A Performance Assessment of the Martha Graham Dance Company
This essay was also published on the Carolina Performing Arts webpage.
Martha Graham was a celebrated American dancer, choreographer, performer, and artist of the twentieth century. Her style was angular, tense, and torso-driven rather than smooth and flowing through the limbs like ballet (Gardner 297). Most of Graham’s productions were put on by her namesake troupe, the Martha Graham Dance Company (“the Company”). On March 24, 2017, the Company performed in Memorial Hall at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The night began with a Martha Graham original: Clytemnestra Act 2, the second act in a dramatic retelling of a classic Greek myth; Graham would have approved of this as the opening piece but objected to someone other than her in the leading role (Clytemnestra Act 2). She would have also approved of the topical issues addressed in the second piece Mosaic, a contemporary Middle Eastern-inspired dance by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Mosaic). Choreographer Annie-B Parson successfully adapted Graham’s 1941 comedic piece Punch and the Judy for a contemporary audience without sacrificing any of the original humor, which Graham would have applauded (I used to love you). Graham would have approved of Maple Leaf Rag as the closing piece because it was her final choreography and reflected lightheartedly on her long life in dance (Maple Leaf Rag). Overall, Graham would have approved of the format of the Company’s performance, despite her sadness about no longer being able to perform onstage with the rest of her Company.
The first piece of the night was an unretouched Martha Graham original called Clytemnestra Act 2, a theatric dance scene taken from her longer dance called Clytemnestra (Clytemnestra Act 2). In this piece, the murderous Queen Clytemnestra grappled with the guilt of killing her husband. His spirit moved their daring daughter Electra and reluctant son Orestes to avenge him by killing the queen and her new lover. The music and movements of the piece were quintessentially Martha Graham: atonal and angular, respectively. This was amplified by the dark nature of the piece, layered with themes like betrayal, guilt, and anguish. The main action in this piece came when Electra tried to persuade her brother Orestes to help kill their mother; she danced emphatically towards and around him until he relented, mirroring her movements with increasing confidence. Meanwhile, King Agamemnon watched over them in platform boots, symbolizing that he was in the Greek afterlife (CPA 4). As the music swirled to a crescendo, the parents and their two children danced slowly and forcefully in a circle, until Orestes finally killed the queen and her lover with an axe.
The piece may have seemed unnecessarily dark or heavy to some, but it is a suitable opening piece from Graham’s repertoire because the choreography is highly representative of her technique. Biographer Howard Gardner described this technique as “based on a central contrast: when you release, you inhale; when you contract, you exhale. Contraction originates in the pelvic region, whence comes its explicit sensual tension as well as the percussive angular movements that flow through the body and the lengths of the arms and legs” (297). This was evident in Electra’s strong entrance, because between each step she snapped her arms up above her head and audibly exhaled. She would pause, contracting her muscles into a strong stance, and then release by spinning her body, with her leg above her head, into a new step, repeating the process until she had crossed the entire stage. Clytemnestra is filled with such movement, which makes it an excellent piece with which to begin the Company’s night of performance.
The original Clytemnestra received warm praise and was one of the high points in Graham’s career. Premiering in 1958, it was a full-length ballet that marked an end to her three-year creative drought (De Mille 334). In a daring move, she cast herself, now sixty-four years old, as Queen Clytemnestra (Gardner 302). Edwin Denby of the New York Herald Tribune praised the piece in 1961 as the culminating work of Graham’s career, and he reflected on her past twenty years of innovation: “A life of such enormous energies that keeps pouring itself according to its fate into the imaginative world of dance is a godsend” (405). Clytemnestra’s popularity led to multiple tours and Graham insisted on keeping her leading role, despite its demanding choreography (Gardner 302). During its last season in New York, Graham was unable to rise after one of her choreographed falls; luckily, one of her dancers picked her up gracefully without the audience noticing the mistake (De Mille 373). In the dressing room afterward, her colleagues begged her to stop performing in such a demanding role. Graham refused, saying, “I would die if I stopped. I cannot go on without dancing… The love I receive from the faceless audience I cannot live without” (qtd. in De Mille 373). Given Graham’s intense love of performing, she would be too proud to approve of someone else in her leading Clytemnestra role. She would concede that the Company’s performance of Clytemnestra was meticulous and representative of her unique dancing style, but no matter how skilled the current dancers, she would not approve of anyone other than herself as Queen Clytemnestra.
The next piece that the Martha Graham Dance Company performed on March 24 was commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) and entitled Mosaic. It was choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who has an artistic approach based on “non-hierarchical thinking on movement, body language and culture” (“People”). A Belgian native, Cherkaoui has Moroccan roots and enjoys dealing with themes like culture and identity in his art (Cools iv). In describing Mosaic, he explained that “inspired by the energies and sensuality of the Middle East, Mosaic is my attempt to piece together, juxtapose and uncover its different facets and paradoxes” (qtd. in CPA 4). He was particularly entranced by the repeating, fractal-like mosaic pattern prevalent in the Middle East (CPA 4). This translates into the choreography of Mosaic, which featured an ensemble of dancers in matching costumes that would often dance in repeating, swirling patterns, with one dancer defecting at a time.
