Boston Symphony Orchestra and Martha Graham Dance Company at Tanglewood

Copland
Appalachian Spring
Christopher Rountree
En Masse – excerpt: For Martha (Variations on a Theme of Leonard Bernstein)
Beethoven
Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92

Martha Graham Dance Company
Janet Eilber, artistic director

Appalachian Spring (1944)
Laurel Calley-Smith (The Bride)
Ethan Palma (The Husbandman)
Jai Perez (The Revivalist)
Leslie Andrea Williams (The Pioneer Woman)
Meagan King, Devin Loh, Marzia Memoli and Amanda Moreira (The Followers)
Choreography and Costumes by Martha Graham
Sets by Isamu Noguchi
Original lighting by Jean Rosenthal, adapted by Beverly Emmons

En Masse (2026) – excerpt: For Martha
Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Meagan King, Antonio Leone, Devin Loh, Amanda Moreira, Jai Perez & Leslie Andrea Williams (dancers)

Original Choreography by Hope Boykin, with subsequent and substantial alterations by Martha Graham Dance Company
Costume Design by Karen Young
Lighting Design by Al Crawford

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Anna Handler

Martha Graham Dance Company joined Anna Handler and the Boston Symphony to perform ‘Appalachian Spring’, Graham’s most famous ballet, set to Aaron Copland’s Pulitzer Prize-winning score; and ‘For Martha’, an excerpt from ‘En Masse’, a new ballet set to music by Leonard Bernstein and Christopher Rountree.

Martha Graham, an iconic figure in twentieth-century American dance, established an idiom as an alternative to classical ballet that continues to influence choreographers, dancers and actors. Graham worked regularly with artists in other disciplines, including Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who designed sets for more than twenty of her works, and many prominent composers such as Hindemith, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, and Menotti, and in its centenary is America’s oldest dance company. It owns the copyrights to nearly all of Graham’s 181 dance compositions and has preserved Noguchi’s original sets and other properties associated with Graham’s creations.

‘Appalachian Spring’ is distinctly American in subject matter, music and choreography, depictin the wedding day of a young couple who are establishing a home on a frontier farm in the mid-nineteenth-century. Noguchi’s simple but superbly effective set does little more than suggest the outline of a farmhouse, which has only a single exterior wall and a platform on which there is a slim Shaker rocking chair. A section of fence rail and a low boulder complete the set. Although created during World War Two, the ballet exudes almost unbridled optimism. The openness of the set is suggestive of the open frontier and its unlimited possibilities. The characters show their commitment to the hard work and faith that will be required to tame the land; and the music reflects the joy with which they anticipate a prosperous future. The opening procession introduces a Revivalist, a Pioneer Woman, the Husbandman and Bride, and the preacher’s four young Followers. The Husbandman is self-assured as he establishes his new family and home, and his loving Bride shows a deeper reverence than the fire-and-brimstone Revivalist, whose Followers hang on his every move. The most interesting character is the Pioneer Woman, whose precise relationship to the others is unclear, but whose supportive presence brings an aura of confidence to the younger pioneers. Just as Copland’s music makes reference to American folk-tunes, Graham’s choreography draws on indigenous dancing idioms, including several square-dance moves. The Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” figures prominently as the couple’s celebratory dance and aptly epitomizes the spare aesthetic of the sets and choreography demonstrates how well the visions of Graham and Noguchi meshed. Both eschewed nonessential ornamentation in favor of simple and abstract shapes and movements calculated to bring out the essential elements and emotions that connect the story and its characters to our common human experience.

This was a rare opportunity to experience this iconic ballet with all of its original visual and acoustic elements, including Copland’s score, complete with segments that are omitted from the Suite. The BSO, directed by Anna Handler, using Copland’s original spare orchestration with augmented strings, captured the music’s aura, perfectly accompanying the dancers’ superb performance.

After intermission, the Company performed a new ballet, but one with a direct connection to Martha Graham. A recently discovered fragment of music, titled only “Vivace” and less than a minute in duration, is believed to be the remnant of a collaboration between Leonard Bernstein and Graham that never came to fruition. Christopher Rountree expanded this fragment into ‘Variations on a Theme of Leonard Bernstein’ which, with choreography by Hope Boykin commissioned by the BSO and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, became the seven-minute ‘For Martha’ performed here. It is the final section of the larger ballet ‘En Masse’, set to excerpts from Bernstein’s MASS (a theatre piece that includes dancers), interestingly choreographed and energetically danced.

This was the last concert of Handler’s tenure as a BSO assistant, and before conducting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony she voiced her appreciation of the musicians. Her reading of the Seventh – “the apotheosis of the dance” (Wagner) – was marked by brisk tempos, swirling passages, and powerful contributions from timpanist Timothy Genis. The energetic opening movement featured fine oboe (John Ferrillo) and flute (Lorna McGee) contributions, with the horns calling out in the rollicking finish. The Allegretto’s persistent motif was mesmerizing. Marvelous strings led the way, and William R. Hudgins’s clarinet and Josh Baker’s bassoon intertwined before leaving it to the strings to launch a fugal passage that Handler treated almost as if the instruments were laughing. The final two movements flew by at a rapid pace except for the twice-occurring Trio in the Scherzo with timpani even more prominent, pounding away to the very end.