“It was important for me to not see Martha Graham,” declared Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. “I didn’t want things that were Graham-esque. We have Graham. We have the most fabulous 20th century choreography that exists, in my opinion. So to bring someone in and ask them to do something like Martha is just too much of a mountain to climb. I really look for people who have developed their own distinct voices and ask them to take inspiration from one of Martha Graham’s ideas, but to create a completely different dance, something that is their own.”

The project about which Eilber is speaking is The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians which is having its world premiere this Saturday at The Soraya in Northridge. The original version by Graham debuted in 1952. But there is no permanent record of that work. All that exists were the memories of one former dancer and a film of one of the eight parts that make up the work, even though the original Canticle was revived in both 1969 and 1987.

“It was kind of a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy if anyone remembers what Xerox was in 1969,” she said of those revivals. “The initial performances were never filmed. So 18 years later many of the original cast came back and tried to remember what they had danced and they put together a revival. That revival was not filmed. In 1987, another 18, 19, 20 years later with an entirely new company, a few of the original cast came back and said, ‘we sort of did this. Maybe we did this. Let’s use our collective knowledge of Martha Graham and put something together.’ So when I was researching bringing it back to the stage again with no filmed record of any of those earlier efforts, I thought I’m not going to pretend that we know what Martha Graham choreographed back in 1952. But we had her structure, we had her blueprints. And I thought that would be great inspiration for some of these young emerging choreographic voices that I wanted to work with. Martha’s blueprint for Canticle for innocent Comedians, with its eight distinct vignettes about nature, gave me an excuse to have eight different choreographers involved.”

Joining one vignette choreographed by Graham and a second recreated by Sir Robert Cohan, a dancer in the original production, are works by Sonya Tayeh, Kristina and Sadé Alleyene, Jenn Freeman, Juliano Nuñez, Micaela Taylor and Yin Yue.

Tayeh may be the best-known of the choreographers for her work on So You Think You Can Dance and her Tony Award-winning choreography for the stage musical Moulin Rouge!

“Sonya’s choreography is very emotionally descriptive. And she has her own physical vocabulary that is quite different from Martha’s. But it’s still this idea of using using motion and movement to describe emotion.”

Emotion and heart are the keys to The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians maintaining a connection to the original work by Graham.

“You’ll see, even in this brand new version, that the emotion is just the emotion that comes through the dancing that we do,” Eilber offered. “Certainly the Martha Graham classics are all about the physicality that she invented to reveal emotion. To reveal, as she said, the inner landscape, the heart and that comes through. That was the core principle in all of her choreography. And I think it’s certainly true of our New Canticle – even though it’s got a great variety of creative artists who have put it together.”

Another artist joining in this project is musician/composer Jason Moran who has created a new score. For the world premiere he will be performing his music live. Two days later he’ll be recording the score for use in other upcoming Martha Graham Dance Company performances of The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians.

“Jason has gone in his own direction. It’s a long piece – long in a good way. It’s about 40 minutes for solo piano. It’s a tour de force for him to play for 40 minutes. Jason had carte blanche and he did not really have direct contact with any of the individual choreographers. He’s been working with Sonya and me. He came into the studio several times and you could just feel the sparks flying once he saw our dancers in person. He sat down at the piano in our studio and just began to create sounds and phrases that went with the choreography Sonya had already created.”

The New York Times, in a review of the 1987 revival, called the original work by Graham one of her “most atypical pieces.” It’s an assessment with which Eilber agrees.

“One reason that made it atypical in 1952 was that Martha Graham was not in it. The works that she was creating in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s, for the most part, revolved around her. She was choosing narratives – borrowing stories from the Bible, from Greek myths, from wherever – to have a vehicle for herself as a leading actress and dancer. It wasn’t just a narcissistic trip. She often transformed these stories in genius, revolutionary ways.”

With Canticle, Eilber says, “She’s not creating a vehicle for herself. She’s creating virtuosic solos and duets for her company. So it’s an ensemble work. It does not have a narrative. There’s no bad guy or anything like that. So it’s a much more sort of poetic and abstract idea without a leading lady at the center of it.”

As for the leading lady, Martha Graham, Eilber thinks she’d be very interested and supportive of this new version of her work.

“As long as we’d ask her to bow and bring her up on stage she’d be happy,” Eilber said followed by a joyous laugh. “The other answer is, people think of Martha as the sort of old-fashioned, staid diva who wanted things a certain way, but it was quite the opposite. She was a revolutionary. She embraced change until the last day of her life and was always looking for new. She had an appetite for the new and and she was always looking for ways to astonish her audience; to figure out what was new and what she could do. So I just have to believe that she would be behind us all the way; that she would be interested in the experimentation that we’re doing.”

To watch my full conversation with Janet Eilber, please go here to our YouTube channel.

For tickets and more information on The New Canticle for Innocent Comedians please go here.

