Pillow Scholar Jennifer Edwards considers the imprint left by Martha Graham at Jacob's Pillow, with reflections from those she impacted, the work of Richard Move, and the words of Graham herself.
Pillow Scholar Jennifer Edwards considers the imprint left by Martha Graham at Jacob's Pillow, with reflections from those she impacted, the work of Richard Move, and the words of Graham herself.
[Music begins, composed by J.S. Bach, performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: Welcome to PillowVoices, a production of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival with content from the Pillow archives. I'm Norton Owen, the Pillow’s Director of Preservation and it's my pleasure to introduce Pillow Scholar Jennifer Edwards who is also the Director / Producer of PillowVoices. She will be your host for this episode honoring one of the twentieth century’s towering dance artists, the ineffable, Martha Graham.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: In her book, Martha: The Life and Times of Martha Graham, Agnes deMille wrote, “Martha always wanted to leave behind a legend, not a biography.” In crafting this episode it seems, at least where the Pillow is concerned, she succeeded. While Martha Graham did visit Jacob’s Pillow in the later 1950s and a program announcement from 1960 boasts “a special added event of extreme importance” listing a talk by Graham and the performance of Errand into the Maze by Helen McGehee and Bertram Ross, the paper program is the only evidence of this happening as there's no audio or video record of this auspicious event. Several companies have performed her dances at Jacob’s Pillow, but the Graham Company itself only made its Pillow debut when Graham was ninety years old, in 1984.
Graham did give a talk during their performance week that season, but it was under the clear agreement that it would not be recorded and so the Pillow has no footage of her speaking with students and staff just seven years before her passing. In dedicating this episode to exploring Graham, through the lens of the Pillow, I realized that what I could offer are really just traces of her. We begin with Pillow founder, Ted Shawn who reminds us that Martha Graham’s formative dance years were spent with the Denishawn company.
TED SHAWN: Just as an oak tree grows out of the ground from an acorn and the trunk and there's a big branch goes to the right and a big branch to the left. So out of Denishawn we had the Humphrey Weidman branch on one side and the Martha Graham branch on another side. And then you come on and out of those branches you get another generation: José Limóncoming out of the Humphrey Weidman branch, and many of the pupils like May O’Donnel on down through Norman Walker into the present day. It is a royal family and a genealogy that you can trace back, everyone in modern dance today goes back to those beginnings. Martha, of course, has made the greatest fame of any of our Denishawn pupils, and she deserves it as a stage personality of such dynamic power, as this age has never seen before.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: Indeed, Martha Graham was a force. Recognized by TIME magazine as “Dancer of the Century,” and by People magazine as among the female “Icons of the Century.” Graham created 181 works and a dance technique that has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude. The Graham Technique is still foundational for many who study modern dance and is taught around the world. A posthumous pop icon, referenced in films like The Bird Cage by Robin Williams’ character and most recently in the 2019 film Halston, her impact continues to ripple not only in dance and dance training, but also in the larger public consciousness. Here Paul Taylor remembers his mentor in a passage he reads from his own memoir in a PillowTalk titled “Insects and Heroes” in July 1998.
