Martha Graham

Revving up for a whole new phase of its existence, the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance made official this week the working arrangement that had placed longtime Graham dancers Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin at the head of the recently reconstituted Martha Graham Dance Company. Capucilli and Dakin both now carry the title of artistic directors of the company while remaining on the faculty at the Graham school in New York.

One of the biggest problems in our politics is that people don't think for themselves. We let radio and television hosts, pundits and politicians tell us what to believe. And one of the biggest problems in our arts is that people don't enjoy for themselves. We let museum curators, gallery owners, critics and professors tell us what to feel. A recent battle in the art world illustrates the point. The billionaire Ronald Perelman is suing the multimillionaire art dealer Larry Gagosian on the grounds, among others, that Gagosian overvalued an unfinished sculpture of Popeye (yes, the Sailor Man)

At a distance, Martha Graham and Isamu Noguchi seem like very different creatures: The first was the product of a stern, Puritan-accented family from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the second was a Los Angeles-born, Japan-raised sculptor who strove in his work to unleash the energies of nature. Choreographer Graham was an intense, sometimes-imposing figure who spoke in portentous aphorisms; sculptor Noguchi an often-elegant, even-tempered presence. However unlikely the pairing, the two ended up sharing an artistic sensibility that led to one of the greatest and most productive creative unions of the 20th century.

Sorting through the rubble of Modernism is a task that preoccupies a significant number of contemporary artists today, but rarely so tangibly as it does Steve Roden in his recent film and video works at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. The show begins with "Everything She Left Behind That Fits in My Hand," a single-channel projection in which we see the artist's hand opening and closing upon a series of small objects - seashells, mostly - that once belonged to Martha Graham.

"I'd rather go on than go back . . . than sit in a rocking chair and cry about or recall what's past," Martha Graham said a few days ago, in looking ahead to the 60th anniversary season of the Martha Graham Dance Company. In fact, the season, which is due to open here May 27 with a three-week engagement at City Center, is to include three rare solos danced by Graham in the earliest part of her long career. They are: "Incense," a 1906 dance by one of Graham's greatest influences, Ruth St.

The nation's dance community is stepping ever so gingerly over the matter of the senior senator from Arizona and Martha Graham. Twice in the last nine months Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) has sought special funding to renovate the 94-year-old dance legend's studio in New York, to videotape the Graham company's repertory and to set up permanent archival records of her choreography. And that has the organized arts community irate. Currently the federal government gives $9.

The vagaries of international co-production send PBS' "Dance in America" series to Paris tonight for "Three Dances by Martha Graham." The 48-minute telecast is scheduled for 9 p.m. on Channel 24, 10 p.m. on channels 28 and 15. Although we periodically see a Paris Opera audience, the lighting and camera placements for at least two of the works aren't those of a standard theater shoot.

With witty puns, savage eye-rolling glances and stiff-jawed dignity, arobed Richard Move uncannily evoked the diva presence of deceased modern dance icon Martha Graham as host of an American Repertory Dance Company program Thursday at California Plaza. This reconstituted Graham fired off some splendid digs at modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn and his unconsummated marriage with Graham's idol, Ruth St. Denis.

To celebrate her 60th anniversary season, Martha Graham created a dance suite that brackets her roots in Denishawn--the company and school founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in 1916--and her own early masterworks. But her reconstructions of works by St. Denis and Shawn, seen Thursday in the first of two programs by the Martha Graham Dance Company at San Diego Civic Theatre, left unanswered the question of whether such early pieces merit more than historical interest.

In this time of growing social turmoil and impending war, we may feel closer to the anger and despair of Martha Graham's solo "Deep Song" than her "Appalachian Spring," with its vision of limitless horizons and a secure American future. Certainly, new dancers in these works, Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, made the former work seem like personal testimony, the latter like wishful fantasy.

Ron Fletcher, a former dancer and choreographer who helped popularize the Pilates exercise system when he opened the first West Coast studio in 1972, died Tuesday at his home in Stonewall, Texas. He was 90. The cause was congestive heart failure, said Kyria Sabin, director of Fletcher Pilates, which trains instructors in the exercise methods Fletcher developed based on the teachings of Joseph and Clara Pilates. Forty years ago, few people outside of New York, where the Pilates method was first taught, had heard of the unusual fitness regimen, which involved strange-looking machines and movements similar to yoga and calisthenics.

We all know what happens when great composers, writers and artists die: Their work lives on. But what about groundbreaking choreographers — say, Martha Graham, José Limon, Merce Cunningham, Antony Tudor, Alvin Ailey, George Balanchine — those creators whose inspiration floats on a flashing moment, an instant image, a looming structure, perhaps never to be recaptured? A question of survival follows. Because, unlike music (written in scores), art (hanging on museum walls) and books (housed in libraries)

Martha Graham Dance Company Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday Tickets: $20 to $45 Information: (714) 708-5555 or http://www.scr.org

At a distance, Martha Graham and Isamu Noguchi seem like very different creatures: The first was the product of a stern, Puritan-accented family from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the second was a Los Angeles-born, Japan-raised sculptor who strove in his work to unleash the energies of nature. Choreographer Graham was an intense, sometimes-imposing figure who spoke in portentous aphorisms; sculptor Noguchi an often-elegant, even-tempered presence. However unlikely the pairing, the two ended up sharing an artistic sensibility that led to one of the greatest and most productive creative unions of the 20th century.

Seeking to avoid the sort of bitter legal struggle that erupted over the rights to Martha Graham's repertory after her death in 1991, 90-year-old dance master Merce Cunningham and his Cunningham Dance Foundation unveiled a plan Tuesday for dealing with key artistic, preservation and administrative issues when the time comes that he can no longer direct the troupe. Following the choreographer's death or incapacitation, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will celebrate his legacy with a two-year world tour.

In the latest development in a long and bitter legal battle, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled this week that choreographer Martha Graham did not own most of the works she created and therefore could not leave them to her heir, Ron Protas.

Martha Graham was a troublemaker. She depicted sex so unsparingly that her "Phaedra" was denounced in Congress as obscene. She refused to represent America at the Olympic Arts Festival in Berlin in 1936 because it meant dignifying the regime of Adolf Hitler. She gave artists of color prominence in her company during a period when they were seen as "exotics"--or not at all.

In 1935, Martha Graham began exploring the nature of the American sensibility and designing a new dance lexicon to express it. Now, more than half a century after her solo work "Frontier" broke new ground, the modern dance pioneer continues to sift through our cultural roots to find inspiration for her dances.

Bertram Ross, who spent 20 years as a leading dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company and afterward became a noted actor, choreographer and cabaret performer, has died. He was 82. Ross died of pneumonia Sunday in New York City. He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease. The performer once joked that during his Graham years, "every night and twice on matinee days I was beaten, beheaded, blinded and castrated -- and it was wonderful! I never missed a performance."

Star ghosts have always wielded undying power in the dance world. More than a century ago, for instance, a ballerina named Pierina Legnani specialized in executing 32 of the high-velocity whipping turns, called fouettes, on pointe. So choreographers put that bravura feat into her roles.