Home Nightlife Robert Wilson’s “Snow on the Mesa”: A Martha Graham performance and Gala

Robert Wilson’s “Snow on the Mesa”: A Martha Graham performance and Gala

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Carrie Ellmore- Tallitsch -center

Next, was the “Navaho Rug,” starring an ever so passionate, Carrie Ellmore- Tallitsch.
Evoking some primal energy, with her gold spotted black two piece dress, golden tusks to shaky, African rumble, drums and maracas, the dancer reminded us of what it was like to be ‘possessed’. The background, shifting from blue, to green, to orange and red– adapted to her changing state– highlighted her interior shifts. Triangular specs would appear in the screen behind, as the xylophone laced rhythms, intensified. Middle eastern drums flailed in and out, tempering the devilish anger.

“The Black Rocks” finished part I, with Jacqueline Elder, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Miki Orihara and Blakeley White-McGuire. Three ladies—dressed in black, harassed the red robed veiled female, with sticks and movement. They marked the transition from chaos to light, from devil to purity, as rain. Next thing you know, the three position themselves in a triangle, each holding a different prop: Knife, scissors and orchid. Dropping their tools, in fear of the howling wolves—sounding, in the back—all three take turns running around the three rocks. “Beauty hides danger,” Wilson says. This act certainly displays the effect beauty has on the deadly.

Part two, opened with an ensemble, mimicking something of a whirling, entranced orgy, in “The World Outside.” Mounting each other, in an ever so stimulating manner, my eyes escaped into the beauties before me. Katherine Crocket continued to seduce in the next scene: “A Room with Too Much In It”. Teasing audiences with her eyes, motioning tongue, and breasts shown through a revealing red robe, Crockett’s solo performance mesmerized everyone, alike. Whispering verses, “…everything begins to fall…” the sounds of glasses shattering, mark her presentations of gluttony and drunkenness.


Crockets really embodies Wilson notes is “movement in stillness.” Her muscles tantalize the multiple angles of the pupil, and inspire all to watch, motionlessly. She so quietly exhibited a human strength, that I could hear hundreds of growling stomachs, amid thick stroke. “The World Still Outside,” consisting of everyone who had already performed, plus Jacqueline Bulnes, Hanan Misko, Maurizio Nardi, Ben Schultz, Oliver Tobin and Blakely White-McGuire, reverted the solitary women back to chaos, multitude.

My favorite was “Night in the Desert”, starring Maddux and Schultz. Exhibiting the extremes of sexuality, large muscular man against the small, skeleton of a resilient, flexible female—the scene, set against a light whistling wind, focused on male- to female contrasting symmetries. Slow moving, yet passionate and ever so arousing, the man lifted the woman, who so easily flew and twisted in his arms, like a precious bird to a massive eagle.

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