsomest men to personify the self-obsessed youth: Lloyd Mayor and Lorenzo Pagano. They are clad in long sheer skirts and the theme of self-infatuation is embodied in their constant embracing and intimate partnering. They are all but inseparable.

    As the rapture of Julien Tarride’s musical score takes wing, we meet the lovely and lonely Echo, danced with flowing grace by PeiJu Chien-Pott – a dancer who this season has emerged at a stellar level. The dance swirls forward on waves of lyricism, with a time-evoking gamelan theme of particular appeal. Angelic voices from another cosmos permeate the atmosphere as the ensemble of dancers, hair down and skirts drifting as they fly swiftly about the space, come and go from the dark recesses of the stage. Tadej Brdnik, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Lloyd Knight, Xiaochuan Xie and Ying Xin are all to be savored, and a duet passage for Natasha Diamond Walker and Ben Schultz suggested a partnership to be cultivated.

    ECHO rightfully received a sustained ovation, both for the dancers and the choreographer. 

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    Above: Maurizio Nardi

    Having my last look – for now – at Maurizio Nardi in the evening’s closing work, MAPLE LEAF RAG; Maurizio was one of the first Graham male dancers to seize my imagination when I began following the Company a few years ago. One of my regrets is never having seen him in the Graham solo LUCIFER which he has danced at galas. Perhaps an opportunity may still come. His immediate future I believe is wrapped up with Key West Modern Dance. I like to imagine him under a palm tree, sipping a cool drink after teaching class. Bon voyage, Maurizio!!

    I’d never seen MAPLE LEAF RAG and it is, in a word, adorable. Adorable in two ways really: first for its wit and sparkle and second for its gentle pandering to admirers of the male physique: all the Graham hunks spend the whole ballet shirtless, in tights.

    The stage is dominated by what appears to be a fusion between a ballet barre and a balance beam. The dancers will use this in myriad ways during the ballet. All wearing pastels, the eighteen dancers romp about the space to Scott Joplin tunes. Ying Xin and Lloyd Knight, in canary-yellow, are birds of a feather in their quirky, animated pas de deux. Periodically Katherine Crockett wafts across the stage, a tongue-in-cheek representation of Graham spoofing herself. Stylized Graham movement takes on a charming vibrancy here and the piece, just long enough to dazzle us without wearing out its welcome, is a great way to end the evening.

    During the curtain calls, Tadej Brdnik came striding out in his Agamemnon platforms and stopped the applause to ask that we donate to Dancers Responding to AIDS on our way out. I would do anything Tadej asked of me, and so I gave them – literally – my last dollar.

    So, a vastly pleasing evening in every regard with my lovely companion Roberto Villanueva, and so nice to run into Ian Spencer Bell. My thanks to Janet Eilber, Denise Vale, Andonis Foniadakis, Janet Stapleton, and all of the Graham dancers, and a champagne toast to Katherine and Maurizio. And a million roses for Martha.

  • Martha Graham’s ‘Hérodiade’

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    Above: Miki Orihara in Graham’s Hérodiade

    Wednesday November 20, 2013 – Two of today’s foremost interpreters of the works of Martha Graham – Miki Orihara and Katherine Crockett – appeared tonight in a studio showing of the great choreographer’s 1944 work Hérodiade. As a splendid prelude, Ms. Crockett also danced Spectre-1914. It was an evening that resonated for me in so many different ways.

    Martha Graham Dance Company‘s artistic director Janet Eilber welcomed an overflow crowd to this second of three presentations of this programme. The Company’s spacious studio/theater on the eleventh floor of the Westbeth complex had been hung with black drapes, and after Ms. Eilber’s brief remarks, the majestic Katherine Crockett appeared to dance Spectre-1914, the opening solo from Martha Graham’s Chronicle.

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    Above: Katherine Crockett, photographed by Matt Murphy

    Chronicle, dating from 1936, is Graham’s powerful statement on the devastation and futility of war; it is a great masterwork for female ensemble and it opens with a magnificent solo in which the dancer manipulates a voluminous skirt lined in red fabric to evoke both the bloodshed and the flames of war.

    Spectre-1914 had all but passed from memory until 1994 when it was researched and reconstructed by Terese Capucilli and Carol Fried, using film clips and still photos by Barbara Morgan. May Terpsichore bless these women for their efforts, for Spectre-1914 is as powerful a dancework as may be found, and it was danced tonight with marvelous amplitude and a deep sense of consecration by the marvelous Katherine Crockett. The audience beheld the dance in an awed state of pin-drop silence.

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    Above: the Isamu Noguchi set pieces for Martha Graham’s Hérodiade

    After the Noguchi setting had been swiftly installed in the space, we watched a full performance of Graham’s ballet Hérodiade. Set to music by Paul Hindemith and commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge for the Library of Congress, the ballet was originally called Mirror Before Me, and was first seen on October 30, 1944, at the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Writing of that performance for the New York Times (November 1, 1944), critic John Martin said: “Miss Graham has created a powerful study of a woman awaiting a ‘mysterious destiny’ of which she has no knowledge…into it she has poured a somber tension that is relentless and altogether gripping. The music is rich and dark in color and the action on the stage meets it magnificently on its own terms.”

    That music, scored for chamber orchestra, was written by Paul Hindemith, a composer perhaps best-loved in the dance world for his superb Four Temperaments, choreographed by Balanchine.

    When I received the announcement that Hérodiade would be performed this evening, I suppose my natural reaction as an opera-lover was that it would be a dance about the Biblical princess Herodias and her daughter Salome and their conspiracy to have the prophet John the Baptist executed. But that is not the case: there are no allusions to either the Strauss or Massenet operas, nor to the Bible, nor to Oscar Wilde who penned the famous play Salome – Salome does not figure in the Graham work at all.

    Martha Graham had been interested in the poem Hérodiade by Stephane Mallarmé and in creating her ballet, the choreographer eschewed a specific narrative and instead turned to an abstraction of the character. Herodias is never named; she is simply referred to as ‘A Woman’. In Graham’s description, we see “a glimpse into the mirror of one’s being,” and she refers to this Woman as ‘doom-eager’, going forth with resolve to embrace her destiny.

    The Hindemith score is in eleven short movements, and we watch with intense interest as the radiant Miki Orihara, as the Woman in a deep violet gown, and the more austere Ms. Cockett, her Attendant in simple grey, move about the space. The choreography is restless and urgent, the Woman clearly obsessed with whatever fate awaits her while the Attendant seeks to comfort or forestall her mistress. The two dancers were simply engrossing to behold: Miki often in rapid, complex combinations moving swiftly about the stage while Katherine deployed her uncanny extension with mind-boggling expressiveness.

    In the end, Miki steps out of her rich gown and is revealed in virginal white; the Attendant withdraws and the Woman, taking up a black veil, contemplates her destiny. Mysterious, and all the more powerful for the unanswered questions it raises, Hérodiade is breath-taking.