Above: Blakeley White-McGuire and Tadej Brdnik; these two phenomenal dancers were making their ‘farewell’ appearances as members of the Graham company tonight.
Sunday February 22nd, 2015 – For me it was a bittersweet evening at the Martha Graham Dance Company‘s final performance of their 2015 Joyce season following the news earlier this week that tonight would mark the ‘farewell’ Graham performances of Blakeley White-McGuire and Tadej Brdnik, two of the great Graham interpreters of our time and two people I greatly love and admire both as dancers and personalities.
Tadej danced in the very first performance of a Graham work that I ever saw: Appalachian Spring at Jacob’s Pillow some 20 years ago. That afternoon his Bride was the inimitable Miki Orihara. Combining the physique of a champion athlete with an appealingly boyish face, Tadej’s boundless energy and commitment have made him a Graham icon; he also has a devilish sense of humor, and I’ve seen him at the end of a long rehearsal keeping his fellow-dancers merry with one-liners and dead-pan expressions. In these final performances as a Company member, he has again shown the power and presence that have made him an emblematic Graham dancer throughout his career.
Of Blakeley White-McGuire, one can say she has indomitable technical prowess and a rare gift for communicating emotion. But beyond that there’s an undefinable element in her dancing which only a handful of dancers in my experience have possessed: a spiritual connection with the music and the movement that makes her performances not just important, but essential. Blakeley is twice-blessed by Terpsichore, and it is we – the audience – who reap the benefits of her beauty and generosity of spirit.
Like Wendy Whelan, who recently retired from New York City Ballet (and who was in the audience tonight!), both Blakeley and Tadej have indicated that they aren’t retiring, but simply turning a page in the chronicle of their dancing careers.
Blakeley and Tadej walked into the Graham studios for the first time on the same day some two decades ago. Although in the original scheme of things they were not scheduled to dance Errand Into The Maze together this season, it seems they were destined by the gods to do so.
Their performance was thrilling, commencing with Blakeley’s opening solo (photo above by Brigid Pierce) in which she danced with a palpitating mixture of fear and resolve, delineating the character’s destiny in a vivid marriage of technique and temperament. Tadej, as the monstrous Minotaur, stalks her like a vicious predator, his incredible thigh musculature giving him grounded strength of purpose. Their pas de deux, so fraught with struggle and sexuality, shows Graham’s gift for devising miracles of leverage, counter-balance, and entwining in her partnering motifs. Blakeley and Tadej’s joint triumph was vastly cheered by the packed house, and their Graham colleagues joined them onstage for the celebration.
For all the excitement generated by Blakeley and Tadej, the evening was an enriching one overall, commencing with two Graham works in which two of my beloved Muses appeared: Deep Song opened the program in a vivid performance by Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch, and Miki Orihara gave a luminous rendering of an excerpt from Primitive Mysteries, presiding over a corps of young women in blue.
Above: Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch in Deep Song; photo by Brigid Pierce
Deep Song is a solo work by Martha Graham, set to Music by Henry Cowell. It was premiered in 1937 as one of the choreographer’s responses to the horrors of war (the Spanish civil war in this case). In a black and white gown, Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch is first seen seated on a white bench. The choreography develops with seeming inevitability as she struggles with her inner torment, sinking to the ground. She later lifts the bench, seeming to use it as a shield or hiding place. Finally the bench takes on a coffin-like aspect as she lowers it over herself. Carrie, a dancer I have always held in highest esteem, danced as superbly as I expected. The audience seemed to agree: she won a prolonged ovation which made me want to smile and weep at the same time.
Miki Orihara (rehearsal image, above) appeared like a shimmering angel all in white to perform the ‘Hymn to the Blessed Virgin’ from Graham’s 1931 ballet Primitive Mysteries. This is the Graham work I am most curious about, and tonight’s tantalizing excerpt makes me curiouser and curiouser. Escorted by a group of attendants in deep blue gowns (members and apprentices of Graham II), Miki radiates feminine mystique with her poetic gestures, moving with an almost ghostly lightness of tread. To Louis Horst’s atmospheric melody for flute and piano, the women perform antique rituals in this finely-structured dancework. The ensemble’s signature poses and port de bras make a particularly strong effect as Miki walks forward between facing rows of acolytes who sink down or raise their arms to heaven as she passes by. Miki sustains a powerful pose in demi-plié as the women circle about her. All to soon, their cortège passes onward but the resonance of their dancing lingers. Miki, always so movingly inspired and inspiring, sets a lovely example for the young dancers surrounding her: not only of how to move, but how to be.
