Indisputably Martha Graham
With courage and splendid effort, the Martha Graham Dance Company performed a one-night stand at City Center, May 9,2002. Although the right to Martha Graham's works are still in dispute between the nonprofit Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, which manages the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Center's former director, Ron Protas, the dancers rehearsed, performed and pulled
off a miracle of authenticity and verve, all true to the passion and precision of the works.
At a sold-out, benefit for itself program, with a cheering and supportive audience, the company performed excerpts from Graham's "Steps in the Street" (1936), "Conversation of Lovers" from "Acts of Light" (1981), "Night Journey" (1947), "Seraphic Dialogue" (1955) and "Embattled Garden" (1958). The program was under the coordination of senior Graham dancers Christine Dakin, who danced Jocasta in "Night Journey" and Terese Capucilli, who danced the role of Joan of Arc in "Seraphic Dialogue." The seventeen current company members and a number of apprentices were coached by some of Graham's earlier members, including Bertram Ross, Yuriko, Pearl Lang, Ethel Winter, Jacqulyn Buglisi and others.
Although there were moments that showed inexperience, or nerves, in the performance of some of the newer members, the evening was a triumph over adversity.
United States Supreme Count Judge Miriam Goldman Cederbaum is now considering whether the evidence that the Center owns the dances as organized in 1948 and 1956 to pay Graham for them or that they are owned by Protas as given to him by Graham, who might mot have had the right to do so. Cederbaum has already denied his trademark infringement claims and has granted the Center and School the right to the use of Graham's name and technique. Whatever the outcome, it is a landmark legal battle for all choreographers and managements to watch.
Simply put, does the work of a choreographer belong to the management that paid for the work, or does the choreographer own it and have the right to give a work away? Fortunately, there was no II incident" to mar the evening as older audience members remembered and enjoyed the return of the company and younger audience members were struck by the passion and technique of the dancers and wondered how they got that way. •