PAUL TAYLOR: A description of the first time that I ever met Martha Graham. I assume you all know Martha Graham? [laughter in the background] You’re the right age [laughter continues]. All right, uhm this is in New London, where I’ve gotten a work scholarship, uhm work-student scholarship, and uh she’s come uhm to give a talk. Uhm Oh, ok, I’ll back up a little bit before she enters [Starts to read an excerpt from his memoir]. By the end of the first week I can hardly move, my body, or instrument as everybody's been saying, has become wall to wall deceleration. The excitement over being able to start training has made sleep brief and fitful and dragging myself across studio floors a major effort. My feet as yet uncalloused have formed huge blisters. I have bruises and floor burns, and even more annoying I'm having to take classes in blue jeans since my mail-ordered tights haven’t come [laughter in the background]. Even so, none of this is discouraging because while watching a class the mighty Martha has pointed at me and said I want him. Later on, when a fellow student tells me about it, he says that she looked just like Uncle Sam in the recruiting poster [laughter in the background]. She's come to New London for a brief visit and I first catch sight of her as she crosses the huge lawn in the center of the campus. A small dot in the distance, she's dressed in red and is carrying her own lighting equipment, a red parasol that filters the bright day casting down a flattering shade of pink. I change direction to get a better look. Closer up what had seemed like a smooth, regal glide turns out to be a sort of lurching swagger, her face features a Crimson mouth, artfully enlarged and she's wearing sunglasses. Behind them, the eyes, the eyes. The eyes are dark and deep lidded. And there's something very wise and undomesticated in them, like the eyes of an Oracle or an orangutan [laughter in the background]. That is, they look as if they've seen everything that's to be seen in this world, maybe even more. They give the impression of being placid yet at the same time seem to be spinning around like pinwheels. After the mouth and the eyes there’s this more or less unimportant nose, and as seen from up close her grooming is telling me that everything possible has been done to prevent nature from taking its course. Just as our paths are about to cross she stops, dips her chin down, and looks up at me. I've never heard Martha Graham described as cute. Nevertheless, that's how she looks as she waits for me to say something. I become confused. Other than throwing myself at her feet, what would be acceptable? [laughter in the background] Forgetting to disguise my Southern accent I say that all us students sure are swift thrilled that she's finally come. Theatrically speaking, her two-day late entrance has been an effective build up. Lowering her huge lashes she whispers that being there is, for her, like atoning for all past sins. Immediately I'm dying to know exactly what all our past sins have been [laughter in the background], but it seems best not to ask. There have been rumors that she isn't above laying out a student or two and that she once kicked Antony Tudor in the shins for accusing her of choreographic compromise. Apocryphal or not, these kinds of incidents only add spice to her ongoing legend. Facing a legend is a blast but making me jittery. The mouth is uttering miraculous things, something about the “little flags of celebration which flutter all over one's body, deepest tone on the body,” and about the miraculous little bones of the foot and she's seeming practically gaga. Then she's telling me that she believes I can be a very great dancer if my imagination holds. Does she mean that it would take imagination to think of myself as being great, or what? [laughter in the background] She's also saying that I'm one of only two people whom she's ever said this to. Who's the other? I’ll kill him! [laughter in the background] Then she produces a slip of fortune cookie size paper and writes down the phone number of her school saying that she wants me to join her company before the year is out and that when I get to New York I should call. Her exit is preceded by an authentic looking oriental bow with flowery wrist gesture thrown in for good measure. I stand transfixed as she diminishes into a floating, into a floating red dot against the wide green lawn.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: Graham, by all accounts, lived as a consummate performer - on and off the stage. Here is Martha Graham Company Artistic Director and former Graham dancer, Janet Eilber, speaking with Pillow Scholar Suzanne Carbonneau in 2013.
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: In your own program materials, you, you actually uh uh refer to the fact that you know, Graham had famously said that if choosing choreography or dancing, she chooses dancing, which for her were one in the same thing, in many ways. Yeah?
