There is already a film playing as the audience gets seated: “Beautiful Captives,” a montage by Peter Sparling with music by Erik Santos that overlays film of Martha Graham dancing with black and white movies, blurring the lines between the dance performance and the actors on screen. The soundtrack sets up the program’s theme by including text about Freud and psychoanalysis.

As the film ends, the lights come up on “Allegro Misterioso,” a solo choreographed in 1954 by Anna Sokolow, one of Graham’s disciples. Standing in the corner with her torso doubled over and arms outstretched to the floor, the dancer begins to flutter her hands quickly, maintaining a straight line in her back as she lets her hands trace an upward path until they are pointed directly at the ceiling. Although her hands and focus still reach to the sky, her body begins to slowly hinge backwards, until she is forced to catch herself by rolling quickly to the ground, only to stand up and start again. Throughout much of the solo, the dancer runs around the stage, staring pointedly into space as if expecting to find something in close pursuit. As Eilber joked during the program narration that followed, clearly Graham was not the only choreographer fascinated with angst.

Graham’s “Deaths and Entrances” opens on a tableau of three women—Graham envisioned them as the three Bronte sisters—wearing similar evening dresses playing chess. For one sister the game seems to stir memories of the past. These lost remembrances come in and out of the space like visions, sending the sister into dramatic fits of emotion. Graham’s signature movements—the cupped hands, the contracting torso—are featured throughout, all performed with the dramatic intensity of a silent film.

Originally developed to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11, “Lamentation Variations” are contemporary choreographer’s spontaneous responses to a film of Graham from the 1930s performing movements from her famous solo “Lamentation.” This particular program featured the variations of Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Larry Keigwin and a premiere by Yvonne Rainer. The brief sketches range widely in style and movement, yet remain tied to the original source material.

Pagarlava’s and Keigwin’s works maintain the introspective, somber tone of the original; Rainer, instead, opts for a lightly comedic approach: a dancer perches on a box in a shirt that stretched to resemble the original “Lamentation” costume while Eilberg alternately puts paper in a shredder and shines a light in the dancer’s face to try and get her to move.

The program closes with “Chronicle,” a Graham work from 1936 choreographed in response to the rise of the fascism in Europe. As the solo figure in the opening section depicting the prelude to war, Jacqueline Bulnes was all fearsome attack, forcefully manipulating her long, black skirt, sending it up in the air to reveal the red lining underneath.

The mass of black-clad women that enter for the second section resemble a small army, jetting across the space with tense leaps and moving in and out of formation. The precision and discipline with which the company replicates Graham’s movements is exceptional; it is remarkable to feel as if the old company videos have come alive in high definition.
EYE ON THE ARTS, NY -- Jessica Moore