This week at the Catskill Mountain Foundation through a Guggenheim Works & Process LaunchPad tech-residency, the Martha Graham Dance Company performs a preview of choreographers Baye & Asa’s Cortege, inspired by Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles from 1967, at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, NY. The performance, on September 28 at 7pm, offers an opportunity to experience Cortege’s ferocity and daring speed danced by the world-renowned Graham company.
The company, founded in 1926, celebrates its 100 years with programming that follows overarching themes. Last year, the company concentrated on Graham’s social activism and Americana dances. This year the company presents Graham’s great dances of the mind, “the psychological ballets of the 1940s”, as described by Janet Eilber. Eilber, the ever-visionary artistic director and former company soloist, commissioned the award-winning, in demand Baye & Asa to create Cortege on eight members of the 15-member company. Graham commissions have included the field’s most sought after choreographers.
There are few limitations for choreographers, according to Eilber, beside the requisite number of minutes and dancers. However, with the escalated cost of freight, (the Graham company is an international touring company) no sets are allowed unless the set, such as fabric, can fit in a suitcase. Graham famously collaborated with sculptor and set designer, Isamu Noguchi and many of her dances are focused on his exquisite sets.
Martha Graham, considered one of the great artists of the 20th century, fearlessly plumbed the depths of societal issues and psychological landscapes to create evocative and everlasting dances. The angular Graham body, in contrast to the reserve and fluidity of the ballerina, for instance, expresses unabashed emotion and power. Her revolutionary dance technique, rooted in the activation of the pelvic contraction, and her body of work, have influenced countless dancers and choreographers.
Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington and Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt were classmates since age 6 at The Dalton School in New York City, where a robust dance program is offered to children from their earliest years. Baye & Asa’s choreography, based in Hip Hop and African dance, pushes the limits of possibility. Says Amadi, “The rhythms of those techniques inform the way we confront contemporary dance and theater. There’s a lot of speed in our physicality which the Graham dancers have. They also have a kind of rigidity in their bodies that’s different from ours. They’re more upright because they’re classically trained and they’re telling stories about Greek myths. In our work we're asking them to be people on stage. The principals of partnering are different, too. In Graham, a man press lifts a woman above his head and holds her for a duration of time as opposed to our approach to partnering where weight is shared, and lifts are cooperatively created.”
Both Baye & Asa and Martha Graham intersect in their explorations of social issues. Graham’s early work, including Chronicle, championed the hardships experienced by the common ‘man’, the common person. Says Sam, “Martha Graham was a political risk taker in the way that she created. This is highly resonant with the way that we conceptualize. Like the reason that we do what we do, the things that drive us as people and as artists, and the way we communicate that drives our friendship, that drives our curiosity; our ideas in the world are related to politics. Martha Graham's theatricality and themes of betrayal and fascism and femininity and all of the things that she was dealing with makes her feel like a contemporary artist even if the physicality feels from a different era. It was of the time and of her body.”
As seen in a recent rehearsal, Baye & Asa have pulled striking movements from Cortege of Eagles, “an antiwar dance,” says Eilber, such as the electrifying eagle pose held aloft, and the frenetic feeding on prey. Baye & Asa embed these movements in their spilling ensemble and duet work. Graham parsed the bloodshed of the Trojan War while Baye & Asa posit the fall of the American empire.
Amadi continues, “The interesting thing about Greek myths - it's the same thing that's interesting about Shakespeare- every story is wrapped up with love death elements of war and betrayal. Even when Martha Graham stepped away from more personal narratives about herself or more worldly narratives about what's happening around her and into the Greek myth realm, she was still able to explore the political dynamics. And something that stretched an emotional range and gave her access to a lot of fun ways to tell stories. This is our way into this piece. Cortege of Eagles is about the fall of the Trojan Empire; this mythological juggernaut of a civilization and now we're thinking about the ways our own American contemporary empire is crumbling and the ways that it's falling apart. The biggest distinction we made was that where Martha Graham focuses on the classical characters in the Iliad, we focus on everyone together. We prioritize the group and the group dynamic and therefore the culpability lands on everybody. They all become implicated in whatever moments of disaster, whatever moments of grievance, whatever moments of tenderness we see.
Another opportunity to view Cortege is Sunday, September 29, 7pm, Guggenheim Museum, as part of the Works & Process series. Janet Eilber moderates a discussion with Baye & Asa. The company dances excerpts of the dance.
Catherine Tharin danced with the Erick Hawkins Dance Company. She teaches dance studies and technique, is an independent dance and performance curator, choreographs, writes about dance for Side of Culture, and is a reviewer and editor for The Dance Enthusiast. She also writes for The Boston Globe. Catherine lives in Pine Plains, New York and New York City.
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