Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503090035
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STACY JONES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Javier ... Javier ... up, up."
"Do less of an entrance Caroline."
"Ok, let's not mess with this. Leave it the way it is."
"Zhenjun needs to get his thighs back on those butterflies."
"Are we ready? Are dancers ready?"
Kikuchi, director of the Martha Graham Ensemble, was at Roanoke College last Thursday preparing her troupe for an evening performance.
Under her critical eye the dancers, in baggy sweats, faded T-shirts, knee pads and bare feet, leaped, slid and rolled across the stage. The raw moves and propulsive energy of the troupe was unmistakably Graham - their posthumous mentor.
The ensemble, formed in 1982 by Kikuchi's mother, Yuriko, a former principal dancer of Graham, is composed of 12 scholarship students in the Trainee Program at the Martha Graham School for Contemporary Dance in New York City. Touring year-round, the ensemble serves two purposes. First, as a training ground for future company members. Secondly, and decidedly more difficult, as a public conduit for Graham's revolutionary techniques and repertoire.
Kikuchi's challenge in leading a dance ensemble created in the memory of a dance icon is how to carry on the heritage of Graham while still moving forward artistically. One strategy Kikuchi employs is revivals of long-lost Graham works like "Panorama" and "Salem Shore."
Graham, who died in 1991 at age 96, broke from ballet's 19th-century classicism and shocked audiences with her jagged poses and jerky movements. From the 1930s through the 1970s, Graham used dance to convey primitive emotions, such as love, greed, sex and violence.
"Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart," Graham once said. "The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body."
by CNB