"Clytemnestra"
Martha Graham Dance Company
Eisenhower Theater
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
December 9, 2008
by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson
Not easy! Taking in Martha Graham’s “Clytemnestra” is work. The latest reconstruction of Graham’s epic manifesto has been outfitted with super-titles to help navigate its fracted story, many characters and not unambiguous meaning. Still, some of the audience opted to “just watch the movement”. That’s one approach and, indeed, immediate pleasures are to be had during the two plus hours spent in the theater. Graham, the choreographer, compressed human action and individual expression into moments as memorable as any Phidias marble yet as pliant as flesh. Graham, the costume designer, knew how to dress and undress the sculpted bodies she wanted her dancers to display. Several of the current dancers seem stellar beyond their role fit and sex appeal. Halim El-Dabh’s music and Isamu Noguchi’s stage objects are striking, besides serving Graham’s intent. If you do, though, make the effort to keep track, sort and interpret, then sitting through “Clytemnestra” becomes an event singularly worthwhile.
Graham does not simply retell the story of the House of Atreus from a woman’s point of view. Things are more complex than that. A woman, Clytemnestra – one of the principal actors in the classic tragedy, is actor and narrator. Be she the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus’, Sophocles’ or Euripides’ plays or Graham-as-Clytemnestra, this figure has the courage to question fate. Graham also bestows on her the gift or curse to see other points of view. That necessitates breaking the story's time line in order to revisit individuals and incidents.
A key concern of Graham’s is why Clytemnestra must suffer guilt for crimes from which other perpetrators have been absolved. There’s a happy ending for her according to the program notes: “Clytemnestra resolves the terrible conflicts of her life and heart”. I’m not so sure. At the conclusion of Graham’s version isn’t Clytemnestra about to relive her life and, haunted by memories, commit the same sins once more?
Remarkably absent from the choreography is decoration. None is to be found in the chilling scene in which Clytemnestra goads Agamemnon to step on “sacred ground”. She holds out her palm and he places his foot on it, her subservience and submissiveness listfully pumping up his sense of power and gratifying his sexual arousal. Clytemnestra’s palm is a step to perdition for Agamemnon and once he walks where only gods may alight, his fate is sealed. Death follows him, step by step. Any other choreographer would have had Agamemnon dance a variation on the cloth that covers the path of the gods. Graham restricts the sequence to action. It is action, though, with its own dynamic. In Agamemnon’s walk, an interplay of force and pause portrays all that he was - heedless boy, bully but also a man too proud and yet brave. In another scene, Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus watches her with relish. He doesn’t dance out his feelings or his charm but makes us acutely aware of both as he sits, reclining like a question mark, lightly strumming the royal purple veil Clytemnestra had discarded.
This new production has toured Greece but was receiving its American premiere. There are lapses. The super-titles need rewriting by a poet. The bright and dark of the lighting scheme, I suspect, was more vivid when Jean Rosenthal was in charge. In the opening night cast, Fang-Yi Sheu was too agile a Clytemnestra. Graham’s struggle with the role (she was in her 60s when she first danced it) was part of her performance’s fascination. Sheu may age into the part. Tadej Brdnik had the contrary problem. He’s become a man whereas his character, Orestes, as Clytemnestra’s son, should show traces of boyishness. How would Brdnik be as Agamemnon? Mauricio Nardi, who used to be thin for a Graham dancer, has filled out to be a seductive Aegisthus. Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch’s Helen, David Martinez’s King Hades and especially Blakeley White-McGuire’s Cassandra were eye catching.
Graham lived a long time and her company changed. Once there were dancers with Graham-only training – impossible today. Still, the current company brings life to the choreography’s structure. “Clytemnestra” is reborn.
