Dance
Radical Graham (Edinburgh Playhouse) Reyno — Far from the Lotus (King's Theatre, Edinburgh) White Oak Dance Project (London Coliseum)
Bring back the drama
Giannandrea Poesio
Since Martha Graham's death, there have been many anxieties about the destiny of both her work and her style. The perfor- mances of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Edinburgh have dispelled only some of these doubts; although Graham's artistic legacy is carefully preserved, there is still a lot to be done to ensure an appro- priate rendition of her choreography.
From what I have seen, company mem- bers seem to fall into two distinct cate- gories: those who know what they are doing and why, and those who do not have a clue but do it because, after all, it is their job. The former, which is also the smaller group, numbers excellent artists such as Terese Cappuccilli, Christine Dakin and Katherine Crockett who are fully aware of what the dancing must convey. The other group includes a bunch of nice, enthusiastic and committed people who do their best to perform all the correct steps and move- ments. It is a pity that they lack the dra- matic drive for which members of the same company were once renowned. Interpreta- tion is fundamental to Graham's style, for technical components such as the contrac- tions, the releases and the falls correspond to the varied moods and to the psychologi- cal shadings of each work, whether narra- tive or plotless.
Most of the celebrated classics from the Graham repertoire presented in the two programmes suffered greatly from this lack of dramatic tension; I found El Penitente, Diversion of Angels and Appalachian Spring, dances I used to love, rather floppy and boring. Curiously, none of Graham's less performed works — mostly from the early days of her choreographic career — seemed to be vitiated by similar interpreta- tive flaws. In Sketches from Chronicle, a recently reconstructed all-female 1936 dance that explores the theme of war, the emotional crescendo which accompanied the dancing was both overwhelming and intoxicating. One wonders if this phe- nomenon depended mainly on the fact that such pieces were masterly interpreted by
the dancers of the older generation, those who, in other words, worked directly under Graham herself.
Dramatic tension and the exploration of man's dark inner depths should also be the ingredients of butoh, the Japanese theatre art halfway between dance and drama. Yet, in Reyno — Far from the Lotus, Tomoe Shizune has opted for a more poetic approach, as stated in his own director's notes, to renew what he considers an art 'veering towards stylisation'. I am not sure if the experiment has fully succeeded, though, for I missed the violence and the harsh, often shocking images that constitut- ed the nucleus of the 'dark art' — which is what butoh means — when it first came to the West. The performance had indeed some interesting moments but the overall effect was of a theatre genre that has some- how lost its primary essence and suffers from a great deal of Western contamina- tion.
I rushed back to London to see the White Oaks Dance Project, starring Mikhail Biuyshnikov. I do admire this liv- ing legend — his decision to leave the bal- let world at the right time is not a common feature among ballet dancers — but I can- not agree with his programming choices. Neither the opening piece, Quiet As It's Kept, by Ruthlyn Salomons, nor the closing one, What a Beauty!, looked interesting, particularly when compared to the two cen- tral items of the programme, Merce Cun- ningham's Septet and Jose Limon's Chaconne — a solo beautifully interpreted by the great Russian dancer.
The perfect structure devised by Cun- ningham for his slightly humorous work and the powerful eclecticism of Chaconne clashed vividly with both the flatness of Salomons's piece and the trite repetitions of What A Beauty! Not even Mark Morris's Three Russian Preludes managed to rise to the level of the two central pieces, remain- ing merely a nice showcase for Barysh- nikov's skills, unfortunately too similar to the previous Ten Suggestions by the same choreographer.
The real surprise for the evening, howev- er, was to see members of the audience walking around the auditorium with plastic cups of soft drinks, water bottles and nib- bles during the performance. I had to endure the noise of a fat-bellied gentleman
'It has room for a full set of aliases.' gulping his large cappuccino throughout the first dance, which is performed partly in silence (the man eventually burped at the beginning of Chaconne), and the ice tinkling in the mega cup of Coke, relent- lessly drunk by a lady sitting in front, throughout Mark Morris's work. Is this the Coliseum's new policy to attract a wider audience — the same that makes it impos- sible to follow the dialogue in a West End cinema?
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