‘GRAHAM100’ bringing century of groundbreaking artistry to Hancher in Iowa City

A century of Martha Graham Dance Company’s artistry is coming to the Hancher stage March 29 in “GRAHAM100,” with University of Iowa dance students in the opening spotlight. As the legendary late Martha Graham intended.

“Having the students on the program and (doing) some residency activities, it just makes a world of difference,” Janet Eilber, the company’s artistic director since 2005, said by phone from her office in Manhattan’s West Village.

  Buy Photo

The students will be showcased in “Panorama,” a piece Graham choreographed in 1935, incorporating students in the cast.

“She wanted to create a work of social activism, about the power of people to make change — the power of numbers, if you will,” said Eilber, who spent nearly a decade dancing under Graham decades later, beginning when Eilber, herself, was a college student.

Graham needed a large group for “Panorama,” so she added students from the Bennington College summer program in Bennington, Vt., to dance with the dozen women in her all-female company. (Graham was among the prominent choreographers who founded Bennington’s School of Dance.)

“Fun fact: Betty Bloomer was one of those cast members, and she became first lady Betty Ford,” Eilber said. “But when she was a young dancer, she danced as an apprentice with Martha Graham.”

These days, male dance students are welcome to join the ranks at the tour stops where “Panorama” is staged.

If you go

What: Martha Graham Dance Company: “GRAHAM100”

Where: Hancher Auditorium, 141 E. Park Rd., Iowa City

When: 7:30 p.m. March 29

Program: Martha Graham: “Panorama,” performed by the University of Iowa Dance Company and additional UI dance students; Graham: “Errand into the Maze”; Agnes DeMille: “Rodeo”; Hofesh Shechter: “Cave”

Tickets: $45 and $65 adults; $10 students and youths; Hancher Box Office, (319) 335-1160, 1-(800) 426-2437 or hancher.uiowa.edu/2023-24/martha-graham-dance-company

Discussion: Exploring the original art from the first staging of “Panorama,” 6 p.m. March 28, Stanley Museum of Art lobby, 160 W. Burlington St., Iowa City; free admission. Panelists: Janet Eilber, artistic director, Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance Company; Rebekah Kowal, professor and department executive officer, UI Department of Dance; Lauren Lessing, director, UI Stanley Museum of Art; moderator Stephanie Miracle, UI dance assistant professor

Company’s website: marthagraham.org/

Hancher’s prominence

It’s an honor afforded only three or four times a year, Eilber noted. So how did Iowa City rise to that barre?

“Hancher is one of the great presenting organizations in the country,” she said.

“I was hoping to be back to Hancher for a number of years,” she added, citing the company’s 80th anniversary performance in 2006. “Then you had your flood and your reconstruction, and then we all had COVID. And so it’s been quite a while, but it’s really an important venue, and we’re pleased to be back.”

  Buy Photo

Eilber will be traveling to Iowa City to introduce the performance from the Hancher stage — something that’s done at every tour stop, so audiences will know what to look for. She also will be part of a free panel discussion at 6 p.m. March 28 in the UI Stanley Museum of Art lobby downtown. The discussion is described as exploring “the deep impact leading midcentury visual artists played” on Graham’s choreographic vision.

“The movement, the power of ‘Panorama’ is in the landscape, the architecture of the choreography — the geometry of the groups of dancers moving through space around and through each other, and the lines of diagonal force and the masses of circles,” Eilber said.

“The movement is very accessible for an intermediate dancer — for a student, intermediate and advanced — because she made it for students. The theme is so powerful and speaks to that age when you talk about power, and self-realization, and your contribution to the community. It really is that college age (that’s) just ready to go on that ride.”

The work challenges the young dancers in multiple ways.

“With Graham, there’s always the technical side and the expressive side, and they have to be married, they have to go together,” Eilber said.

“There are technical challenges, like the counts. There’s a whole section in this piece that is to the count of nine, which is a very uneven, unusual count. And so they have to get used to counting in a nine and starting on the ‘and’ of an eight. The counting is quite complex.

“There are quite a few jumps, particularly in the third section, so they have to get their jumping power up to speed. Their jumping power and their stamina is challenged, and in rehearsal, that is what they’re working on, to get that all ready,” Eilber said.

“Then there’s the expressive side, because while you’re counting to nine like mad and trying to jump and be in the right relationship to the person next to you, you’re also saying, ‘We matter and you need to listen to us and follow us.’ It’s a group that wants you to join.

“So being able to have that sort of powerful activist presence at the same time that you’re technically meeting the requirements of the work, those are the challenges.”

The Hancher program continues with Graham’s “Errand into the Maze,” Agnes De Mille’s “Rodeo” (pronounced row-DAY-oh), and Hofesh Shechter’s “Cave,” taking audiences on a ride through a century of Graham’s company, formed in 1926.

  Buy Photo

Eclectic, electric works

A revolutionary choreographer, Graham plied her artistry right up to her death in 1991 at age 96, fueling and shaping 70 years of modern dance. Her company continues its forward trajectory by curating and presenting not only the core collection of timeless works, but also by commissioning new works annually.

