In Motion
Martha Graham Dance Company at LIU Post
Join LIU Post dance students as they take on “Panorama”—a major work by groundbreaking modernist Martha Graham. It’s a crash course on the legend’s choreography and technique in this special arts residency.
TRANSCRIPT
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[ Drum rhythms play ]
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[ Up-tempo classical music plays ]
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Kikuchi: Change.
Ball change, change.
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And 5 and 6 and 7, 8.
Cara sent the e-mail over the summer,
and she was like, "We're having an amazing opportunity
to do residency with the Martha Graham Company."
Honestly, I cried.
I was like, "Wow. That is so awesome."
Kikuchi: 6, 2, 3, 4, and 5...
Ms. Graham is probably
one of the most important choreographers
of the 20th century.
So many people don't remember what she did,
how innovative she was,
what exactly her discoveries were
because they've been so absorbed
into dance and theater worldwide.
She was a very deep person,
and none of her dances were really frivolous.
And as a woman choreographer was a real pioneer.
[ Classical music plays ]
[ Drum rhythms play ]
Hi, I'm Cara Gargano,
chair of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Arts Management.
You know, there are a lot of dance schools
in the universities in the world
that have dance programs,
And, so, you know, I would say that the competition
can be somewhat fierce for really good dancers.
We've had the opportunity to have master classes
from some of the most major companies in the world --
Alvin Ailey Company and Dance Theater of Harlem,
of course, the Graham Company,
and all sorts of wonderful opportunities for our dancers.
The company will be rehearsing on our Tilles Center stage
throughout the semester,
so we are never losing sight of them.
We are going to stay with them
and they are going to stay with us
really for 3 months.
Sometimes it's easier
just to take it from the beginning,
but we'll get to know each other,
and you'll tell me.
The company will be setting a piece on us,
which is very special.
So we'll have a legacy piece
from one of Graham's earliest works.
And when they suggested doing "Panorama,"
I was so excited
because that was, of course,
one that I have longed for over the years.
[ Dramatic music plays ]
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My name is Susan Kikuchi.
I knew Martha all my life.
My mother joined
the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1944.
I'm on faculty.
I've been in the company,
and I often go to re-create works
for the Graham Company.
5, 6, hold, hold, 4,
change 3, hold 4, 5, 6,
change, 7, 8.
We go and we audition the students
to perform a work of Martha Graham,
and then we are responsible for putting the piece together.
-9 here. -16.
Here.
-7. -2.
Not a lot of colleges, like, get the opportunity
to be able to dance with, like, a professional dance company.
Up, 2, 3, 4, 5, up, 2, 3, 4.
To be able to learn one of their legacy pieces
and perform it onstage with them,
It's really incredible.
I think it's very important
because, especially as a dancer, networking is important.
So to be able to get the experience
with the Graham Company
and, like, have that in my pocket
and be able to say,
"Hey, you know, I danced with the Graham Company once,"
like, people recognize that.
People will know, like, "Oh, that's real serious.
Like, she really wants to dance."
So it's very important to me
to be able to present myself as that person.
Kikuchi: It's 90 degrees.
You're gonna go relevé, lengthen,
relevé, lengthen, relevé...
Gargano: Residency starts, essentially,
with this introduction to the Graham Company,
the Graham technique,
but also the history of the Graham Company
and Graham's aesthetic
and Graham's sense of political engagement,
which I think is terribly important right now.
"Panorama" was a dance for all women.
We have a fabulous dance from 1936
with a great anti-war statement
that was a cast of all women.
This was only 16 years
after we got the right to vote in this country,
so when she was making --
She created works that had a political voice,
that had a psychological voice,
that really allowed women to speak out on subjects
in the 1930s and '40s
that they wouldn't have using words.
She would often have you
enter into the mind of the lead character.
Eilber: I'm helping kick off this wonderful residency at LIU,
just talking to them about Martha.
She was determined to find this style of dancing
that would reveal our inner selves,
and she began to study how we move,
how we react,
how we hold our bodies when we're...
when we laugh or cry, when we're bored,
when we're agitated.
And she, through this study, found a completely new approach.
I think they're kind of amazed at her genius.
I mean, she really developed
a completely new style of dancing.
"Lamentation" starts with the figure just leaning forward
with her elbows on her knees and shaking her head, "No."
And that no --
You can let that rock your body a little bit.
So that's where you start, number one.
And then she went on to innovate
in terms of costuming and lighting design.
She taught at The Neighborhood Playhouse.
There's a whole generation of American actors
from Bette Davis to Gregory Peck
that say Martha Graham changed their lives.
