Last Dance at Westbeth for Graham Studio

By J. Taylor Basker

Dancers need space. Space is at a premium in New York City. Since its inception, Westbeth has provided a premium place for dancers to run, leap, skip and spin their healing magic. The vicarious experience of a dance audience is unique for both mind and body. If you can’t dance, just watching is valuable for your health!

But sadly, Westbeth is losing the 11th floor dance studio initiated by Merce Cunningham in 1971, shortly after Westbeth’s founding. It was then transferred to the Martha Graham Studio in 2012.

The final dance performance was an appropriate tribute to the history of modern dance by the important company Dances We Dance, whose director, Francesca Todesco, draws much of her choreography from the founders of modern dance. The concluding performances in this historic space evoked the spirits of Doris Humphrey and Isadora Duncan whose techniques were incorporated into the contemporary choreography of Todesco and the Sokolow Theatre Dance Ensemble.

The program was divided into two parts. Part 1 Repertory Works featured performances of the original choreography of Humphrey and Duncan. Part 2 Harmonic Dissonance added the choreography of Todesco, Rosie Gentle and a tribute to Anna Sokolow. The performances were riveting and exhilarating.

The performance began with a startling scene, made more effective since there was no separation between the dancers and the audience. Into this darkened space, a light gradually grew on the stage, revealing a Rodin-esque sculptural group of figures, black and still, in the quixotic shadows right in front of our chairs! Then the figures began to move; light exploded revealing the contrast of many dancers in rose-colored gowns, reminiscent of Grecian-type chitons, weaving through their long gold scarfs, evoking ancient Greek himations. These were close copies of the costumes Humphrey used, and these dark figures seemed to have emerged from the past revealing the splendors of the classic piece that she choreographed to Bach’s Air for the G String. Her lyrical, ethereal choreography was achieved by using the body’s ability to travel between the polarities of balance and imbalance. Bodies gracefully fell to the floor and recovered. Backs became liquid, arms and legs forcefully reached through space, hands and feet embraced the earth and clouds, even necks became limbs stretching in rhythmic arcs. Partners were poles of energies; groups were gleeful spirits celebrating the power of the body to defy gravity and any constrictions. Freedom was celebrated. Gail Corbin’s solo was strong and sure, affirming her close connection to Humphrey, whose foundation she directs. Together with Charles Weidman she reconstructed this piece for the José Limón Dance Company, all pioneers of modern dance. This piece expressed Humphrey’s use of fluid movement, musicality and rhythmic structure as the core principles of her choreography. The result was an exciting and expressive kaleidoscope of bodies, scarfs and space.

The second piece was choreographed by Duncan to Schubert’s Symphony #9 The Great. This work is famous for its break from symphonic norms giving woodwinds and brass prominence, and for its energetic and expansive quality. These characteristics harmonized with the work of Duncan, who also rejected classical forms, and emphasized a free flowing and improvisational structure, what she termed the “law of wave movement” in nature. Her choreography to Schubert’s music parallels both the gentle, nostalgic lines of Schubert’s wistful, romantic mood that then erupts into the fierce energy of triumph and elation with dancers marching, kicking and leaping. The piece soon softens into a ritual, with quiet solemn procession and imagined offerings. A male soloist leaps into this sacred space, in a bright red toga, depicting a priest or tyrant, a strong male authority figure, directing and dominating the females. The first performer, Ian Bell, was more tyrant while the next night Oscar Rodriguez, with his Mediterranean classical features, was more priest, despite his bulging muscles and bandaged ankle. The unique interpretations each gave to this challenging role is a reminder that viewing dances with different performers is quite worthwhile. In the concluding scherzo, Duncan’s structured approach incorporating patterns of movement as opposition, succession and unison were playfully executed. The world becomes a cheerful place in which to frolic, Schubert’s melancholy is dispelled and enchanting joyful gestures orbit and captivate the viewer.

Part 2 entitled Harmonic Dissonance was a series based on Duncan’s Scriabin Études. Introduced by Todesco using Duncan’s choreography, she employed Duncan’s technique of sharp distinctive gestures that matched the pointed intent of Isadora Duncan, who was sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, the suffering of the oppressed and the tragic losses to violence, war, famine, imprisonment and torture. Todesco describes the mood of these dances – with frequent falls and expressive hands grasping tragedy. In Schubert’s Impromptu, danced by the Sokolow Ensemble, some of the movement is so smooth it is as though the dancers’ feet were on rollers, yet this velocity dramatically collapses onto the floor. Then the movements become both gentle and acrobatic. There are spins, leaps into partner’s arms, and tangible tenderness using the drama of wide black skirts as a unifying element between figures, one of whom is a male also in a voluminous skirt. The Impromptu’s uncertain tonalities end in a sustained tension of a cascade of figures tightly grouped, again reminiscent of a Rodin sculpture unified by the verticality of the dark skirts.

Returning to Scriabin, the dances become apocalyptic. There is panic watching the sky, bodies, no escape, only death. Todesco evokes the paralysis of war and grief in her choreography. Returning to Duncan’s choreography and Scriabin, the tragic mood transforms into defiance. Dancing in darkness, red light, with clenched fists, imprisoned, with movement in convergent paths of death and farewell. I thought of the soloist, Coleen Edwards, as a Charlotte Corday, who murdered Marat during revolutionary times. The duo of Ballard and Todesco was angular, as two vectors that have magnitude and direction radiating from the solar plexus as Duncan directed. Geometrically directed, the movements are strong but free of cliché or artifice. Gentle’s solo choreographed by Todesco, brings Duncan’s emotive strength to a scene of angst and anger. Ducan knew personal grief; she lost her three young children. The world seems to collapse. Violence and hate prevail. Do we accept it or do we scream, as the dancer’s contorted face implies as she concludes this dystopian vision, that is so contemporary and painfully familiar to us today.

These performances are not just brilliant dance and a lesson in modern dance history but vibrant visions of the extremes the human spirit endures, from ecstasy to extermination. Westbeth will miss being crowned with such dance on our top floor.