Graham Dancers Give a Dream Vibrant Life

There are worse fates than waking up alone, and Martha Graham depicted most of them in classic dance-dramas about women with too many overwhelming priorities to worry about loneliness. And when she did occasionally touch on that subject, she tended to portray it in terms of either social alienation (“Steps in the Street,” for instance) or carnal need (“Phaedra”).

However, sleeping solo represents the central image of “But Not for Me: Gershwin / Graham,” the half-hour 1998 dream ballet by Tony Award-winning Broadway choreographer Susan Stroman that the Graham company introduced locally in a five-part program at Cal State L.A. Saturday. The company is enduring another of the administrative conflicts that have plagued it since Graham’s death in 1991, but they looked just fine on the Luckman theater stage.

Tossing and turning and clutching pillows, 10 dancers form a kind of nocturnal cityscape, invading one another’s fantasies in a series of lightweight pillow-dances to an elaborate piano fantasia by Glen Kelly that fuses the title song with such Gershwin standards as “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “They All Laughed,” “Liza,” “The Man I Love” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

Although Stroman remains unfailingly clever and resourceful, she rarely focuses on the emotional gamut detailed in her program notes (“joy and sadness, longing and desire, anger and jealousy, lust, loss and regret”), and perhaps it’s just as well: On a program boasting Graham’s harrowing “Deep Song” and “Errand Into the Maze,” the poor-me solo that Stroman assigns Katherine Crockett remains more notable for spectacular balances in extension than profound Grahamesque emotion.

Ultimately, the greatest satisfactions of “But Not for Me” come from watching the Graham dancers who stay offstage for the rest of the program pretend to be asleep while cutting loose to the greatest music in their rep since “Appalachian Spring.” Resplendent in William Ivey-Long’s pajamas and tennies, the evening’s major discoveries include the dynamic Tadej Brdnik, the volatile Elizabeth Auclair and the statuesque Crockett: dream dancers indeed.

Alternately angry and anguished, the solo “Deep Song” (1937) abstracts Graham’s feelings about the Spanish Civil War in unsparingly forceful passages on and around a long white bench. Christine Dakin’s performance achieves its finest effects in moments of resignation: brokenly crawling along the floor, for example, or retreating to the space under the bench as if seeking the peace of the grave.

In contrast, the mythic duet “Errand Into the Maze” (1947) finds Terese Capucilli fighting heroically against the paralyzing fear embodied in the figure of the Minotaur (Gary Galbraith), superbly heightening every detail of the choreography, from her sharp twisting on the ground when he stamps over her to the moment of total self-empowerment at the end when she realizes she’s free.

Almost arrogantly ebullient, Miki Orihara’s performance of the solo “Satyric Festival Song” (1932) exults in absolute control of body sculpture matched by the sense of her character taking nothing seriously--including her own prowess.

“Appalachian Spring” (1944) features Crockett as an almost implacably serene Pioneering Woman, the versatile Galbraith as a transparently phony Revivalist (only fully real in the solo explosion near the end) and Martin Lofsnes as a Husbandman with more than the usual amount of self-doubt. But, of course, the work belongs to Fang-Yi Sheu in Graham’s role of the Bride: brilliantly buoyant in the girlish kissing-the-air solo but admirably warm and thoughtful at the end when she takes her last look at the horizon.

As in “Errand Into the Maze,” the set, by Isamu Noguchi, inventively enhances the drama of space built into the choreography: a labyrinth with a narrow gate in “Errand,” a tiny spot in a wide landscape in “Appalachian Spring.” In addition, Graham’s skill as a costume designer shines from every piece of hers on the program.

Will the Saturday performance be the last time we see the Graham dancers? Could be: Relations between the board that supports the company and the trust that controls the Graham repertory recently reached an impasse. An agreement between them allowing performances to continue is reportedly set to expire when the current tour ends later this month. Janet Eilber (a former Graham dancer and co-founder of L.A.’s American Repertory Dance Company), previously announced as the company’s artistic director-designate, is identified in the program with seven others as “consultant for the Martha Graham Repertoire.”

Some company sources speak of an existing 10-year contract that will preserve the status quo beyond that deadline. But the status quo reportedly involves so much unresolved bitterness that something much more positive needs to be negotiated if this company is to sustain its excellence and bring Graham’s vision intact into a new century.