So there are just some remarkable discoveries
that students and other people
who don't really remember what Martha Graham did
are kind of astonished at
what an amazing genius woman she was.
Stretch away, stretch away, stretch away, way away.
Hiraldo: Graham is so, like, contraction-heavy
and, like, athletic,
and it's like, always be thinking, like,
"Okay, I have to stay engaged,
but I can't be too engaged.
I can't be stiff.
I have to be calm and breathing but engaged."
Like, it's a lot going on mentally.
But, like, once it's in your body,
it feels so natural.
Stay, like, as down as you can here.
Travel, do your jump.
Gargano: One of our musical-theater students
is doing her thesis on women choreographers,
particularly in the 20th century,
and came to me to talk to me
about the possibility of focusing on Graham.
And I said, "Well, now that you mention it,
we're having this wonderful opportunity."
So she's actually in there taking the master class.
The goal is to create a thesis performance piece
based off of females in modern dance,
but specifically Martha Graham is the focus.
Kikuchi: This is a very early exercise
from Martha Graham's repertory.
There's no better way to research
than by actually going through the technique
with somebody like her
who obviously is very qualified.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4, and 5 and 6...
Kikuchi: My father used to say,
"I think it takes an audience member a while
to begin to understand what Martha is saying.
But after that, you begin to appreciate her a lot more."
My mother was in the company.
Kikuchi: That was excellent.
Okay. Let's do it from the top.
So it goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
It's been going good.
I really liked the warm up and everything.
The sequencing is kind of confusing me,
But I think, like, with time, I'll be able to get it.
2, 2, 3, 4, hold.
I was nervous.
I didn't know what to expect really.
But I feel comfortable now.
I think some of them are utterly terrified.
They've been in my office all week.
This has been a really special, special thing,
and our dancers are super excited about it.
[ Applause ]
[ Dramatic music plays ]
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Kikuchi: This is my first day back in the rehearsal space
for about a month,
and they have obviously been doing fantastic work
with Fritz and David
and within themselves
as groups of different people in the piece.
You can see that their technique has been cleaned up,
and now comes the fun part
of figuring out where -- what I call the stuffing,
the actual artistic elements
that we put into their dance, their piece,
and that has to come through the use of their imagination.
We want change...
for our lives.
So this is a very challenging
and important part of the process.
So that's what you need to do about choreography
that has some substance.
It's not just physical.
That's the use-your-imagination part.
Lockette: You can't just dance it,
and I think that'll be a really great component for my thesis
about how the work,
especially, like, in "Panorama" but in a lot of Graham's work,
is it's really socially, politically fueled.
There's a lot of meaning behind it.
Everything has a meaning.
[ Soft music plays ]
Kikuchi: I think that's unique to Graham.
From the beginning, Martha was very involved
in the human psyche and the drama.
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A lot of her pieces were not abstract.
They were story line, story-based like in ballet.
This one is abstraction,
but it has within the abstraction
a common human element of force,
so what causes people to come together as a group
and want to express a need for change.
And that can be any century.
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The original concept with this piece
is very, like, political in a sense,
and Susie told us to relate it to now.
I feel like we take on
a completely different energy in our bodies
once we're in a certain mind-set,
so knowing that, we're a lot more powerful,
a lot more together.
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Let me feel this.
Up, Griffin looks -- Look at Griffin.
She's got a motivating thing.
See her face, her face? Yes.
See? That's the actor, the actor.
We need a little moreacting in this, okay?
And yet I feel her spine, whoop, up, up, up, up.
And if I gave her a note, I'd say,
"Your hand need to be saying something."
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Lockette: It's been really interesting to kind of see the connection
between what we're doing here
and my acting work that I do
because a lot of the intention that you do when you're dancing
comes from the same thing that you do when you're acting.
So it's been really interesting for me
to kind of see how those things work together
and how they can --
how the movement and the intention
can help each other.
[ Soft music plays ]
If you have the stuffing,
if you have the thought process inside,
and you all come together for whatever gesture
with a thought behind it, a common goal,
the audience will feel it.
Kikuchi: 16.
17.
18.
Okay.
Let me see this.
-How did you feel? -Good.
Kikuchi: Good! You're coming along.
I can see more connection to everything,
more awareness of each other.
You -- I think you can see
the light at the end of the tunnel.
I would like to take a half an hour now
with the adagio, 5 people.
1, 2, 3.
Use your back, 4.
Gillespie: We've been working really hard,
the 5 of us, to make it look good,
and I think we've really come a long way.
Work on your projection because you have the space now.
I was really honored to see that.
I was like, "What?"
