\n<\/p>\n
The most arresting performer in the Martha Graham Dance Company\u2019s current season at the Joyce Theater died 34 years ago: Martha Graham.<\/p>\n
In the intriguing premiere \u201cLetter to Nobody,\u201d which the outstanding dancer Xin Ying choreographed with Mimi Yin, Xin dances in front of archival footage of Graham in \u201cLetter to the World,\u201d a 1940 Graham masterpiece inspired by Emily Dickinson. As the image of Graham fades in and out, Xin attacks the task of copying it with full commitment and fitful success, embodying the spiral turns, the vacillations and the forward swoon that kicks a full skirt back and up into a crescent \u2014 the move that, captured in a photo<\/a>, became an emblem of the work.<\/p>\n Near the end, Xin quotes Graham quoting Dickinson: \u201cI\u2019m Nobody! Who are you?\u201d<\/a> Then, in a projected excerpt from the 1957 film \u201cA Dancer\u2019s World,\u201d Graham declaims about total identification with a role, but her face has been replaced with Xin\u2019s. The use of A.I. here reads as an admission of the impossibility of replacing Graham.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a candid encapsulation of the predicament perennially faced by this company and its dancers. In its 99th year, three decades after the loss of its founder, seven or eight decades since the height of her creative powers, the group named after Graham grasps after a legacy that fades in and out yet remains commanding enough to make relative nobodies of all who tend the flame.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Besides maintaining and performing Graham repertory, which this season includes \u201cFrontier\u201d and \u201cDeaths and Entrances,\u201d one tactic the company has tried in recent years is to reconstruct or reimagine lost works by Graham<\/a>, drawing on photographs and other archival materials and using in-the-bones knowledge of her vocabulary to fill in the gaps. The latest examples are two solos from the late 1920s \u2014 \u201cRevolt\u201d and \u201cStrike (From \u2018Immigrant\u2019)\u201d \u2014 reimagined by the former principal dancer Virginie M\u00e9c\u00e8ne. (She first attempted this method in 2017 with the 1933 \u201cEkstasis.\u201d)<\/p>\n Like most of these efforts, \u201cRevolt\u201d has the look of a photo flip book, of static poses bridged with motion. But poses by Graham are uncommonly potent; that\u2019s one reason her works photograph so well. In Leslie Andrea Williams\u2019s arrow-sharp performance, \u201cRevolt\u201d seems like an exercise in vocabulary development, a study for austere, gutsy 1930s works of protest like \u201cChronicle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStrike\u201d is something else, though. It, too, is period-accurate, and Xin brings to it the same scary-inspiring authority that she has shown in performances of \u201cChronicle.\u201d<\/a> But partially by adding new music \u2014 the wind-and-rain sounds of a bass drum in Judith Shatin\u2019s \u201cAdventure on Mt. Hehuan\u201d<\/a> \u2014 M\u00e9c\u00e8ne pushes her reimagining into novel creation. Clasping her hands behind her head at extreme angles, Xin could be doing street-style bone-breaking<\/a> or new way vogue. Present-day protesters could study this one-woman \u201cStrike\u201d for lessons in the projection of power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The season\u2019s other premiere is \u201cCortege\u201d by Baye & Asa. At least it\u2019s billed as a premiere; really, it\u2019s a second draft of a work that the company debuted in 2023<\/a>. I\u2019m not sure exactly what the young dance-making duo has changed, but the piece looks improved.<\/p>\n The lights come up on a long, mounded shape covered in a black sheet, which is removed to reveal a line of kneeling, soldier-like dancers. The work ends with the dancers in the same position, being covered by the sheet again, as if they were terra cotta warriors ready for the next deployment. Like \u201cCortege of Eagles,\u201d Graham\u2019s 1967 take on the costs of the Trojan War, \u201cCortege\u201d examines violent conflict.<\/p>\n Spotlights single out tableaus of the fallen, with Goyaesque suggestions of cannibalism and rape. But the choreography seems enthralled by aggressive attack and speed. The excessive detonations in Jack Grabow\u2019s score help to make the dance feel like a video game, a first-person shooter. It\u2019s a fairly engaging contemporary piece, but what the Graham company and its uncommonly versatile dancers gain by performing it remains unanswered.<\/p>\n The best non-Graham work of this season is the best non-Graham work of last season: \u201cWe the People\u201d by Jamar Roberts. Its bluegrass score by Rhiannon Giddens, arranged by Gabe Witcher and played live last year, retains its savor in a recorded version. (The same isn\u2019t true of Witcher\u2019s bluegrass arrangement of the paradigmatic Copland score for Agnes de Mille\u2019s \u201cRodeo,\u201d and the thinness of sound contributes to the overall thinness of this year\u2019s rendition, making the dance even quainter than usual.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe the People\u201d is far from quaint. The music could swing a hoedown like the one that ends \u201cRodeo,\u201d but Roberts\u2019s choreography has the frontal attack of hip-hop and the energy of a roadhouse just before fists start to fly. Solos in silence that precede each of the work\u2019s four sections have a gestural clarity that recalls Graham\u2019s description of her own works as fever charts of the heart. Made as a companion to last year\u2019s revival of \u201cRodeo,\u201d \u201cWe the People\u201d resonates more strongly with \u201cRevolt\u201d and \u201cStrike.\u201d Like few of the company\u2019s commissions, it complements Graham.<\/p>\n Martha Graham Dance Company<\/strong><\/p>\n Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n