Even the invitation was in the tradition of old school dance connectivity. A friend who knows I’m in an out of town texted on a crapshoot alerting me of the extra ticket. I threw myself together and met her at the Joyce.
“We’re in the front row, by the way. I apologize,” she told me as we walked in.
“I’ve never sat that close so it will be a new experience. I’m open.”
And I was. I’m fine with seeing the sweat and the work. Understand that Erin’s constant proximity to black dance vis-a-vis Earl Mosley, her ability to take her pointe shoes off and actually throw her weight down and kill the house step, and her innate side-eye of supremacy before 2020 puts her on that list of folks I would see pretty much anything with. I’ve always had a theory that when the original people (all dark) split up, and the ones who moved north became white as an adaptation, and a few of the ones who trickled back down to get sun slain managed to hold on to some of the very very very powerful black DNA that just wouldn’t let whiteness win. Erin is descendant of one of those. She has two kids and runs a dance school doesn’t have a wrinkle anywhere.
I digress. The point is, we Erin and I sat there and watched the angels get diverted and the dancers were good. The men were big and buff and solid in the brown pants, the way Martha intended, and the women worked those torsos in the dresses. But of course it was the sister in the corps who was giving you the extraness, the ancestral rhythm inside the spiral, the slave pain in the contraction, the kakilambe jubilance in the high releases. She was doing the most and I LIVED. Natasha Diamond Walker and Lloyd Knight did their thing too, but in that way that established principals who have diverted and mazed and clytemnestraed for years. I’ll get to their slaying in a second.
Of course, in contrast to Leslie Andrea Williams, the young lady who was letting not a single black person down with this performance, there was a very red hunky guy who hasn’t quite figured it out. He needs to turn around the back, and then turn around the back some more so that those arms can find the source.
Then there was a brilliant solo that was made as a response to the women in the Spanish Civil War who were doing all the work but being ignored, and of course no video record of it exists. So they put this together from pictures. I can’t think of anything more modern dance willful than the commitment to such a project. I dig it. And the solo was beautiful.
Then they did a new work that was lovely. I would say more but I can’t wait to get to Appalachian Spring, where Natasha was the Pioneer Woman and Lloyd was the fire and brimstone Preacher. Janet Eilber did a great job setting up in the preshow a context: young couple, frontier, hopes and dreams, fire and brimstone values vs. passion, etc. etc. etc. But what Natasha and Lloyd did in spades was give us all the shade that could be gleaned from this story.
First off, before we get there, understand once again that I was in the front row. So I saw er’thang. The general shade is the shade Martha had for these four corps dancers. I could see that Noguchi set and understand the slope of that seating that those weren’t seats. Those ladies were perched in permanent contraction and booty flexion barely leaning against the house for fear that knocking it over means Suspiria level torture from the ghost of Graham. Then there was the fucking hat. Your remember this, right? Where the Preacher takes off his wide brimmed hat and sits it on top of the cupped fingertips of the four women in a square who have to essentially not breathe lest they ruin the tableau? Why Martha, why? Why that level of stress where the ladies are basically performing as pieces of furniture?
Meanwhile, Lloyd gave us a full duckwalk. Now, I’m sure the step that Martha set on Merce was a crawl of some sort along the metatarsals through parallel plie with some kind of augmenting change of the back and maybe cupped hands coming in. But when Lloyd but dropped his black behind in that squat, the next thing HE did was a duck walk. And I got my entire life.
Because what is a duck walk other than what happened when black hits this kind of step?
I told Erin not to let me be in the front row no more.
Then there was the X-Men mutant level shade that Natasha gave. She wanted to be clear with the way too happy, naively optimistic bride that this might not work out for them. A bear might come and end it all. The Chickasaw might come and take you out in your sleep. Or go at it with another tribe and get you in the crossfire. There are no hospitals nearby and you ain’t go no friends. So it may not end well.
Natasha did things like look the groom up and down as if trying to decide his fitness. She expressed worry. She sighed heavy. At one point she sat on that Noguchi sculpture passing for a chair and gazed out like she was on her rocking chair in Arkansas saying, “Lord these white folks not gone make it.” And she was already irritated about the heaviness of that wool dress - she confirmed this for me after the show - especially during the leg up in seconde attitude tableau (again, Martha, why). I wanted my younger students to be there to see an example of how to put it all in the work. It’s possible, sometimes even fulfilling.
I was getting my constant life! And let’s give the woman in Martha’s dress her props; she gave us mercurial , naive, optimistic flower in SPADES, so Natasha and Lloyd had good shit to work with. The dancer (I lost my program so I can’t tell you who it was) might have been just good and committed to the character and with acting chop enough to let Natasha and Lloyd lead, or she’s another Erin, in this case clued in to the nuances of this story when told with a few black leads. Either way, she was a perfect crash pad for the shade.
Then Lloyd, in his last solo, gave me full Donald McKayle, which is appropriate because that’s a black man who informed a Graham thing or two. So come through with all this DNA in the edge-of-palm contraction torso stirs. He pointed to the right as if to condemn them to white privilege ignorance hell, but in the name of Jesus. Life, family. Life is what I was getting.
The thing to take away from all of this is that Graham is alive and well in spades. I’m not sure how long Natasha and Lloyd and this young lady Leslie are there to give us the pigment, but know that they are blessing the children. One spiral and contraction at a time.