Martha Graham Dance Co. brings works and influence of iconic namesake

—Courtesy photo

Katherine Crockett remembers dancing in a “level one” dance class that Martha Graham, the icon of modern dance, was observing. “I was very new, and I was — oh, gosh, oh no — I was just so nervous, I didn’t know what I was doing,” Crockett recalled.

The teacher asked Graham to comment, and the great dancer and choreographer said, “If you don’t breathe, you’ll die.”

“Basically she was saying if you’re trying to be perfect, trying real hard, and you’re tense, nobody wants to see that,” said Crockett, who is now principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, which performs at Hawaii Theatre Saturday.

Pam Taylor-Tongg of Ballet Hawaii, which is presenting the show, said she believes this is the first time the dance company has performed in Hawaii. That’s a gap Ballet Hawaii has filled.

Graham’s advice to breathe was more than just a relaxation technique. It also defined a basic tenet of her dance philosophy, which made her dances revolutionary in her day, Crockett said in a phone interview from New York, where the company is based.

“She was interested in stripping down movement to re-create the essence of the inner being,” Crockett said. “And how she did this was to begin by focusing on the movement of the torso. The torso is where life begins, the pelvis, where the breath happens, the breathing in and out. This is where you feel joy, you feel rage, happiness, anger, jealousy, love, passion. This is really the heart of all our deepest innermost psyche and emotional life.”

GRAHAM DEVELOPED techniques and choreography based on movement of the torso, associating them with the notion of “contraction” and “release.”

“When you sob, all the air goes and the movement is very sharp, so that there’s this empty, hollowing out of the body. And then when you breathe in, there’s this revitalization of the body, this expansion,” Crockett said. “Rather than expressing something with a gesture of the arm, or movement of the leg, she had the expression originate with the gut, the core, with the contraction and release. From that center the movement radiates through the body.”

The result were dances that were less about beautiful, graceful or even athletic movement than they were about expressing emotion.

Graham “felt that art was not about presenting something beautiful and easy and lovely on stage; art was about presenting the human condition,” Crockett said.

Gone were conventional wisdoms like dancers being en pointe — Graham herself usually danced barefoot. Instead, her dance positions often appear angular, with arms and wrists cocked rather than extended and ankles flexed rather than pointed, a position stemming from Graham’s belief that the dancers should draw their power from being grounded on the earth.

The spiral — as represented by the twisting and untwisting of the body — also became a key element.

Later dances became even more experimental in costume and set design.

In one of Graham’s most famous dances, “Lamentations,” which will be part of the performance here, the dancer is encased in a tight tube. Remaining seated throughout the four-minute work, the dancer twists and stretches as if in the throes of deepest agony. Graham, who kept developing dances until her death in 1991 at age 96, said in a 1976 interview the dance was “as if you are stretching inside your own skin.”

Crockett said the choreography goes to the level of the twisting of the foot and toes and that the work, in fact, is as difficult to perform as it looks, since the tube does not stretch.

“It’s not just theatrically designed; it’s actually a physical process that the performer is going through,” she said.

—Courtesy photo

THE COMPANY’S performance here will feature nine dancers and will be a survey of Graham’s work and her continuing influence.

Dances from early in her career — “exotic, big-hair pieces,” Crockett said — will meld with works that show the development of Graham’s distinct style. Her continuing influence will be represented in a series of dances inspired by “Lamentations” that commemorate the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.

The performance will also include a selection from “Appalachian Spring,” the ballet that Graham wrote to pair with music composed by Aaron Copland.

The work, depicting a pioneer family, is one of the most famous of Graham’s career, and Copland’s music by itself is one of the most beloved pieces in the American classical repertoire.

Crockett said the presentation will include the reading of notes that Graham wrote to Copland as they were developing the work.

“It kind of gives you a look inside of her creative process,” Crockett said.

“It’s like a little mirror, which is a nice way to be brought in as an audience member.”

—Steven Mark / smark@staradvertiser.com