Moved by Martha

“My whole premise,” says Richard Move, “is that Martha never died. It’s just that now she’s hosting a dance series in which she performs and introduces other people’s work.”

Move is talking about Martha Graham, the modern dance icon who actually did die in 1991. On a regular basis, though, Move brings her back to life, reincarnating a legendary figure who spent most of the century developing her severely angled and weighted form of dance, and reached household-name status while sweeping about in diva style, making pronouncements in lofty, “I am art” style.

At barely 5 feet tall, she was perhaps not the logical alter-ego for the 6-foot-4 Move to choose. Nevertheless, for the last three years, at a tiny club called Mother in the meat-packing district of New York, Move has been packing them in. Dressed in full Graham drag--plenty of severely draped Lycra and a wig of black hair tortured into a bun far above ski-slope cheekbones--Move hosts a monthly dance series called Martha@Mother.

Since its inception in 1996, Martha@Mother has become one of the hottest tickets in New York--hotter, some might say, than tickets to see the Graham company itself, which has fallen on relatively hard times since its founder’s death. In 1997, Martha@Mother received a Bessie (the nickname for the New York Dance and Performance Awards, presented by Dance Theatre Workshop) and was listed among the year’s most unforgettable moments in New York’s Time Out magazine. The series is regularly recommended by critics in the Village Voice and draws a mix of dance insiders and the high-art crowd (Baryshnikov is a fan), along with curious clubgoers and locals.

Each Martha@Mother program, curated by Move and his co-director Janet Stapleton, contains a number of quick-moving (nothing over 10 minutes) contemporary dance works, as well as what Move calls his “Cliffs Notes” versions of Graham classics. His company sometimes swells to 12 dancers, half of whom currently belong to the real Graham company as well--and none of whom is in drag.

Move’s interpretations are not to be confused with Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo antics, which rely primarily on cross-dressing for their effect. Nor are they reconstructions of Graham’s famous works--more like deconstructions, Move says. “I take parts of different dances and restage them, maybe combine things, heightening what I think are important elements. And I find new music--I like to use the Bernard Herrmann’s Hitchcock movie scores, like from ‘Psycho,’ things like that.”

Other works on the Martha@Mother series have included premieres by the likes of Mark Morris, Meredith Monk and Sean Curran; as well as pieces by unknown choreographers, either from well-established companies (Taylor, Cunningham or New York City Ballet dancers) or discoveries, such as Bill Shannon, a hip-hop wunderkind who dances on crutches. Move calls the series “a monthly New York dance season, really.” Dance critic and historian Deborah Jowitt has described it as “a dandy backdoor education in modern dance.”

In addition to the new work, there’s no doubt that one of Martha@Mother’s biggest attractions remains Move’s ghost-of-Graham commentary, delivered in a style best termed “oracular chic.” He tells historically correct anecdotes as he imagines Martha might have--had she been just inches further over the top. Sometimes, he inserts spoken text into his dances. In his interpretation of Graham’s famous solo “Lamentation,” for instance, he stretches against the tube-shaped purple Lycra costume and freezes at a severe angle to recall--in a reverential deadpan--the famous story about a critic who thought this solo made her look as if she might give birth to a cube.

Groping for a way to describe someone who worships Graham and satirizes her goddess persona at the same time, dance writers have called Move’s work a “sophisticated parody,” a “clever, disarming dance tribute” and “an accurate and irreverent homage.” Move himself calls it “an in-depth character study.”

Southern Californians will get a chance to see this second coming of Martha on Thursday and Friday, when Move hooks up with the L.A.-based American Repertory Dance Company to host its evening of modern dance reconstructions at California Plaza. It’s not exactly a predictable collaboration, since ARDC usually presents its historical modern dance without a discernible sense of humor--you’re not meant to chuckle at the dramatic excesses of Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, no matter how dated they may sometimes seem to today’s eyes. But Move and ARDC’s more conventional dance reconstructors actually have the same goals in mind: to bring forgotten gems back to the stage with as much historical accuracy and contemporary passion as possible. The fact that Move provides a dicingly clever commentary by reincarnating and deconstructing Graham could be seen as a postmodern bonus.

“We’re always searching for ways to present our programs, to give the historical work some context, and I think Richard can do that,” says Bonnie Oda Homsey, artistic director of ARDC and a former Graham company dancer. “After meeting him, I realized that he’s not poking fun at Martha, it’s genuinely an homage to her aesthetic, her philosophy, her passion for dance. I’d seen him on videotape, and I thought his ability to pick up the essence of Martha was extraordinary.”

*

Raised in rural Virginia, Richard Move (born Richard Winberg) had never heard of the woman who is called the mother of American modern dance until he was required to take dance as a high school drama student. It was the early ‘80s, and in faraway New York, Graham, born in 1894 and in failing health, was still running her own company. But a student of Helen McGehee, one of her former dancers, was preaching the Graham gospel in Fredericksburg, Va., and was about to make a convert.

“That was my first dance class ever, and I was swept up in it right away,” Move recalls on the phone from his New York apartment.

“I loved it because the technique was so extreme for one thing, and then, the teacher was so beautiful and severe,” he says. “She spoke of the work in really mystic, religious, philosophical sort of terms, because that’s the approach Martha took.” His voice, normally lower than Graham’s, takes on some of the high-flown intoning of Martha’s: “You were never dancing for the sake of movement, you were dancing to express some element of the human condition.”