Cherkaoui’s choreography was not at all similar to that of Martha Graham, despite their similar interests in the culture and influence of the East (De Mille 100). The smooth, swirling, flowing movements in Cherkaoui’s piece were closer to ballet, from which Graham actively distanced herself (Gardner 271). However, she would have approved of the political undertones of Cherkaoui’s piece. His piece is timely because Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent face violence and discrimination around the world. Cherkaoui’s dance is a peaceful reminder that the intrinsic beauty of a mosaic, like our society, is the diversity of its individual parts.
Graham also addressed timely political themes in her work. In 1936 she turned down an invitation to perform at Hitler’s Berlin Olympics, explaining that “so many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the régime that has made such things possible” (qtd. in “German Invitation”). At the same time, she also created her solo dance Imperial Gesture, in which she presented herself as a haughty monarch who, by the end of the dance, lost power and fell to the floor (Kourlas AR9). Without invoking specific people, Graham was criticizing the emerging dictators of the time and predicting their eventual downfall. Cherkaoui also approached his topical critique without being explicit. In the absence of a defined target, the audience must reflect and ensure that they themselves do not embody the traits being condemned in these pieces: bigotry and megalomania. Like Imperial Gesture, Cherkaoui’s piece successfully triggered self-reflection in the audience at a critical time in history. Graham, who often used her dances to reflect societal injustices, would have approved of Mosaic for addressing the critical contemporary themes of diversity and inclusion. As a modern artist, Graham believed that dance should be about more than just visually appealing movements, and nearly all of her pieces contained some sort of social commentary; she would only approve of her Company performing pieces with a deeper meaning, and Mosaic falls well within this category.
The third piece of the night was choreographed by Annie-B Parson, a contemporary artist collaborating with the Company for a second time (Kourlas C2). Her piece I used to love you was modeled from Graham’s 1941 domestic comedy Punch and the Judy. Graham’s close friend and fellow dancer Agnes De Mille described Punch as “an exuberant romp dealing with the classic marital turmoils of the marionettes Punch and Judy (the first theatrical entertainment Martha had ever seen). Punch is depicted as a pompous egotist with straying fantasies, and Judy as his exasperated, self-pitying, fantasizing wife” (245). Parson started with the original Graham choreography, then layered with video projections, scripted lines for the dancers, and music. She also tweaked parts of the story, like changing the unfaithful husband’s lover from a woman to a man (I used to love you). Parson described the process as “like making a new song from a folk song,” and noted that she kept almost all of the original choreography in an attempt to stay true to Graham’s vision (qtd. in Burke C2).
Since most of the choreography remained the same, it is important to note one of the main differences between Punch and I used to love you: their storylines. Punch was a seven-section ballet with multiple characters, and Parson was forced to downsize the story into one act (Burke C2). This meant condensing to seven main characters: Punch, his lover, Judy, their daughter, and three female narrators. In the original, Graham cast herself as Judy and her then-lover, dancer Erick Hawkins, as Punch (De Mille 245). Both were famous and skilled dancers at the time, so the couple was the centerpiece of the play: “Erick was extraordinarily effective as the husband, and Martha permitted herself to indulge in farcical comedy, to killing effect” (De Mille 245). However, despite being the main characters, the husband and wife duo in Parson’s version seemed secondary. It was the three female narrators who spent the most time onstage and were the most expressive. Each had witty spoken lines that illustrated their distinct personalities while drawing laughter from the audience. The narrator’s humor and increased time on stage overshadowed the performances of Punch and Judy, a departure from Graham’s original.
Another main difference between Punch and I used to love you is set design, specifically the use of props. Parson admitted that she and Graham differed when it came to using props: “Everything for me is material: the body, the microphone, the chair. [Graham] doesn’t do that. She had an object in the piece, a big globe, and it meant the world, the universe. For her the globe was something valuable; for me it’s a round thing in space that can roll” (qtd. in Burke C2). Indeed, Parson omitted the globe prop with which Graham’s three female narrators often interacted. In the 2017 version, the aforementioned microphones and chairs were often manipulated by being turned upside down or swiveled on. In a sense, Parson’s three narrators used these props as extensions of their own bodies; the microphones amplified their voices, and the wheeled desk chairs moved them across the stage. This was her biggest choreographic departure from the Graham style, which assigned deep meaning to props and used them sparingly. Above all, Graham believed in the power of the human body, and rarely used props to enhance that power (Gardner 301). She might have scoffed at Parson’s dependence on props, but not without acknowledging her successes.
Perhaps the most accomplished feat that Parson achieved was matching Graham’s humor. New York City dance critic Edwin Denby praised Graham in 1944 for creating the original piece, injecting humor into an art form that otherwise lacked it:
Punch and the Judy, on the other hand, is a sardonic, urban farce that, with wit and personal charm, explains how married life is mere folly, family ties and marital fidelity are so much nonsense. It is far from simple good humor; it is a stinging comment, performed with a nonchalant smile. Here, too, the company was perfect in every witty and cumbersome detail. (228)
Graham had a knack for timing in both comedy and dance; so she would have appreciated the tides of laughter that rippled through Memorial Hall during her Company’s performance of Parson’s I used to love you. The first big laugh came when the performance had just begun. The music switched from dramatic percussion to tinny elevator music as dancers finished setting up a folding bed and projector onstage. The audience laughed at the sudden change and throughout the rest of the piece, surprised by the lighthearted tone that verged on self-deprecating. In both cases, the audience found humor in the dancers’ timing and the truth of the story. Graham would have applauded Parson for updating Punch for a contemporary audience without sacrificing any of the original humor.