JANET EILBER: Yes
SUZANNE CARBONNEAU: Yeah
JANET EILBER: She because she said she never intended to be a choreographer. She just had to invent the things that she wanted to dance. She wanted to create great roles for herself, and in uh doing so just changed the art form. Uhm But yes, she was a performer she was a creature of the theater she, she lived for the dramatic moment, whether or not she was on stage [laughter in the background]. I think as Martha aged, and you don't want to compare anybody to Martha, but she developed roles for herself that were less and less physical and more and more dramatic so that she could stay on stage even into well, her 70s.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: Let’s listen to former Pillow Director Liz Thompson, as she introduced the Graham company from the Ted Shawn Theatre stage in 1984. She’s followed by Massachusetts first lady Kitty Dukakis who proclaims June 24th 1984 as Martha Graham day in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
LIZ THOMPSON: For those of you who don't know me, I’m Liz Thompson and I have the honor of being the Director of Jacob’s Pillow. And this week, I have now the honor of presenting the Martha Graham Company at Jacob’s Pillow for the very first time. Um Martha, I think, can easily be called not only a genius, but a miraculous person. She's affected all of us with our art. And she's affected all of us by her being. She spoke to us yesterday, she spoke to the students. And to the rest of us here at Jacob's Pillow. And she gave us enough information about life and art, to last us the rest of our lives. She's 90 years young. She has made, yes, applaud [applause in the background]. She has made dances which have changed the course of dance history, and the course of many people's lives. And she's still making dances. And I think she will, in the future continue to make dances. Uhm her company at the moment is a wonderful, wonderful company. You can see Martha's involvement with them. Because they dance with the spirit, and with a specialness. We've been really, really happy all week having them here. I've seen every single performance, and I feel so moved in my heart and in my spirit, by this week, and I'm sure you will be as well. The governor's wife is here, Kitty Dukakis. I used to hate to be called anyone's wife. Why did I say that? But Kitty Dukakis is here tonight. She is… [applause in the background] she is also, a former dancer as I am, and she has something from the state of Massachusetts to Martha [applause in the background].
KITTY DUKAKIS: It's a special treat for me to be here tonight. Because if it weren't for Martha Graham I would not have danced. In the late 40s, I watched a program in Boston at an arts festival, at the Boston Academy, where Martha Graham performed. And it took about fifteen or twenty minutes for my family to get me out of my seat, and home that evening. And they finally, found in the early 50s, a modern dance teacher for me. And then I started going to Connecticut College to that festival and then started seeing performances here. But that's why this particular proclamation has such special significance and personal joy for me to be here tonight. And I'm glad to read it to you [a brief pause] is a proclamation and this is one of those times when I'm lucky to be me. And my husband cannot be with us tonight and I'm so sorry and I bring his greetings. It's a proclamation by his Excellency Michael S Dukakis Governor proclamation that says: “Whereas 1984 is the tribute year to Martha Graham, one of the foremost creative artists of the 20th century, whose life and work has changed the course of dance history. And whereas Jacob's Pillow is a major cultural treasure of Massachusetts, demonstrating the spirit of Massachusetts it has presented the world's outstanding dance artists for over a half century. And whereas this week marks the Martha Graham Dance Company’s debut appearance at Jacob's Pillow, in recognition of this historic event, now therefore, I, Michael S Dukakis, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts do hereby proclaim June 23rd 1984 as Martha Graham day in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” [applause in the background].
JENNIFER EDWARDS: Graham moved in the world unapologetically. She was extremely hard on herself, which translated into her being extremely hard on her dancers and collaborators, but she not only allowed herself, but in fact built her entire technique, company, and vast body of work on elevating access to a raw emotional landscape that many of us aim to control, hide, and ignore. Here again is Janet Eilber talking about this aspect of Graham’s life and work in a talk with Pillow Scholar Suzanne Carbonneau, about The Eve Project, a program performed by the company in 2019, at the Pillow. We follow that with a quote, shared by Maura Keefe in a 2005 PillowTalk, where she speaks with Peggy Lyman who is also a former Graham dancer and reconstructor of Graham’s work.
