Returning to Portland and White Bird Dance for the first time since 2017, the legendary Martha Graham Dance Company performed in a front of an elated audience at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Wednesday, January 22. On tour for the company’s 100th anniversary celebration, the performance offered two classic works by Graham alongside new works by choreographers Jamar Roberts and Israeli-born Hofesh Shechter. 

Suite from Appalachian Spring (1944)

Janet Eilber, celebrating 20 years as MGDC’s artistic director, took the stage first to preview the evening for the audience. First up was Suite from Appalachian Spring, featuring excerpts from the original Appalachian Spring, the 1944 intrinsically American masterwork on which Graham collaborated with composer Aaron Copland on the score and Isamu Noguchi on the set design. 

Introducing each excerpt, Eiber read spoken introductions drawn from letters Graham wrote to Copland. The letters provided fascinating insights into the collaboration between these two 20th century masters, including the early American influences that informed Graham’s story, her belief that religion had to be included in any work about America, and that the two friends considered the work to be their patriotic contribution to the World War II war effort. According to Eilber’s introduction, Graham and Copland intended Appalachian Spring to be a testimony to the spirit of America. The result was Copland’s Pulitzer Prize-winning score — inspired in part by American Shaker folk music, including the iconic tune “Simple Gifts” — and Graham’s groundbreaking modern choreography. Many of the letters are available to read online at the Library of Congress, along with reviews and other material about this production and other works by Graham. 

Even after over 80 years, the music and solos from Suite from Appalachian Spring still fill the audience with joy. Thanks to a new minimalist set and bright lighting that washed across the stage, the work is saved from feeling like a dated museum piece. In her solo as The Bride, Laurel Dalley Smith stood out, dancing with joyous optimism and enthusiasm. Next to her, Richard Villaverde as The Husband couldn’t help but look a little rigid in his stiff poses. But, when the two danced a duet filled with leaps and spins, sweeping arm gestures, and slaps on their knees, you could feel their energetic joy and hope for the future.  

Although Antonio Leone gave a strong and appropriately riveting performance as The Preacher, The Followers, a quartet of young women ardently trailing him, do not quite stand the test of time. In their bonnets and flounced dresses, their minced, scurrying steps as they trail after The Preacher felt a little cringy at times. 

We the People (2024)

We the People (2024), by choreographer Jamar Roberts, formerly a dancer with Alvin Ailey Dance, follows on the program. Like Suite from Appalachian Spring, the work resonates with American history, and the score, by multi-instrumentalist and two-time GRAMMY winner Rhiannon Giddens, was likewise inspired by American folk music, including the Black American folk music traditions that Giddens studies.

But We the People sets a different tone to the optimism America of Appalachian Spring. Instead, as Roberts explains in the program notes, “We the People is equal parts protest and lament, speculating on the ways in which America does not always live up to its promise. Against the background of traditional American music, We the People hopes to serve as a reminder that the power for collective change belongs to the people.”

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The work is divided into several sections, each beginning with a solo or duet performed in silence. The solo by dancer Lloyd Knight was particularly powerful as he first shrank his body into a ball, then slowly uncurled and moved forward, his arms shooting up into the air and then reaching out to the audience, as in a plea for help, before finishing facedown with his hands behind his back. 

When the ensemble comes on stage, the dancers – collectively, in duos, and solo – began to twist, spin, stomp the floor, and slap their hands with such impact that the sounds resonated throughout the theater.  As the work progressed and smoke gradually filled the stage, the ensemble became more and more swept up in the music, moving in unison with speed and amazing precision, and, finally, turning to face the audience with defiant faces. 

For two works that were created 80 years apart, it was curious to see how Graham and Copeland and Jamar and Giddens used many of the same techniques in their collaborations. But the stories they told of America were very different.  

Errand Into the Maze (1947)

The second half of the night began with a crash of music from Gian Carlo Menotti’s score for Errand Into the Maze that set the tone for the dark and ominous story. My companion noted that the music reminded her of 1940s film noir soundtracks, full of menace and violence. Graham liked to tell her stories from the woman’s perspective, and here she turns the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur on its head. Instead of being the daughter of the King of Crete who helps Theseus defeat the Minotaur, only to be abandoned by him later, here Ariadne is the heroine, vanquishing the mythical monster herself.

Ariadne was danced with both grace and subtlety by Xin Ying, whose flowing white dress (a Graham hallmark) was designed by Maria Garcia. She danced across the stage with a long white ribbon, representing the thread which Ariadne used to find her way out of the Minotaur’s maze.  

But the entrance of Ethan Palma onto the stage brought audible gasps from the audience. Garcia had designed a simple, but shocking costume for the doomed Minotaur. As the half-man, half beast, Palma’s face was covered by a dehumanizing mesh mask and his arms were pinned behind his back by a club-like yoke. Instead of limiting his movements, the bonds made Palma even more ominous as he demonstrated powerful jumping and moved in menacing circles around Ying. 

It is no wonder that this powerful and evocative duet is considered one of Graham’s masterpieces of choreography. 

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CAVE (2022)

CAVE, a new work by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter, capped the evening with a fun rave party, refreshing after the dark Greek tragedy which preceded it. The music, by Shechter and Âme, opened with a blast of percussion and later moved on to hip hop club music. For the duration of the piece, the 11 dancers moved as a fast-paced, frenzied crowd across the stage: in one moment moving as a single organism, then breaking into individuals and pairs, then back in unison, time and again.

At times the dancers became hypnotic, zoned out, and then wild and contagious in the pure joy of their movement. If CAVE was as far from Martha Graham’s choreography as you can imagine, it was clear that the company is not stuck in the past.   

Straddling Past and Present

Martha Graham was a pioneer of modern dance, and her legacy lives on in the dancers and the choreographers that make up her eponymous company. As they celebrate their centennial, the Martha Graham Dance Company demonstrated Wednesday night that they are both timeless and, through pieces like We the People and CAVE, very much of the moment. Portland dance lovers are fortunate to have an organization like White Bird which brings such acclaimed national and international dance companies to our city. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait so many years to see the Martha Graham Dance Company again.