“Our dancers are unbelievable,” Eilber said of the troupe members, ranging in age from 22 to 44. “People should come just to see these 21st century athletes. We may dance 20th century dances, but we have 21st century athletes. And they are extraordinary.”

Choosing the pieces to present in “GRAHAM100” tours is no easy feat — even with the ability to “authentically reconstruct” only 45 to 50 of Graham’s 181 works. Eilber begins by creating a theme to take on the road. This year, it’s “American Legacies.”

“It’s not only about Martha Graham’s legacy, but about that modernism that happened in the middle of the 20th century,” Eilber said. “One of the pieces we’re bringing you is Agnes DeMille’s, ‘Rodeo,’ certainly another one of the American legacies,” which Eilber described as a story ballet. She said the story is made “very clear through the acting of the dancers,” a silent-film technique influenced by DeMille’s time in Hollywood, where her uncle, Cecil B. DeMille, blazed a trail in both silent- and sound- filmmaking.

“Maybe even more important is that it’s the first dance ever created for the stage that incorporated the American vernacular (with) folk dance. There’s a genuine square dance in the middle of ‘Rodeo,’ and there’s a lot of tap dancing. These are all dance forms that emerged out of immigrant and enslaved communities in this country,” as did the bluegrass stylings in the music.

“So we hope that this production will open those conversations and allow people to have a little more expansive view of 20th century art, dance and music. Because it is so rooted in the many communities … that brought so much to this country.”

Overall, “American Legacies” is “running the gamut,” Eilber said. “You’re getting some essential Graham through ‘Panorama,’ which is really core Graham Americana from the 1930s — her social activism, her community power periods.

“And then you’re also getting ‘Errand into the Maze,’ which is from the 1940s when she’s gone from this sort of social community, community activism, to the power of the individual.”

It’s a period in which America discovered Freud and Alfred Hitchcock began making psychological movies, Eilber said, and America’s post-World War II fascination with psychology is seen in Graham’s work of that era.

The duet “Errand into the Maze” is “definitely a psychological ballet,” Eilber said. “She borrowed the Greek myth of Theseus, who traveled into the maze to battle the Minotaur, but she sends a woman instead. And the metaphor is the maze may be her own mind. The Minotaur may be confronting her own fears — that he’s not actually a monster, it’s something inside herself that she can’t overcome.”

A signature role for Graham as a dancer as well as a choreographer, the 15-minute work features a commissioned score by Gian Carlo Menotti. “It’s really powerful, classic Graham,” Eilber said.

The final piece, “Cave,” leaps into 2022, with a COVID-inspired work by London-based Israeli choreographer, dancer and composer Hofesh Shechter.

“I hope people will notice how seamlessly our dancers move from one style to another,” Eilber said. “ … We were in a COVID pod as this work was created, and it evokes the feeling of a dance party — of a rave. It’s highly cathartic. It was created at a time when people were not going out to clubs and dancing with strangers.

“It’s inspired by that basic human urge to move to the beat, so it’s infectious. Audiences participate physically, vocally,” she said. “They get so invited into it and so inspired by that connection that we all have to move to the beat.”

The Graham technique

Graham changed the language of dance, stripping down works to find the universal essence that speaks across borders and generations.

“I think the most important thing Martha did, or the most unique discovery that Martha had, what launched her revolution, is that she took body language and she theatricalized it,” Eilber said. “She took that visceral, innate, primal way of moving that we all have, and she expanded it and she turned it into a form of theatrical expression, not just personal expression.

“So the hallmark of her style that you'll see on stage is quite gutsy. It’s been called ‘powerful, weighted,’ because she wanted to put human beings on stage.

“The goals of classical ballet are to defy gravity, and to be lighter than air, and Martha's goals were quite the opposite.

“She wanted to show human struggle, so she dug into how we hold our bodies when we laugh, when we cry. It all comes from the breath. It comes from those core muscles. And that’s what her technique is based on — the use of the core. So it’s literally quite gutsy, and the weight of the body is the power behind all of the Graham movement. …

“This idea of using the core as the power of movement has expanded into ballet, for sure,” Eilber added. “In the old days, they just moved their arms and legs. Right now, ballet dancers are using their torso, and it’s incredibly expressive, with more full use of all of those muscles that Martha identified as being so emotionally expressive from the center of the body.”

“Gutsy” also describes Graham’s determination to express herself her own way. Born in what is now Pittsburgh on May 11, 1894, she cut through cultural norms at a time when it was difficult for a woman to work, let alone lead the way.

“She was a creature of the theater,” Eilber said. “She was born to be a star, and she wanted to be a star. In order to be at her most impressive, she had to break boundaries. She had to astonish people, and that’s what she was after her entire life. …

“She called herself ‘doom eager.’ It’s an Icelandic term, like you’re eager for the darkness, because she was in a constant state of free fall. She was always stepping off the edge into the unknown to find the next thing,” Eilber said.

“If it was safe, and the next thing existed, nobody would have cared what she did with it. But she was ‘doom eager,’ and she was willing to constantly step into the unknown.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com