JANET EILBER: She also was uhm intent on maintaining the emotional message and the impact of the emotional message, she was totally clear eyed about what was, as she would say, frankly, decorative, you know, [laughter in background] you think you'd add a nice little extra head or a you know, you got used to doing some flourish, and she was like, forget about it. She was about that stripped down modernism that just allowed the inner life to be revealed. It's much more important to us to honor Martha's legacy of innovation, her her forward thinking revolutionary mind set, she was always about the future. Uhm she was creating new work, she was understanding that audiences were changing, she was all of that. She called herself “doom eager,” which is an Icelandic term she liked that she was always jumping off the cliff into whatever was next [laughter overlays the last couple of words by Eilber]. So that it seems to us is much more important, a much more important part of our legacy than the woman herself, frankly. The color of her lipstick, or whether she wore fur, you know, whatever. Uhm so it was important for us to to continue uhm to support creativity. It also, I think, and I hope the audience agrees there's there’s more going on stage than just a couple of classic works and a couple of new works. There's a conversation between [another voice interjects saying: “yes”] the classics and what's happening today. Martha's work brings a historical prete..uh perspective and a context to the new work. And the new work brings fresh eyes and and a relationship to the past, you know, these new works, they don't just spring out of the head of Zeus, today's choreographers, they, you know, they've, they've gone in a path, even though modern dance is a very young art form. So we don't refer to our Beethoven or, you know, beyond. But in the last few years, we've recognized that we do have uhm a history. We didn't when I was dancing, all of those people were still alive. And you know, you didn't really think of it as being historic [another voice interjects saying: “right”] But now it's what can blossom out of our history, like every other art form [another voice says: “right”].
DEBRA CASH: The Eve Project is based in part on the centennial of women's suffrage in the United States. And when I was starting to research this, I realized that Martha Graham was already an adult, by the time women got the vote. That she had grown up in a world where that was not possible, even though the fermentation and the the efforts of suffragettes in Europe and here was already underway. Uhm and you've chosen a program that talks about female empowerment, talks about female power. And I'm wondering if you can talk about how you conceive the whole project of The Eve Project to bring a spotlight to those changes over what is in fact, 100 years of really radical change.
JANET EILBER: Right…uh deciding on The Eve Project, I wanted to focus on the fact that she revolutionized, one of the many things she revolutionized, the way women were presented on stage in dance. Her female characters are complex and antagonistic and curious and determined and they are heroines and they are antiheroines. Uhm she was choreographing the mind, she was choreographing their memories, uhm their fury in some cases, and uh they're a remarkable group of women. When you say I'm featuring the empowerment of women, I could choose any dance and the Graham cannon and feature the empowerment of women.
MAURA KEEFE: And Peggy, you uhm remarked in Robert Tracy's book Goddess, you said “as women we got to explore a huge range of vivid emotions by acting out our characters, angers, fears and ecstasies. Where else could one do that except with Martha Graham,” and then you go on to say “this is why women stay in the company with Martha for so long.”
JENNIFER EDWARDS: In fact many of Graham’s most important roles portray great women of history and mythology, like Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc, and Emily Dickinson. Which makes it perhaps all the more fascinating that most of what captured my attention, in terms of audio recordings in the Pillow archives, was from a performance by Richard Move titled Martha @ The Pillow in 2002. Move is a performer, choreographer, and scholar who has dedicated a hefty portion of their career to embodying Martha Graham in drag and creating a comedic variety show which centers Graham and places her in direct dialogue with other performers, choreographers and Move’s own, partial reconstructions and derivative Graham-based works. For each show they create, Move researches Graham’s journals, footage of her choreography along with reviews, commentary, books and essays written about her work and life. Here is Move as Martha Graham.
