Friday January 15th, 2016 – Tadej Brdnik invited me to a showcase performance today at the Martha Graham Dance Company‘s home space on Bethune Street where participants in the Graham 2016 Winter Intensive showed a standing-room-only crowd what they’d been working on for the past three weeks.
Following some solo composition studies and repertory excerpts, presented by the Graham school’s Yung Yung Tsui and Lone Larsen, choreographer Joshua Beamish had a group of male and female students demonstrate how dance can be developed from a single phrase. Maxine Sherman then presented several women in an excerpt from CAVE OF THE HEART; this solo was danced by the girls in unison and in canon.
The male contingent from the Intensive then appeared for CELEBRATION, a 1934 work which Graham set to music by Louis Horst. Graham originally created CELEBRATION with an all-female cast; Tadej has now been tasked with re-working it for a male ensemble. Fifteen men danced it today; it’s a very dynamic piece, showing Graham’s customary skill in structuring movement to achieve the maximum effect. Tadej mentioned that the choreography includes approximately 400 jumps, putting it into a special category alongside David Parsons’ CAUGHT.
Among the dancers today, both male and female, some showed great promise.
I always love being at Graham events, and was so happy to see – in addition to Tadej and Joshua – Denise Vale, Blakeley White-McGuire, Ying Xin, future maman Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch, Abdiel Cedric Jacobsen, and Lloyd Knight.
I had planned to take lots of photos, but latecomers arrived and took seats to my immediate right, and I didn’t want to disturb them with my camera. So I have only the one image (at the top) of a dancer in her composition study at the start of the presentation.
Oberon's Glade 