Martha Graham's Errand in the Maze still thrills

If you ever see film footage of Martha Graham dancing, you’ll know that not only was she a pioneer in modern dance, but she was an incredible dancer. Astonishingly flexible, charismatic, with an implacable stage persona. She didn’t just dominate, she blazed. 

One can imagine how thrilling she was in Errand in the Maze. The dance is based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, except gender bent. The woman (the Theseus stand-in) weaves through a rope maze to arrive at a set that seems like a gate, but also resembles... well, a woman’s anatomy. The woman is confronted by the Minotaur, (called a “Creature of Fear” here) and their dance together seems half power struggle, half mating ritual. They have three dances, each more fraught than the last. At some point, the dances start to resemble sexual positions, and one thinks that the woman is confronting her own sexual fears. When she finally overcomes the Minotaur and steps through the gate, you practically want to stand up and cheer.

So Young An and Antonio Leone did an amazing job of capturing the raw sexual energy of this dance. The partnering in this piece gives me vertigo: so many precarious lifts. Everything about Errand in the Maze still works: the Isamu Noguchi designs, the Gian Carlo Menotti music, the escalating battle of wills between Minotaur and Theseus. Just an absolute masterpiece. 

Another classic Graham work, Death and Entrances, did not have the same impact. Death and Entrances is inspired by the three Bronte sisters. The curtain rises on three sisters sitting at a chess table. It seems to be a memory play, with the sisters remembering their younger selves in the “spirits of three remembered children”, and some male lovers who are only named The Dark Beloved and The Poetic Beloved. The male lovers fight like rivals. At the end of the work, the three sisters are once again seated at the chess table. Xin Ying was very compelling in the central Emily Brontë figure, as was Lloyd Knight as the Dark Beloved.

Yet one ended up more confused than anything. The relationship between the sisters was opaque, as was the relationship with the Beloveds. The Brontë sisters are compelling literary figures, but what exactly was Graham trying to say about them? Maybe this is a piece that needs more than one viewing, but the initial impression was a work where the results didn’t quite live up to the concept. 

The evening ended with Cortege by Baye & Asa. It is actually a revision of a work I first viewed in 2023. The beginning and end are still the same: a dark sheet is pulled back to reveal a line of corpses, and at the finale the dark sheet once again covers the bodies. The work is inspired by Graham’s Cortege of Eagles and is about the horrors of war. One remembers that the original Cortege of Eagles premiered in 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War.

The whole of Cortege 2.0 is now clearer and more impactful. It seems to be a battle and the soldiers are engaged in some kind of ritualistic sacrifice. The loud, menacing Jack Grabow score reinforces this dystopian world. There is some pretension: why do dancers take off their vests and then put them on again repeatedly? But the themes of battle, death and sacrifice make an impact. It’s not a pleasant work, but the revised version has a structure and focus I don’t remember in the original version.

One does wish the company would commission less of these Graham-inspired works. While they are interesting, one wishes instead to see the actual Graham originals and for the company to commission wholly new works like Jamar Roberts’ We the People, which was by far the most compelling non-Graham new work I’ve seen the company do.