RICHARD MOVE: For my 138th work, I played another queen who met to violent death. Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots. Episodes premiered May 14, 1959, the result of George Balanchine asking me to create a work for his New York City Ballet. An unexpected request considering Balanchine's well-known scorn of contemporary dance. Balanchine chose the music, and insisted that we each choreograph to the same pieces by Webern, each of our dances to be presented on the same program. Balanchine's, which he confidently hoped would be the stronger of the two, would follow my own. The dance begins at the instant before Mary, Queen of Scots’ execution. Like the other heroines in my ballets, she relives her past prisoner and a country that she considered her appointed right to rule. Mary is doomed. But first, she must face the woman who has signed the decree for her execution. Gravely, Mary takes her place downstage, opposite the imposing figure of the English queen. Their decisive match, the outcome of which they already know is about to begin. With macabre formality, the executioner placed in each opponents hand a racket. Facing the audience, the sovereigns raise their rackets, but the imaginary ball never traverse the space. In mock earnestness, the game proceeds with each strike of each racket hangs the fate of kingdoms. With a sting of venom, behind each stroke, the volley continues until outmaneuvered the Scottish queen allows the unseen ball fly past her. The costume was designed by Korinska, the famous Russian couturier. Her reproduction of an elaborate 16th century court gown was authentic, but made one immobile. I quickly said about redesigning the gown myself. So willingly did Korinska use my ideas and then rework the costume that she was led to think the final design was of her own invention. I graciously gave Korinska the credit for the garment that was capable of standing alone, like a shell, out of which Mary could step, divesting herself of her queenly outer garment. Mary as woman is revealed. A devout Catholic, whose belief in her God and anointed right to rule never wavered life after death, the only remaining hope of the Scottish Queen. Majestically, she mounted the steps of scaffold in the garment she chose for the final event of her life. Mary's Stewart possessed by the white flame of her faith. “In my end, is my beginning” she said. Hers is, after all, the ultimate triumph, the triumph over the oblivion that is death. At the ballet’s conclusion, the audience rose to its feet. No response from Balanchine. He never came backstage. He never said a word.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: It’s important to state that Move has been able to share so much of Graham’s writing and reflections on her work due to the extensive archives kept by the Graham Company. Here again is Move from the Doris Duke Theatre stage.
RICHARD MOVE: I'm so often asked how I feel about those who impersonate me [laughter in the background]. I've always said that I've enjoyed these satires over the years, from vaudevillian, Fanny Brice to one of my favorite female impersonators, Miss Danny Kaye [laughter in the background]. And I have to agree with my dear old friend Mae West, when she said to me “what's wrong with female impersonation Martha, some women have been doing it for centuries” [laughter in the background]. I'm thinking now, of the many great and gifted women in my life. I'm thinking of the silent film starlet Louise Brooks, with whom I danced in the Denishawn company. I remember Louise once said that she learned to act by watching me dance [laughter in the background]. I'm thinking of my many great gifted female students at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Among them, Betty Davis, who once said that she worshiped me, that I was the thoroughly modern woman like lightning, all tension [laughter in the background]. I knew Bet would be a star the moment I saw her feet [laughter in the background]. I'm thinking of Joanne Woodward, who once came to me for inspiration. She was in a desperate search for the motivation with which to bring her split personality multiple roles, in the film, The Three Faces of Eve to life. I suggested she call upon her training with me and perform one personality in contraction, the second and release and the third in repose [laughter in the background]. She of course won an Oscar for that performance [laughter in the background]. I'm thinking now of Ingrid Bergman, whom I coached privately to prepare her for her role on screen as Joan of Arc. I remember Ingrid once saying to me that the secret to a happy life is good health, and a very bad memory [laughter in the background]. Some other women in the feminist movement claim me as a woman's liberationist, but I've never thought about myself in that way at all. Because I never felt any competition or in any way inferior to any man and always get whatever I want from men without asking. You see all the things that I do on stage or in every woman. Every woman is as vengeful as the sorcerer's Medea. There comes a time when every woman is a mother to her husband or to her lover, like your Jocasta to her son, Oedipus. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills. For I know, in a woman, like in a lioness, is the urge to kill, when she cannot have what she wants [laughter in the background]. She is more ruthless than any man. I will share with you now, from my Greek period, my retelling of the Greek legend of Medea. From my notebooks: Thoughts [overlay of laughter] on Cave of the Heart, originally entitled, Serpent Heart.1946. This is a dance of possessive and destroying love, love which feeds upon itself like the serpent heart. And when it is overthrown, it is fulfilled only in revenge [dramatic music begins and Move continues narrating over it]. Place across shoulder without bourette, place around waist, loop, twist. Wide steps beginning to the road with wide strides holding ends of snake, repeat. Turn, remove snake, spasms begin from the feet and move up through the body. Drop it. Recoil. Turn in to sit. Knee ripples. Fall forward to pick up snake. Eat snake with knee ripples. Spit it out with fall to floor. Rise to fourth on knees. Cave turn. Step. Fall. Devour. Rise into wide forward fold. Devour with head [laughter in the background]. Rise up. Up. Deep lunge with turn. Cross. Bourettes on the heels while drawing out snake. Churn up the Earth. Sit. Turn. Fall forward and begin wrestling with snake. Forward. Back. Change. Fight. Rise. Big turns with stops on the diagonal. High triumphant arch. Deep, deep plies. Passe. Passe. Turns. Pulling ends of snake. Stop. Push pelvis through, more churning up the Earth. High arch. Final battle with snake. Devour, devour. Sit. Turn. Fall forward. Spit it out [thud sound followed by laughter and applause].