The final piece of the night was also the last that Martha Graham ever choreographed, entitled Maple Leaf Rag, after the classic piano tune that inspired it (Graham 1990). The audience heard a clip of Martha herself saying “Louis, play me the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’,” because this was a phrase she often repeated to her pianist when she became fed up with the creative process (CPA 4). Indeed, Louis Horst’s playing of the song was the main background music, mixed in with other similar piano tunes. This gave the whole performance a lighthearted feel, and the dancers mimicked the playful music with their bodies.
It seemed as though the entire company took part in this dance, because more than a dozen dancers — male, female, black, white, and Asian — danced across the stage. Each wore a simple pastel bodysuit in a different color, and couples of male and female dancers would match up onstage and dance with each other. The only prop was a long, large, bouncy bench, meant to look like an oversized ballet barre (CPA 4). The dancers interacted with it in imaginative ways: bouncing on it, jumping over it, crawling on top of and beneath it. This piece did not follow a set storyline, but every few minutes there was a semi-reset as one dancer in a bright white dress spun across the stage with high-kicking arches.
Although Maple Leaf Rag was a Graham original like Clytemnestra, she would have approved of the performance because she did not write herself a part in this dance. As biographer Edwin Denby explains, “The new dances following her formal retirement did not center on a particular protagonist; Graham may have found it too difficult to place in the body of another the movements and roles she previously would have reserved for herself” (304). As such, she would have had no qualms about the Company performing it after her death.
Just as Clytemnestra was an appropriate opener, Rag is the perfect closer for the Company’s performance. Not only was it the last dance that Graham choreographed — the closing piece of her life, in a sense — but she also used the piece to explore and reflect on her long life in dance. This is important because her views on dance were never static; they evolved as she became a more seasoned artist. Graham described some of her earliest dances as “childish things, dreadful,” and used Maple Leaf Rag to poke fun at her early self-seriousness (qtd. in Gardner 271). New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff saw the original 1990 performance and described how five waltzing couples responded to one of Graham’s favorite archetypes, the Greek Furies: “[A]fter a chorus of mock Furies spills onstage in a parody of the Graham lexicon’s most angular contractions, the pairs on the board turn into strait-laced spectators. This audience is disapprovingly haughty about what it sees and offers what is usually called polite applause” (“Dance Review”). The piece is filled with similar self-aware satire. Graham would have approved of Maple Leaf Rag as the concluding piece because it gave the audience a more holistic view of her works, proving that she could be self-critical and range from serious to satirical.
Overall, the Martha Graham Dance Company’s March 24 performance in Memorial Hall was a success. The athleticism and skill of the dancers were unquestionable, upholding Graham’s high standards for performers, which no doubt would have pleased her. But the Company had a more important goal that night: to stay true to Martha Graham’s original visions for Clytemnestra Act 2 and Maple Leaf Rag, and to present the new pieces Mosaic and I used to love you in a way that aligned with Graham’s historic vision. In this respect, the Company was successful. Each piece held a deeper meaning than what was evident on the surface, continuing Graham’s artistic tradition.
Works Cited
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Burke, Siobhan. “Invoking Martha Graham’s Comic (!) Spirit.” New York Times, 8 Feb. 2017, p. C2.
Carolina Performing Arts (“CPA”). “Martha Graham Dance Company.” Connect, Spring 2017, p. 17.
Clytemnestra Act 2. Martha Graham. Martha Graham Dance Company. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. 24 March 2017.
Cools, Guy. In-between Dance Cultures: On the Migratory Artistic Identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan. Valiz, 2015.
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“German Invitation Refused by Dancer.” New York Times, 13 March 1936, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9C05EEDF123FEE3BBC4B52DFB566838D629EDE. Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.
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I used to love you. Annie-B Parson. Martha Graham Dance Company. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. 24 March 2017.
Kisselgoff, Anna. “Dance View; Martha Graham: Up to Her New Tricks.” New York Times, 21 Oct. 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/21/arts/dance-view-martha-graham-up-to-her-new-tricks.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.
Kourlas, Gia. “Deep Movement and Eternal Mysteries.” Review of Sacred/Profane. New York Times, 22 Feb. 2017, p. C2.
Kourlas, Gia. “Recreating the Reign, the Better to Fall.” New York Times, 17 Feb. 2013, p. AR9.
Maple Leaf Rag. Marth Graham. Martha Graham Dance Company. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. 24 March 2017.
Mosaic. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Martha Graham Dance Company. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. 24 March 2017.
“People / Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.” Eastman, http://www.east-man.be/en/35/Sidi-Larbi-Cherkaoui. Accessed 23 Apr. 2017.
