Date: Dec 1st 2008 3:44p.m.

Contributed by:
stonebanks

Last night the Martha Graham Dance Company's series of Beijing performances at The National Theater for Performing Arts concluded with American Chronicle. This survey of Graham's choreography featured six pieces relating to American themes.

Graham choreographed the first, a solo entitled "Serenata Morisc," at the age of 20. The dance, while technically impressive, showcases all the frivolous and titillating movements and clichés that Graham's later work would reject. With bells on her ankles and a billowy dress, the dancer plays the role of a dancer trying to impress a wealthy man.

The contrast between this first solo and the second, "Lamentation," which Graham choreographed a decade later, could not have been more stark. "Lamentation" is performed by a seated dancer whose arms and legs are restrained inside a tube of blue fabric that traps the dancer's entire body. Has she moves, red colors are revealed inside the fabric.

The third piece, "Appalachian Spring" (pictured above) explores traditional American frontier culture. The most exciting movement is performed by a priest character, who shrouded in black garb and hat performs his fire-and-brimstone sermon as a dance.

The evening concluded with "Maple Leaf Rag," which Graham choreographed in 1990 at the age of 96. Built around one of her favorite songs, the piece confronts themes of life, sexuality and death, but does so only in a playful, light-hearted matter. At the center of the stage stands a black bench, which at various points in the piece seems to function as a playground, a bed and a bridge between worlds. At the end of the piece, the clothes of one of the female leads are stolen away in a comic movement, and she is left on this black bench as the lights go out.

The piece was Graham's last ...