Dancing Through the Ages

New York’s century-old Martha Graham Dance Company gave a sensational kickoff to the UCSB Arts & Lectures dance series at the sold-out Granada.

It was a fitting launch given Graham, who died in 1991, aged 96, attended Santa Barbara High School, graduating in 1913, after being editor of the school newspaper and captaining the girls’ basketball team.

I was also lucky enough to meet her during the final chapter of her life when an editor at New York Magazine in the ‘80s with Bianca Jagger, the ex-wife of Rolling Stones singer Mick.

During her life, Graham single-handedly defined contemporary dance as a unique American art form.

The stupendous evening of new and reimagined works, spanning 80 years, featured Graham classics from the ‘40s with the Dark Meadow Suite, an abstract work about life’s journey and the search for connection with one’s self and one’s community, and a reconstruction of famed Hollywood film director Cecil B. DeMille’s niece Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, with a reconstruction of Aaron Copland’s score performed by a live bluegrass ensemble led by Punch Brother Gabe Witcher.

But America’s oldest dance company left its most energized performance for last with Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter’s CAVE, a 2022 work, with a decided mix of the European techno club scene beat and a Rave-style event of visceral collective movement and powerful swirling shared kinetic energy.

It rather reminded me of the early works of Italian composer Giorgio Moroder with the late Queen of Disco Donna Summer, her first big hit “I Feel Love” being the perfect example.

The company, whose former members include Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham, has visited more than 50 countries, including performances at New York’s Met, Carnegie Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt, and the Acropolis in Athens.

Under Artistic Director Janet Eilber, who has held the position for 18 years, the company will mark the starting of the talented troupe in 1926 when Graham was just 31 working from a small studio apartment next to Carnegie Hall, with a three-year celebration focusing on segments from the founder’s life.

It should be quite an extraordinary tour…