Anne Souder, as the Bride, is smiling and fresh-faced compared with Graham’s more sober affect. For the showing, Souter performs in two duets with Larsen, and a wonderful solo that reveals the Bride’s inner dialogue of hopes and dreams, that includes holding an imaginary infant in her arms. She flutters her hands near her ears as if to cool herself down as she walks with a lilting step. The bustle of her dress becomes a vivid partner as she tosses the heavy bundle of fabric behind her, suggestive of burdens implicit in the role of wife. (During the Q&A, Eilber pointed out how all the skirts are hung from the hips, rather than the waist, so we can clearly see the subtle contractions of the torso.) Here is how Graham described the Bride: “There is a great eagerness yet a great steadiness about her. . . . She is what we like to think of when we think of the American woman. Her solo has an electric eagerness about it, an eagerness for destiny that is the unconscious partner of youth.”

The sections that interest me most are those with the Preacher and his four Followers. These characters seem ripe for a tongue-in-cheek interpretation, and sure enough, Eilber confirms that Graham intended this as satire: “There are so many cults here,” Graham wrote, referring to religion in America. “There is something in the soil that seems to make them flourish.” Longtime Graham dancer Lloyd Knight fairly drips with hellfire and brimstone as the Preacher in broad brimmed hat and black waistcoat. He’s tightly wound: beseeching God by walking on his knees and bouncing like there are springs under the balls of his feet. When he points an accusatory finger, his hand becomes a pistol.

The four Followers (So Young An, Meagan King, Devin Loh, and Amanda Moreira) in pale bonnets and sleeves ringed with fluff, scurry around the Preacher like baby chicks, at one point kneeling so he can recline on their backs. “We are not sure whether they are inspired by his religious fervor or by his personal charms,” Eilber says. The character we don’t see in these excerpts is Pioneer Woman, originally played by May O’Donnell, whom Eilber points out is the spiritual center of the community—not the Preacher.

The showing closes with a duet from the marriage celebration, and this is where the Shaker hymn comes in. I can’t help but hear the lyrics in my head: “Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free.“ This scene has no violence, no disturbance,” wrote Graham.  “It has a warmth, a kind of sweetness that need be in no sense sentimental. It is here that the whole meaning of what all the work and frontiering has been about should appear. And in some way this line of hope and peace and security should enter again at the ending as the open road.” Larsen lifts Souder in an embrace and swings her around, her massive skirt flaring. He then wraps her in his arms and they gaze together into the distance, their features coming to the stillness of a painted portrait.