The dances of Anna Sokolow at 92nd Street Y
Sokolow still has much to tell us if we invest ourselves in listening to her.
By R. Pikser
Anna Sokolow in Kaddish
The 92nd Street Y is a historic venue of 20th century modern dance. The same studio where Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and many others worked is now the home of Sunday studio performances of both old and new modern dance works. Since this performance was in celebration of Sokolow’s 100th birthday, many of those who had worked with her, or knew her, were in attendance. Mary Anthony was there, and Carla Maxwell, Artistic Director of the José Limón Company, was there, too. Dian Dong, who danced with Sokolow, and is now Associate Artistic Director of The Chen Dance Company, was present, as was H.T. Chen himself. This birthday performance of excerpts from several of Sokolow’s creations forms part of a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of her birth, a celebration being combined with the 102nd anniversary of José Limón: The Limón Company will return to the Y in March performing works of Sokolow’s as well as those of Limón.
The founders of Modern Dance were searching for a way to express their inner selves and their connection to the world. Some, like Graham, Humphrey and Weidman, and Dunham, developed their own techniques and vocabularies to help them in this task. They wanted to find the roots of movement and how movement related to the basic acts of life. Others, like Sokolow and Wigman, tried to find movements particular to each piece and subject and in that way to connect their particular selves to human universals.
How instructive to see this retrospective of Sokolow, even though excerpted. Themes of sorrow in loneliness, of the solace found in reaching out to others, and the pleasure in contact arise again and again. These are still important themes of any human life. Sokolow’s Desire, an excerpt of her famous Rooms, says more in five minutes about the inchoate terror of being unable to contact another than many choreographers can express in an entire evening.
That Sokolow’s work allows room for each performer’s interpretation was demonstrated in the two versions of Kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead choreographed in 1945. Deborah Zall was appalling in her intensity, while young Samantha Geracht, though quite good, seemed not to have found the specifics of the deep well of pain that the dance demands be explored. For example, the performer must take into account that the dance was choreographed just after the end of World War II: awareness of the exterminations of the war must be included in the dancer’s preparation. On the whole, the younger dancers seemed to want clarity of intention that was expected as a matter of course from the dancers of a previous generation. The Rachmaninoff piece was particularly unfortunate, the smiling dancer seemingly unaware of the turbulence of the music and unable to help us feel it. Though the shapes were performed, the ecstasy and fury suggested by those shapes, and the music, were not. Yet surely the coaches, not the young dancers, who are at fault here.
The works of Anna Sokolow were often tailored to her dancers. All the more reason, then, for the older generation, mounting these works, to insist on involving the mind and emotions in the process of interpretation. Sokolow’s willingness to adapt her works for different performers tells us that her idea was never to freeze the dances in time, but to make them relevant to the present. The way to accomplish that is to help the performers do the hard work of transcending themselves. That transcendence, or the attempt to find it, is what draws us to dance, what makes it magical, and what allows it to express the truth. Then we will be able to see that the dances of Anna Sokolow are still relevant to our lives.
14 February 2010
92nd Street YM-YWHA
1395 Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
New York, NY
One afternoon only, at 3:00 p.m.
Tickets $15 212.415.5500
New York, NY 10128