Later, when he majored in dance at Virginia Commonwealth University, Move discovered that Graham was considered “very passe and old-fashioned.” When he moved to New York after graduation, he worked in postmodern dance companies such as DANCENOISE and also danced for “punk ballet” choreographer Karole Armitage. At the same time he “fell into” working as a nightclub dancer to support himself and discovered a different kind of dance energy.

“I was working with these great companies on one hand and then seeing this kind of underworld, where dance was used as a way to assert yourself socially,” he says. “In clubs, I’d be watching some of the greatest dancers ever seen on a dance floor, battling each other from opposing voguing houses. It really opened my eyes to what [concert] dance was missing--it has to be a necessity and a real communication.

“I think a lot of postmodern dance is very difficult for audiences, and it alienates the rest of the world. It makes for a kind of limited content and appeal. Whereas Martha’s universal themes are timeless, like in her Greek ballets--full of love and hate, lust and revenge. It’s tragedy that applies to everyone, whether you’re there right now or not.”

With a solid concert dance background and a sense of the outrageous in tow, Move was on the verge of finding his calling. From a single performance in which he portrayed Graham in a nightclub cabaret, he started becoming obsessed with her. Now thirty-ish (“A lady never tells her age,” he quotes Graham as saying), he not only hosts the Martha@Mother series, but he’s starting to travel widely with his Graham-esque repertory, which is billed accordingly to the venue--Martha@the Salzburg Festival (1998) or Martha@Tanzfest (coming up in Berlin). He’s also working on a film of Graham’s life, tentatively called “Martha’s World.”

“The title sort of combines the wonderful film of Graham called ‘A Dancer’s World’ and ‘Wayne’s World,’ ” Move says, “A serious reference and an absurd one, which I love.”

Any non-Martha projects have gone by the wayside recently, Move says, though he also produces nightclub shows to supplement his income. “To be honest with you, she’s completely taken over my artistic and creative life, and I have no interest in anything else right now.”

*

“The first thing about Richard Move is that his work is high quality, and he has a vision. He evokes her very well--a lot of old Graham dancers besides me have been here and seen it and agree--it’s very powerfully done . . . I’m convinced Martha would love him. In fact, I’m convinced she does love him.”

The speaker--on a Martha@Mother video segment for New York public television--is Stuart Hodes, a leading dancer in the Graham company from 1947 to 1958. Hodes’ stamp of approval goes beyond verbal recognition--he has partnered Move in the Martha@Mother series. “Some people who knew Martha were skeptical at first--sometimes it took them a few years to show up,” Move says. “These were people who deeply loved and respected Martha and gave their lives to her, so to find out that some 6-foot-4 drag queen is doing her regularly at a tiny night club in the meat-packing district of New York was probably a lot to handle. But when they finally came, they embraced it. Now they love to tell me stories, because they don’t think anyone really cares about Martha anymore.”

Homsey is familiar with the phenomenon of Graham’s fading reputation, having watched the Graham company go through what she calls “a difficult transition” after her death.

“The company hasn’t been performing as much the last couple years, and the memory of her work and how vital it was has receded,” she says. “I think Richard is certainly bringing a new visibility to Martha Graham. So many young people now just know of her as the legend, but not what she thought and why these works were created. Richard provides that.”

Still, not everyone was thrilled with Move’s emergence as the Divine Martha. When Martha@Mother first opened and used a photo of Graham on announcements, a cease-and-desist order from the Graham estate arrived promptly. Terrified of having offended, Move quickly agreed to use his own image in subsequent ads and programs, and to print a disclaimer on them: “This event is in no way connected to or sponsored by the Martha Graham entities.”

Not surprisingly, publicity about the incident helped draw attention to Martha@Mother and pack houses for its premiere. Since then, Move has had no further communication from the Graham estate. On the other hand, he says he feels some kind of messages arriving regularly from Graham herself.

“Sometimes it sounds too Shirley MacLaine for words, but I feel that Martha has absolutely guided me,” Move says. He cites instances of finding just the right music at the right time and getting funding at dire moments. Then there was the time onstage when he was talking about Martha’s famously postponed retirement from performing (at the too-late age of 76), a touchy subject for the aging dancer. The moment he ended a soft-spoken reverie about staying on the stage too long, he recalls, “there was this enormous clap of thunder, and what had been a clear April day turned into a storm so great it shook the entire room. You know, I’m not normally a mystic, but Martha was, and I think she’s turning me into one--a historical mystic or an academic mystic, something like that.”

Move shouldn’t have any trouble connecting historically or mystically with the program of American Repertory Dance Company this week. Called “Pioneering California Choreographers,” it includes pieces by Agnes de Mille, Lester Horton, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. The latter two founded the Los Angeles school and company where Graham got her start, so Move has many stories at hand about her experiences with them, which he’ll use in his introductions. The California Plaza crowd will also get to see at least one solo by Move as Graham--possibly from her Greek period.

Asked if working with Richard Move as Martha will be like working with Graham again, Homsey laughs. “Nothing is ever going to be like working with Martha.”

But she doesn’t find the idea of a semi-mystical “channeling” of a dead choreographer that unusual. “There’s an element of that for all of us as dancers. When you’ve delved into a choreographer’s world with a lot of research, all of a sudden certain rhythms and patterns and moments of inspiration become part of the process. He’ll feel very much at home on our stage.”

And would Martha truly approve?

There is a long, long pause.

Then Homsey says, “On the one hand, I think she’d feel flattered, and on the other, the haughty part of her would make her say that no one could ever replicate her persona. She was an extraordinary being, always larger than life. But she was the first one to say that if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.”

*

American Repertory Dance Company, California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., L.A., Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m. Free. (213) 687-2159.