U of AZ School of Dance Salutes Martha Graham

It was a typical, balmy March evening outside the Stevie Eller Dance Theatre on the University of Arizona’s campus in Tucson, but inside, serious work was going on. Principal dancer Miki Orihara, who has been with the Martha Graham Dance Company since 1987, was quietly and efficiently rebuilding Graham’s 1935 work, Panorama, using three groups of students (one, all female; the other two, mixed.) At the time Panorama was first produced at Bennington College in Vermont, the work comprised all women.

The groups had been chosen by Douglas Nielsen, resident choreographer and dance professor at the school, but only one, with 34 dancers (including seven men), appeared with the Martha Graham Company on April 16, 2011, as part of the U A PRESENTS series at Centennial Hall. The other two would alternate performances at the dance school’s annual Spring Collection to be presented from April 21 to May 1 at the Eller Theatre. The school, known from its inception as the Committee on Dance in the School of Music way back in the 1980s, has grown into a sturdy and very respected dance conservatory, and today the school enjoys a well-deserved national reputation.

How the association with the Graham Company played out seems like a dream sequence from a 1950s movie musical. According to Nielsen, it wasn’t until two weeks before the actual rehearsals began that he and his dancers knew who would be coming to stage Panorama. When they found out it would be someone as prestigious and so intimately involved with the Graham Company as Orihara, the students were jumping for joy, or as it would be in this case, leaping into Graham’s exciting choreography. Nielsen was thrilled that his previously arranged visit to see the Graham Company perform at the Joyce Theater in New York and his discussions with the Director of MGDC, Janet Elber, on the possibility of such an exciting collaboration would result in this honorific adventure.

Although any remnant of the nine-minute dance was thought to have been lost, a film of it by Julien Bryan was found, and the dance was reconstructed by Yuriko Kikuchi, a former Graham dancer, in 1992. According to the UA Presents program notes, the dance as presented in 1935 was “part of the emphasis on participation in the revolutionary dance culture and expresses the power of the people to make change.” This quote indicates that during the 1930s, the works of modern dance were very much involved in the social changes coming out of the Great Depression. Today, that political context has fallen by the wayside, and the work is judged solely on its artistic merits.

And that is what Orihara was imparting to her charges on that March evening.
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A Mexican Musical Celebration to Remember

The ” Mexican Celebration” at Crowder Hall on September 25th turned out to be an exciting musical feast that brought a lot of joy to both performers and audience members alike at the opening concert of the University of Arizona Symphony’s 2010/11 season.

The evening was most likely the brainchild of Thomas Cockrell, Artistic Director and Conductor of the Arizona Symphony, who has had first-hand experience with Mexican orchestras. In May 2009, he conducted the Orquesta Sinfonica de Michoácan and last May the Orquesta Juvenil Carlos Chávez in Mexico City. His South of the Border musical adventures no doubt laid the ground work for the College of Fine Arts’ Institute for Arts of the Americas which is fostering a year-long exploration of the music of Latin America.

This auspicious musical program of Mexico’s most popular classical composers no doubt brought a voice of musical reason amidst the social upheaval in Arizona’s recent immigration policies, a fact that was not lost on the enthusiastic and appreciative audience in a year that also celebrated the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence and centennial of its revolution.

Dedications and anniversaries aside, if the music playing isn’t riveting, the talk surrounding the event comes up just as adulation. No need to worry here. The three conductors who are representative of the good work done at the music school proved to be up to the artistic challenge.

Starting with Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemayá, Jackson Warren brought out the powerful primal quality of the composer’s musical poem about taming snakes in a tribal ritual.

Next up was 1962: Homenaje a Copland, Humberto Hernández Medrano’s polyphonic tribute to his friendship with American composer Aaron Copeland. The piece also reflected Medrano’s orchestral studies in Russia with Dimitri Shostakovich as Keitaro Harada remarked before conducting the work.

Ending the first part of the program, David Dunbar and the orchestra delivered an exciting and passionate rendition of Sinfonía India. This work by Carlos Chávez is considered one of the finest works in the Mexican classical repertoire.
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