DORIS HUMPHREY–LOST WORKS
The reconstruction of dances by past masters is vitally important to our understanding of how those masters shaped and influenced the dance we see today–whether classic ballet or modern dance. The recovery of that ephemeral past is also a matter of some urgency, for memories fail and mortality overtakes the artists who originally performed the works.
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Momenta is composed of the Academy of Movement and Music’s students. They are surprisingly accomplished, and responded beautifully to the challenge of a new dance vocabulary. But because they are students, Stephanie Clemens, Momenta’s artistic director, wisely concentrated on Humphrey’s early works, when she was still refining her choreographic ideas and style. The concert featured dances Humphrey made as a schoolgirl, as a member of the Denishawn group, and from the later period when she and Charles Weidman had formed their legendary partnership. Humphrey choreographed into the 50s, but no work on this, program dates from later than 1935.
The next dance, Soaring, was created 11 years earlier with Ruth St. Denis when Humphrey was a member of Denishawn. Reconstructed by Letitia Coburn, Soaring is a dance for five women and an enormous, billowing scarf, and it remains a graceful reminder of the time when scarves played an important role in creating dance designs. The five teenagers who performed it made lovely woodland sprites.
The first part of the program was composed of selections from Facade, choreographed by Clemens; Facade dates from the same period as the Humphrey dances in this performance. Momenta offers a concert of historic and artistic significance, both inspiring and instructive. It gives us the rare opportunity–which will be repeated this weekend to see how this mother of modern dance led the way to the dance we see today.
