At ninety-four, Martha Graham is still very much the vigorous presence in the world of dance that she has been for so many decades. To launch the fall season of her dance company, Miss Graham dedicated the gala opening evening to the memory of Andy Warhol, who on such occasions in the past used to join her on stage for the curtain calls.
The purpose of the occasion, in addition to honoring the late Warhol, was to raise funds for her company. The evening had a singularly heteroclite collection of performers who donated their performances to the event: Mikhail Baryshnikov, formerly of the Kirov Ballet and now of the American Ballet Theater; Maya Plitsetskaya, famed ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet; and Kathleen Turner, most recently the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The gala also opened a three-week run of the Martha Graham Dance Troupe at the New York City Center, preceded by a tour across the United States, which in turn succeeded another one throughout Europe. This season featured Graham's latest work, which premiered October 13, Night Chant, set to traditional American Indian flute music. There were also revivals of three major Graham works—Phaedra, along with Letter to the World, and El Penitente. Also included were Fragments, a series of excerpts from classic Graham works, some of which have not been performed for fifty years or more. In her long creative life, Graham has choreographed 178 works.
Legendary Ballerina
Amid the gala evening's revivals of celebrated Graham dances—Diversion of Angels, El Penitente, and Letter to World—the Bolshoi's legendary ballerina Plitsetskaya dancing to her own choreography of the Palova-Fokine The Dying Swan to taped music was curious, not to say bizarre. Plitsetskaya at sixty-three displayed a sublime grace in her arm movements, which were largely the only part of her body that she used. When she gracefully gave a last little tremor and "died," the audience went wild. The ballerina was literally showered with flowers from the balconies, whole sheaves of roses were hurled up onto the stage. Men in the audience, who had been lamenting that they weren't home watching the Mets, shouted themselves hoarse crying bravo. Plitsetskaya took some ten curtain calls and then, by way of encore, proceeded to dance The Dying Swan a second time. The Audience responded with a standing ovation.
Blond and blue-eyed Russian-born Baryshnikov did not immediately fit the image of El Penitente, in the evening's revival of Graham's 1940 dance, which is based on rituals of the Pentitentes sect of the American Southwest. Dancing barefoot and bare-chested with taped knees and bandaged right foot, Baryshnikov effectively mimed the pain of the penitent as he flagellated himself with a horsehair flail.
Broad Pantomiming
As far as the choreography went, this Spanish-American Passion play was strangely reminiscent at times of classical nineteenth-century ballet with its broad pantomiming in dramatic moments. The interplay between the Mary Magdalene and the Penitent, for instance, was just barely redeemed from the ridiculous by the elegant sobriety of Baryshnikov's presence.
There were moments of power, as when
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