‘Martin’ Adds Nothing to Our Understanding of King

A disjointed melodrama about a plaster saint gunned down by a crazed monster, Gordon Parks’ “Martin” ballet relies on what the audience already feels about its subject, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for civil rights. This hourlong PBS dance drama airs tonight at 10 on Channel 28 and 11 on Channel 15. Channel 50 shows it on Wednesday at 10, Channel 24 Thursday at 8.

Parks composed the brooding score for the ballet, fashioned the libretto from incidents in King’s public life, appears as host and narrator, serves as executive producer and director, plays keyboards and supplies the gritty, documentary photographs shown at the beginning of the program--images inevitably more intense and authentic than anything in the ballet itself.

Some of the scenes offer no opportunities for dancing, and choreographer Rael Lamb dutifully supplies the pantomime or processional action required. Elsewhere he borrows from masterworks of the 1940s by Agnes de Mille and Antony Tudor for vignettes of small-town life or passages of soul-searching by the King character. His use of the classical vocabulary is fluent but there’s little expressive insight in the choreography and virtually no suggestion of black culture.

John Jones brings great integrity and strong technical skills to the impossibly Christ-like role of King. (There’s even a Resurrection scene.) Sheila Rohan humanizes some of the ballet’s emptiest choreography as Rosa Parks, initially victimized and later a King apostle. James Edward Murphy plays the Assassin like something out of a teen-slasher movie--wouldn’t it be great if all dangerous bigots were this conspicuous?