Friday afternoon, February 21 2025 – In the 11th floor rehearsal studio, inundated by Hunter Johnson’s invasive score, bearing witness to the Martha Graham ensemble unspooling this episodic quasi-narrative under the impeccable guidance of Blakeley White-McGuire and the aegis of Janet Eilber, with Miki Orihara lending advice. I haven’t seen this 1943 classic live/alive; I’ve only watched videos from the succeeding decades, and spelled out the work’s resonances with the Bronte sisters in Chapter 25 of Martha Graham – When Dance Became Modern. And yet, when the (ostensible) Victorian literary premises shatter under inner turmoil, fractured partnering, dynamic travelling, and “Emily”/Martha/Anne Souder’s unbearable ambivalence, I let go of preconceptions, seduced one more time into Graham’s field of action.
“How does she do this?” I wonder, yet again, “How does she hypnotize me with movement?”
And I am struck by the dramatic sensory shock in the instant I snap this picture: bodies meticulously-placed in the throes of their frenzy, choreographed aura-to-aura, like mutable words in the hundredth draft of a modern poem in process.