A somber celebration
80th Anniversary Gala, Martha Graham Dance Company
by Susan Reiter
Exactly 80 years to the day after Martha Graham made her first mark as a choreographer with a program of 18 works at the 48th Street Theater, her company presented a gala that, in the space of less than two hours, was intended to serve multiple purposes. It was an anniversary celebration, of course, but it was also an all-important fundraising gala, given the $4 million debt identified in recent articles about the company. It was also a barometer of where the company stands artistically, since this was its first New York performance since last spring’s generous, acclaimed two-week season at City Center and a subsequent change in artistic leadership. READ MORE
Curator Annie-B Parson wonders if Stravinsky's bunker busting music is still relevant to the MTV generation. She invites to DTW six artists whom she considers "scrappy enough to get in there and wrestle with him," and asks them to create new work with the composer as their inspiration. Then she gives them the gift — she leaves them alone. No criteria, no restrictions. The result is, in Parson's words, "a pretty meta experience." What this means is that two dances use the master's music as written, another dance is combined with film and underscored by a jumble of Stravinsky excerpts, a non-danced performance piece is built on the ghost of an idea Stravinsky had, but never pursued, and the final dance is about a dance that happens to be the penultimate fruit of the Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration. Whew! Parson hoped for a "prismatic experience," and I'd say she got it. There are flaws — what good experiment doesn't have them? — but the evening is a great excuse for five different takes on a short, funny looking Russian, and his music. 
From the titles of the two new dances—world premieres both—on his Joyce Theater season, you can deduce that Stephen Petronio intends a progression in these pieces; and a progression is what I see. Looking back not just at this program, but the ones in the years just preceding it, I see the choreographer moving into new territory, and a new investigation of musicality—of a way to make phrases, and thus whole dances, reliant less on his own personal rhythms, and more dependent on outside sources.