Main Photo: Martha Graham takes a bow (Photo by Martha Swope/Courtesy NYPL Archives)

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To acknowledge Juneteenth, the Metropolitan Opera shifted their scheduled operas a little bit. La Forza del Destino, starring Leontyne Price from the 1983-1984 season, has added a second day of showings and is available through Saturday, June 20th at 6:30 PM EDT/3:30 PDT. This pushes the two Philip Glass operas, Akhnaten and Satyagraha one day each. Akhnaten now begins streaming on Saturday and Satyagraha will begin streaming on Sunday. The previously announced production of La Traviata will start Week 15 at the Met.

Here are your Culture Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st.

Live with Carnegie Hall: Juneteenth Celebration – June 19th – Carnegie Hall Website – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT

Carnegie Hall celebrates Juneteenth with a program that combines music and commentary. Rev. Dr. James A Forbes Jr. will be front and center for this event that will features performances by pianist Joseph Joubert and the Juneteenth Mass Choir. There will be speeches by Bill Moyers and Bishop Michael Curry. Comments from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis and Carnegie Hall’s Chairman, Robert F. Smith, will also be part of the program.

Small Island – National Theatre Live – Now – June 25th

British author Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel, Small Island, was the inspiration for this 2019 National Theatre production. The play was written by Helen Edmundson and, like Levy’s novel, earned raved reviews.

The setting is the second World War and culminates in 1948. Two women are at the center of the story: Hortense (Leah Harvey), a Jamaican immigrant who believes a life in England will be far superior to the one she leaves behind and Queenie (Aisling Loftus), a woman of great generosity and kindness who allows servicemen to use her home while her husband is off at war. Between the two is Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jr.), Hortense’s husband who wants to become a lawyer.

The struggle of Jamaican immigrants to England is ultimately what’s at stake in the play.

Rufus Norris directed this production which features a company of 40 actors. Critics talked about Small Island as being one of the most important plays in the history of the National Theatre.

It should be noted that the website for this NT Live presentation does come with the following warning: “As part of depicting the experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, at times characters in the play use language which is racially offensive.”

Dance Theatre of Harlem: Vessels – June 19th – June 21st – DTH’s YouTube Channel

This is a 2014 work choreographed by Darrell Grand Moultrie set to the music of Ezio Bosso. Vessels has regularly been a part of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s touring program.

Moutrie’s work is divided into four sections: Light, Belief, Love and Abundance.

Light features dancers Chyrstyn Fentroy, Jenelle Figgins, Ingrid Silva, Nayara Lopes, Alison Stroming, Fredrick Davis, Da’ Von Doane, Dylan Santos, Anthony Savoy and Samuel Wilson. Belief features Figgins, Silva, Lopes and Stroming. Love showcases Fentroy and Davis and the whole company performs Abundance.

Vessels is important to the company. Earlier this year they created a social-distanced interpretation of Moultrie’s works and its themes in celebration of composer Bosso who passed away in May.

YES! Reflections of Molly Bloom – Irish Repertory Theatre – June 19th and June 20th

Aedín Moloney stars is this one-woman show inspired by James Joyce’s novel Ulysses.

Set in Ireland in 1904, Molly struggles to find meaning in her life after her children are gone, her marriage has lost its luster and the affair she was having ran its course. She doesn’t fully know what she wants, but she knows this isn’t it. With a true Irish sense of both doom and humor, Molly follows an untraditional path to rediscovering who she is.

Moloney, who won the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance, adapted the novel with Colum McCann. YES! features music from Paddy Moloney, best known for his band The Chieftains.

The two performances (Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT and Saturday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT) require reservations made at least two hours in advance. There is a suggested donation of $25. Once a reservation has been made you will receive details how to watch the performance.

Munich Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall – Medici.tv – June 19th – June 21st

Continuing with the Fridays with Carnegie Hall Fridays series on Medici.tv, this week’s program features the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. This concert took place October 26, 2019.

On the program is Jörg Widmann’s Con brio; Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

The soloist for the Brahms is Leonidas Kavakos. His encore is Enescu’s Ménétrier (“The Fiddler”) from Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28, No. 1.

You do not have to subscribe to Medici.tv to see this concert. You do need to register with them, however, to do so.

Act One – Lincoln Center at Home – June 19th – July 3rd

If you ask most theater professionals what one book should be read by anyone contemplating a career in theater or anyone who has a career in theatre and almost universally the answer is Moss Hart’s biography, Act One.

Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner James Lapine adapted Hart’s book and turned it into a Tony-nominated play that ran at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in 2014. Santino Fontana (last year’s Tony Award winner for Tootsie) and Tony Shalhoub (Tony Award winner for The Band’s Visit) each play Hart at various points in his life. Andrea Martin (Tony Award winner for Pippin) heads the rest of the company that finds 22 actors playing over 40 roles.

