Tag Archives: unity

Riegger’s “New Dance” and the Patterned Whole

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As I reflect further on last week’s rehearsal – the first we’ve had in the auditorium of Goodhart Hall – I realize that the beauty of the “wholeness” I appreciated in watching Steps in the Street performed on the stage was derived in part from my experience of the rhythms and patterns of the work in this new, elevated (both literally and figuratively) context.

Over the course of the day the dancers rehearsed the piece in its entirety with the music many times, becoming more closely acquainted with the mixed meters of Wallingford Riegger’s modernist composition. Because the form of the musical score makes counting each measure more complicated the dancers have learned to rely at times on the sound of each other’s steps to cue transitions in movement (as opposed to the beat of the music), so an entrance may fluidly follow the preceding exit. The way the dancers have made adjustments together, as an ensemble, to negotiate this dissonance – between the rhythmic patterns of the sound and those of the movement – highlights, once again, the themes of interdependence and relatedness that exist within this piece. The dancers’ reliance on one another exposes the way in which each entrance relies on an exit in order to continue the dance.

Without having my attention drawn to these structural details, I wouldn’t have seen the delicate balance that exists through Steps in the Street – the elegant way its unique parts together create a cohesive whole.

Listen to Riegger’s musical score and then imagine keeping time to this music while contracting all of your muscles and spinning backwards on tiptoe!

 

The End of The Beginning

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This past Saturday marked both the first opportunity the dancers had to rehearse on the stage of the McPherson Auditorium in Goodhart Hall, where the performances will be held, as well as the last day they will spend rehearsing with Jennifer Conley before she returns for the performances at the end of April. My greatest take-away from this “end of the beginning” was an experience of wholeness – I guess it could be considered the spirit of the mass more completely accessed right before my eyes. By this I mean I felt a strengthened bond between the dancers of the ensemble that was evident in their movements. I also found a new appreciation for the dance itself as a complete entity, instead of a series of deconstructed parts – and this was, I’m sure, influenced by both the unity of the dancers and the way my view was framed by the stage.

After the warm-up Jennifer had the dancers focus on some of the more challenging entrances – moments that are difficult due to a combination of exacting form, limited time and complex staging. So, they lined up and moved across the stage, row by row, back and forth.

Here they come - Sofia, Alexandra Adams, Joie, Michelle - rehearsing spiral lunges. The next row is prepared to follow, with arms in place and hands cupped.

Here they come – Sofia, Alexandra Adams, Joie, Michelle – rehearsing spiral lunges. The next row is prepared to follow, with arms in place and hands cupped.

 

The dancers rehearse the "zombie walk" while Jennifer [far right] uses Joie to demonstrate the sensation of opposing forces this movement should conjure. Here, the dancers are pushing forward through air thick with remembered sorrows.

The dancers rehearse the “zombie walk” while Jennifer [far right] uses Joie to demonstrate the sensation of opposing forces this movement should conjure. Here, the dancers are pushing forward through air thick with remembered sorrows.

Below, the beautiful bourrées (for which I provided a portion of the staging map here), which require the dancers to twirl backwards in an interweaving pattern across the stage, covering a significant amount of space very quickly.

Preparation (anticipation!)

Preparation (anticipation!)

And then but a blur.

Then but a blur.

And quickly following:

Prepare...

Prepare…

 

And go!

And go!

 

Getting Started: Martha Graham Tool Kit

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Bryn Mawr's Modern Ensemble gets steppin' (Photo by Tiannan Zhan, BMC '14)

Bryn Mawr’s Modern Ensemble gets steppin’
(Photo by Tiannan Zhan, BMC ’14)

Everyone involved in this early stage of the Mawr Steps reconstruction process came together for an inaugural 3 hours this past Friday evening. Though I have studied dance and performed original (or derivative) works, this is my first time working with a reconstruction. I am now struck by the imbalance in my dance education between the study of history (non-existent) and technique. I don’t think this is unique to my early pedagogical experience (my formal dance training essentially ended when I turned 16) but understanding this discrepancy does lend new significance to the concept of stepping into dance history for me.

A “Martha Graham Tool Kit” has been provided by the Graham Company as part of the artistic support they will be lending to Bryn Mawr’s licensed reconstruction of Steps in the Street. This kit includes, in addition to rehearsal videos and audio, what I have termed the reconstruction bible (I mean, binder…) This binder, which the Dance Program may hold onto until the April performances, has in it:

  • historic background of Steps in the Street
  • press clippings referencing Steps
  • Martha Graham quotes and biographical info.
  • template for the programs distributed at a student production
  • technical instructions – for staging, lighting & costume design
  • archival images of Steps being performed by Graham Company dancers

Jennifer Conley introduced Bryn Mawr’s student dancers (and us documentarians) to the work they would be reconstructing by encouraging active engagement with these materials. We flipped through pictures together, analyzing Graham Company images at Jennifer’s prompting – identifying formal elements and thinking about their emotional or intellectual implications. And through this exercise we came to understand the history, content and choreography of the work as well.

Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham's "Sketches from 'Chronicle'" (Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham’s “Sketches from ‘Chronicle'”
(Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

In this image, “the strike,” for instance: the women’s angular, sharp elbows and firmly planted feet indicate strength; the arms crossed over their heads express both resistance and empowerment; the mass structure demonstrates unity but not conformity – an opposition both psychic and corporeal.

Even though I will not be stepping through time on stage in April, the way I began to relate to history during Friday’s rehearsal awakened in me an anticipatory reverence for, and an embodied awareness of, what great value lies in sharing this movement legacy.

 

Kicking Off with Antifascist Pro-Democratic Mass Dance

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By shedding an artificial division of labor according to which the legs locomote, the arms imitate, the head rules, etc., the ‘massive’ body asserts a different aesthetic of weight, angle, and balance. …Graham grafted her modernist aesthetic of the massive body onto the social mass which is the group, thereby deftly folding a modernist aesthetic into socially activist choreography. ‘Mass’ can point to the importance of weight and space in Graham’s dance, but ‘mass’ also betokens the precedence of choreography for the group over that for the soloist. …The notion of mass drama begs a question by suggesting a plural, submerged or unindividuated subject.

(Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics)

 

As I mentioned last week Martha Graham used the choreographic form of mass dance, and the heightened emotional output this form generated, to create Chronicle‘s powerful social commentary.

Though Mady Cantor has been working with the licensing division of the Martha Graham Dance Company for nearly a year to make this project possible, this coming weekend marks the physical start of our reconstruction process. Friday evening will begin the first of three consecutive weekends of rehearsals with Jennifer Conley, former Graham Company dancer and official reconstructor of Bryn Mawr’s production of Steps in the Street.

It’s hard to imagine right now all of these disparate parts – 11 individuals who know nothing of the physical experience of the dance yet and some of whom have limited experience with Graham technique – coming together with the force and purpose necessary to follow in the steps of Graham’s fierce revolutionaries.

In considering this I feel nothing but excitement (and some vicarious empowerment). I interpret the plural, submerged individual of this mass dance not as one who has shrunken and lost herself in the mass but rather one who has expanded beyond any preconceived limits of herself. The feminism of the mass ethos is undeniable, with strong women symbiotically gaining and sharing strength and balance as they embody unified power against tyranny and injustice.

I can think of no one more prepared than a mass of Bi-Co women warriors to take this dance of resistance to the street.