In the Graham Company’s on-going project of asking now-generation choreographers to create short danceworks inspired by Martha’s legendary solo Lamentation, Michelle Dorrance and Liz Gerring have now devised new pieces – Lamentation Variations – for the Graham dancers. Bulareyaung Pargalava’s Variation, a classic by now, was also on offer tonight.
Above: the Graham men in Michelle Dorrance’s Lamentation Variation; left to right are Abdiel Jacobsen, Ben Schultz, Lloyd Knight, Lloyd Mayor, Tadej Brdnik. Photo by Christopher Jones.
Ms. Dorrance, a tap-dancing paragon, did not ask the Graham dancers to tap. But the music she used relied on tap rhythmics with a jazzy over-lay. The men formed a kind of central knot, while a quintet of women were seen in walkabouts…which one or two of the men sometimes strayed into. Though abstract, an underlying aspect of sadness and solitude prevailed throughout this work.
Liz Gerring’s Lamentation Variation is a quartet – performed by Natasha M Diamond-Walker, Charlotte Landreau, Ying Xin, and the indefatigable Tadej Brdnik (photo, Brigid Pierce) – which is set to a score for electronics and piano. The movement is rather stylized, and choreographer and dancers make excellent use of the space.
Above: from Bulareyaung Pargalava’s Lamentation Vartiation; photo © 2015 Yi-Chun Wu.
Pargalava’s Variation opens to the sound of Martha Graham’s voice speaking about the solo that inspired all these variations. Soon a haunting melody from Mahler’s ‘Songs of the Wayfarer’ is heard. In flesh-coloured tights, the delicate XiaoChuan Xie and her three demi-god partners – Ben Schultz, Lloyd Knight, and Lloyd Mayor – move with a sense of flowing lyricism through intricate partnerings in which Chuan alternately sinks down and is lifted on high. The dancers and the dance certainly wove a hypnotic spell tonight.
Above: Tadej Brdnik and XiaoChuan Xie in Annie-B Parson’s The Snow Falls in the Winter; photo by Brigid Pierce.
I saw Annie-B Parson’s The Snow Falls in the Winter a few seasons ago when OtherShore performed it. It’s simply not my cup of tea. For me one of the great joys of watching dance is: the dancers are silent. Once they begin to speak, a whole element of mystery falls away. Ms. Parson’s work is more like a play with a bit of dancing thrown in. The Graham dancers of course flung themselves into the piece with their customary zest, and Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch and Natasha Diamond-Walker in particular proved themselves adept actresses. But while many in the audience applauded lustily and commented enthusiastically on this very ‘different’ work, I found it pretty tedious.
Above: from Andonis Foniadakis’ Echo, Lloyd Mayor, PeiJu Chien-Pott, and Lloyd Knight; photo by Brigid Pierce
The evening then soared to its conclusion with Andonis Foniadakis’ myth-inspired masterwork, Echo. It’s more a mood piece than a literal re-telling of the ancient tale of Narcissus and Echo, and as such it flows gorgeously upon Julien Tauride’s atmospheric score. The Graham Company’s beautiful pair of Lloyds – Mayor and Knight – create the illusion of Narcissus and his refection in deeply-enmeshed duets, their movement enhanced by their long sheer skirts (costumes by Anastasios Sofroniou) as caught in shadowy swirls by Clifton Taylor’s lighting design. PeiJu Chein-Pott is simply gorgeous as Echo, her dancing radiant and her creation of the character’s unspoken love and frustration literally becoming poetry in motion. In a supporting ensemble (as if such dancers can ever be thought of as merely ‘supporting’!) Tadej Brdnik, Ben Schultz, Abdiel Jacobsen, Natasha Diamond-Walker, XiaoChuan Xie, Charlotte Landreau, and Lauren Newman all wove into the marvelous mythic tapestry that Mr. Foniadakis has created.
Above: from Andonis Foniadakis’ Echo, Lloyd Mayor and PeiJu Chien-Pott; photo by Brigid Pierce
So nice to see many dancer-friends among the crowd: Wendy Whelan, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Jere Hunt, Justin Lynch, Jonathan Breton, and Alexandre Balmain; and of course my delightful companion of the evening, Roberto Villanueva. Special thanks to Janet Eilber, the dance world’s most gracious hostess, and to publicist Janet Stapleton for sending me the production photos with perfect timing.
Afterglow: Tadej Brdnik and Blakeley White-McGuire basking in the affectionate admiration of friends and fans after the performance. Photo courtesy of Karen Brounstein.
Oberon's Glade 