Hart is best known as the playwright who gave us You Can’t Take It With You (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize) and The Man Who Came to Dinner. He directed the musical My Fair Lady and won a Tony Award for his work. He wrote several screenplays including the Oscar-nominated Gentleman’s Agreement and the script for the 1954 version of A Star Is Born (the Judy Garland version.)

Ann – Great Performances on PBS – June 19th (check local listings)

You have to have real drive and passion for a project to leave a hit television show like Two and Half Men to pursue a play. That’s precisely what actress/writer Holland Taylor did when she left the sitcom to realize her dream of putting the life of Texas governor Ann Richards on stage.

That play, Ann, played at Lincoln Center (earning Taylor a well-deserved Tony Award nomination for her performance) and has been filmed. Ann will air this weekend on PBS’s Great Performances series.

Richards was bigger than life and had a quick-wit. An classic example of her quick turn of phrase was during the 1988 Democratic Convention when she said of George H.W. Bush, “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Salome – San Francisco Opera – June 20th – June 21st

Richard Strauss worked with Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name to create his opera, Salome. The opera had its world premiere in 1905 in Dresden. The opera was controversial with several companies not allowing it to be performed until many years after its premiere (including the Metropolitan Opera where performances in 1907 were cancelled after its first performance and the opera was not seen again until 1934.)

What made it so controversial? No doubt it is the “Dance of the Seven Veils.” That dance inspires the warning that this production contains nudity and scenes that viewers might find disturbing.

In this 2009 production, Nadja Michael sings the role of “Salome.” Herod is sing by Kim Begley. James Robinson directed and Nicola Luisotti conducted. The opera is performed without an intermission and runs approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Jessie Mueller with Seth Rudetsky – June 21st – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

Tony Award winning actress Jessie Mueller (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) joins Seth Rudetsky in this weekend’s concert. Her other Broadway credits include originating the role of “Jenna” in the musical Waitress and she was Tony nominated for her performance as “Julie Jordan” in the most recent Broadway revival of Carousel.

If you are unable to watch Sunday’s live concert, there will be a rebroadcast of it on Monday at 3 PM EDT/12 PM PDT. Tickets for either viewing are $25.

That’s it for this week’s Best Bets at Home: June 19th – June 21st. But before we go we want to remind you that the world premiere of a reimagined Immediate Tragedy (a long-lost work by Martha Graham) takes place on Friday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT on the Soraya Facebook Page and will be shown on Saturday on the Martha Graham YouTube Channel on Saturday at 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT.

Have a great weekend.

Photo from Small Island by Brinkhoff-Moegenburg/Courtesy National Theatre Live

Update: We erroneously credited Moss Hart with having written the book for MY FAIR LADY. Alan Jay Lerner was the sole writer of the book of the musical. We regret the error.

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New York Times critic John Martin said of the work, “Not since the eloquent and beautiful Frontier, first presented three seasons ago, has she given us anything half so fine as Immediate Tragedy.”

This work was never filmed and was considered a lost masterpiece. Until now.

After a considerable amount of material was discovered by Graham biographer Neil Baldwin (including photos, reviews, letter and musical notations), Martha Graham Dance Company has collaborated with Wild Up’s Christopher Rountree and Thor Steingraber at The Soraya to come up with a new version of Immediate Tragedy that speaks to our time.

This reimagined piece features 14 dancers – all performing separately and safely from their own space – dancing to new music written by Rountree.

To help create their individual choreography, each dancer was given four photos and was tasked with designing specific movement phrases. The dancers, all members of the Martha Graham Dance Company, are So Young An, Alessio Crognale, Laurel Dalley Smith, Natasha Diamond-Walker, Lloyd Knight, Charlotte Landreau, Jacob Larsen, Lloyd Mayor, Marzia Memoli, Anne O’Donnell, Lorenzo Pagano, Anne Souder, Leslie Andrea William and Xin Ying.

Rountree and Wild Up (Jiji, Richard Valitutto, Jodie Landau, Brian Walsh and Derek Stein) used what little remains of Cowell’s original composition as their inspiration.

Cowell was an American composer who wrote 20 complete symphonies with significant work completed on a 21st (later finished by Lou Harrison.) His work inspired, amongst others, Bartok and John Cage. He published New Music Quarterly and was an ardent supporter of many composers including Charles Ives.

The video elements were edited by Ricki Quinn who has been working with Janet Eilbert, the Artistic Director of Martha Graham Dance Company, Wild Up and Steingraber on the world premiere of Immediate Tragedy.

You’ll be able to watch the end result of all these efforts when The Soraya premieres Immediate Tragedy on Friday, June 19th on their Facebook page at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT. The next day it will also be available on the Graham Company’s YouTube Channel at 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT.

Photo of Martha Graham in Immediate Tragedy by Robert Fraser (Courtesy of Martha Gram Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc.)

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