I was like, "No way," because that's, like --
It's such a big part of it.
I remember when we had the audition
for the fourth-position part,
they were like, "Kijanna, you got it."
And I was like, "What?" I was like, "No way!"
I was like, "I'm a freshman, like, I should not be."
I was so nervous, and I'm still nervous.
I still shake.
I can feel my body, like, shaking.
And then how you move, whatever position,
the next, the next.
So it's those spaces in between you
is where the dialogue is happening.
So that is the --
That's how it feels like an adagio,
or I call it the tall-lady section,
but the adagio feel is that it's connected.
♪♪
Gillespie: I have had knee pain for 7 years now,
and I've been in and out of doctors
trying to figure out what's wrong.
I had the surgery.
I had Plica syndrome.
It's, like, extra tissue and cartilage in the knee
that causes pain.
It has been really hard,
and I've been marking and sitting out,
which is hard to watch everyone else do what I can't.
But now that I'm back
and trying to, like, do everything full out,
it feels good.
It's scary and very nerve-racking,
but I think I can do it.
Well, I hope. [ Laughs ]
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I feel like I've taken a whole journey.
I've had to work a lot
outside of coming in here on Fridays
because I had a lot of, like, catching up to do
because I'm not a dance major.
I've had to kind of self-evaluate
and take the notes and be like,
"Okay, this is what I'm going to focus on right now."
So it's nice to kind of see that work playing out,
and now I can play a little bit more with the acting
and bring that out as well.
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Hiraldo: It's starting to get a little more real,
like, that we're performing with the Graham Company
and that we're performing this iconic piece
that so many people have seen before.
So now it's sort of like our turn
to, like, step up to the plate and perform this
and just really knock the ball out of the park.
Oh, I'm very excited.
Did that feel good?
It was like, "Whoa!"
I try and write down the good things, too,
so you remember.
That was a good one.
You know?
[ Applause ]
[ Drums play ]
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Gillespie: Everything that we'd worked so hard for
just came into my body,
and I just felt so overwhelmed
but overwhelmed in a good way
just to be out there with all the people that I love
and have had such a connection with.
[ Dramatic music plays ]
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[ Soft music plays ]
Hiraldo: It was a little nerve-racking in the beginning
because we were all like,
"Oh, my gosh. They're going to judge us."
At the end of the day, like,
everyone is here just to see dance,
to enjoy the dance.
So we were just performing
and trying to bring Martha's message out
as much as we can.
This piece was performed in, like, the '30s,
so we wanted to make it a little more present,
a little more real.
[ Dramatic music plays ]
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[ Up-tempo music plays ]
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Lockette: For "Panorama," it's kind of this idea
of this, like, these social issues
that affect all of us
that are happening that we all want to change.
It may be different for all of us individually,
but it's what connects us.
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[ Soft music plays ]
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Lockette: Oh, I was so nervous.
I was really nervous
but, I think, a good kind of nervous.
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I had to work a lot outside, and Fritz helped us,
one of our dance professors helped me outside
because there's a lot of things I had to learn
because I am an actor first.
They graciously let me do this,
so I feel really good about the work that I did,
and I'm very happy that it kind of came together.
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Gillespie: Studying Martha Graham is one thing
and like knowing about
the company and the work she put in,
but actually getting to live it and do it
definitely opened my eyes.
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Gillespie: This was something so much more
than anything I've ever done before,
and I'm hungry to learn more.
I want to do more things with the Graham technique,
and I want to just explore.
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Hiraldo: We're all sort of, like,
put in this little bubble in college.
So getting the outside exposure
to sort of, like, help us going into the outside world,
it was really helpful.
Like, seeing how they run their dress rehearsals
and their tech rehearsals on stage,
like, they're not kidding.
They really want you to go.
So, like, getting all that exposure now
so that when we go into the real world
we're, like, ready,
it was really important for us.
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Lockette: It was, like, months of rehearsal
for, like, one chance.
So there was a lot of pressure and a lot of energy going in,
but I feel really happy about what we did.
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[ Music stops ]
[ Applause ]
Gargano: It was amazing!
My mind is still a little verklempt,
but they were --
I think just that piece in general
has an amazing effect on audiences,
and having seen it come together
and having felt the energy of that piece
coming across the stage
is just hugely moving.
[ Voice breaking ] It was just such an amazing opportunity,
and I just...
I feel so honored to have had the opportunity to do this.
[ Applause ]
Hiraldo: Tomorrow, I have classes.
I have to go back to school, do my regular thing,
But it was really great
to sort of, like, step away from that for a minute
and just be lost in the world of Martha Graham.
[ Applause ]
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