JENNIFER EDWARDS: In their post-show talk, moderated by Scholar Maura Keefe, Move gives us this little bit of insight into Martha Graham’s later life.
RICHARD MOVE: Well, I like the, you know the evening, to feel festive and fun. And disco is very appropriate because Martha was a real regular at Studio 54. And there's incredible photographs of her at Studio 54 ‘cause Halston just worshipped her. And so she was, uh in fact that sequined gown I wear, is a replica of one of the many gowns that Halston made for Graham. And uh I have great photographs of Graham meeting Gloria Swanson at Studio 54. And Liza and Misha and Rudi, and they were all there and Martha, of course at that time was in her late 80s. And she was hangin’ there with Warhol and the rest of them. So, I want of course, some intermission music and for things to feel festive. And I feel like you know, she was very much a part of the disco era because of her connection with Halston.
JENNIFER EDWARDS: At the end of Move’s post-show talk, an audience member comments that he couldn't imagine a woman holding the space as Move did for the entire show, and asked if Move felt that it was because they are male, that they can play Martha. Now unpacking this idea and statement would take several more episodes, and perhaps a differently focused podcast. But this comment gave me pause, and made it even more important to give Martha Graham herself the last word. I'd like to leave you with Graham's voice and perspective, captured in this clip from the 1957 short film, A Dancer's World.
MARTHA GRAHAM: A theater dressing room is a very special place. It's where the act of theater begins. And make up is a magic. It's a ritual. The means by which you transform yourself into the character you hope to play. You make up your face, as you think she might have looked. You dress your hair, as you think she might have dressed hers. I'm wearing my hair tonight as Jocasta, or at least as I hope she wore it. And then, there comes a moment when she looks at you in the mirror, and you realize that she's looking at you, and recognizing you as herself. It is through you, her love, her hope, her fear, her terror is to be expressed. And there's a moment of fear on your own part, dread, sense of hazard feeling that perhaps you hadn't done quite enough work, perhaps you should have gone back to the studio, and worked again. Because that which you do not want to do, is to fail in either clarity, or in passion. You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim. It sounds frightening. It doesn't. It has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder. But at the same time there is that need to go back to the studio. Dance is communication. And the great desire is to speak clearly and beautifully and with inevitability. And this is true of all of us. It's true of me. It's true of every member of my company. And when a dancer is at the peak of his power. He has two lovely fragile, perishable things. One is spontaneity. But it is something arrived at over years and years of training. It's not a mere chance. The other is simplicity. But that also is a different simplicity. It's the state of complete simplicity, costing no less than everything.
[Music begins, composed, and performed by Jess Meeker]
NORTON OWEN: That’s it for this episode of PillowVoices. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of Jacob's Pillow, we look forward to sharing more dance with you through the films, essays, and podcasts at danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org, and of course through live experiences during our festival and throughout the year. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for helping launch this podcast series. Please subscribe to PillowVoices wherever you get your podcasts and visit us again soon, either online or on site.