Marta Graham Greek

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Nurit Yaari, Tel Aviv University, Department of Theater Studies, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.

International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall 2003, pp. 221–242.

Myth into Dance: Martha Graham’sInterpretation of the Classical TraditionNURIT YAARI

As early as 1928, Martha Graham, the renowned dancer, choreographer and moderndance innovator, embarked on a personal journey through the heritage of Classical Greekculture. This journey led to the creation of seventeen dances that I term the “Greek Cycle.”By reading Graham’s original interpretations and analyzing the unique composition ofher dance language and performances, I demonstrate how Graham chose ancient mythsand tragedies as the raw material from which to portray women from a new perspectiveand in a new art form, theatrical dance. I further argue that the “Greek Cycle” definitelyplaces Graham among the modern theatre’s great interpreters of the Classical Tradition.

There are always ancestral footstepsbehind me, pushing me, pushing me,when I am creating a new dance, andgestures are flowing through me.Whether good or bad, they are ancestral.

Martha Graham

Martha Graham, one of the most celebrated innovators of modern dance, is lessknown for her original contribution to modern interpretations of Greek Myth

and Greek Tragedy.1 Graham’s fascination with the heritage of Ancient Greek Culturebegan not long after her choreographic début:2 Fragments: Tragedy, Comedy (1928),3

1. The research for this article developed over several years. I would like to thank AmiraMayroz for guiding me in my long bibliographic research and sharing with me her pro-found knowledge of Dance history and to Rena Gluck who shared with me photos of herwork with Graham in the first Bat-Sheva Dance Company. I would like also to thankProfessor Wolfgang Haase, the Editor of IJCT, and the anonymous readers for their enlight-ening comments and encouragement.

2. The sources used for the information on the first performances of Graham’s dances are theList of “First Performances of Dances” in: The Notebooks of Martha Graham, New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973, pp. 461-464; “Choreochronicle” in: Don McDonagh,Martha Graham, New York: Popular Library, 1975 pp. 303-336; and “Chronology of works”in: Ernestine Stodelle, Deep Song: The Dance Story of Martha Graham, New York: SchirmerBooks, 1984, pp. 298-317. More information on additional dances found in other sourceswill be mentioned separately.

3. Fragments: Tragedy, Comedy, performed by Martha Graham on April 22, 1928. Music: LouisHorst, Costumes and Lighting: Martha Graham. For a description of the dance see Stodelle,Deep Song (above, n. 2), p. 49.

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Bacchanale and Dithyrambic (1931),4 Bacchanale No. 2 and Choric Dance for an AntiqueGreek Tragedy (1932),5 Tragic Patterns (1933)6 and Immediate Tragedy (1937)7 clearlyexhibit her inclination to dance “On Classical Ground.”8 With these dances, Grahamembarked on a personal journey that led her towards the creation of what I term her“Greek Cycle”: Cave of the Heart (1946);9 Errand into the Maze (1947);10 Night Journey

4. Bacchanale, performed by Martha Graham and Group on February 2, 1931, at Craig Theatre,New York (Music: Wallingford Riegger, Costume and Lighting: Martha Graham); Dithyrambic,performed by Martha Graham on December 6, 1931 at Martin Beck Theatre New York(Music: Aaron Copland, Costume and Lighting: Martha Graham). Between these two dances,in May 1931, Graham appeared in a production of Electra and in the role of The Dancercreated three solos for herself. McDonagh records this experience as the turning point thatdrove Graham to use Greek Drama in her work (op. cit. [above, n. 2], p. 84). Anotherpossible source of inspiration is Eva Palmer-Sikelianou’s participation at the revival of theDelphi Festival with two performances of Aeschylean tragedy, Prometheus Bound (1927) andThe Suppliants (1930). Although there is no record in Graham’s notebooks and autobiogra-phy indicating that she knew Palmer-Sikelianou’s performances (on which see now GondaVan Steen, “‘The World’s a Circular Stage’: Aeschylean Tragedy through the Eyes of EvaPalmer-Sikelianou,” in this journal, IJCT 8 [2001/2002], pp. 375-393), we will not be wrongto assume that she heard about those performances in the artistic-theatrical milieu of NewYork in the early 1930s.

5. Bacchanale No. 2, performed by Martha Graham on June 2, 1932 at Lydia MendelssonhnTheatre, Ann Arbor Michigan (Music: Wallingford Riegger, Costume and Lighting: MarthaGraham). Then, on December 27, 1932, Graham and her company danced Choric Dance foran Antique Greek Tragedy as one of the acts at the opening night of the Radio City MusicHall, New York. See Ramsay Burt, Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, ‘Race’ andNation in Early Modern Dance, London and New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 4.

6. Tragic Patterns: Three Choric Dances for An Antique Greek Tragedy, performed by MarthaGraham and Group on May 4, 1933 at Fund Hall, Newark, New Jersey. The dance pre-sented three Choruses: The Suppliants, The Maenads and The Furies (Music: Louis Horst;Costume and Lighting: Martha Graham).

7. Immediate Tragedy, performed by Martha Graham on July 30, 1937 at Vermont State Armory,Bennington, Vermont (Music: Norman Lloyd; Costumes: Martha Graham; Lighting: ArchLauterer).

8. I use the title of the exhibition in the Tate Gallery, 6 June to 2 September 1990, On ClassicalGround: Picasso, Leger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930, and trace the link betweenmodernism and the artistic values attributed to the Classical Tradition. Cf. the exhibition’scatalogue edited by Elisabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy, London: Tate Gallery Publica-tions, 1990.

9. Cave of the Heart, a 24-minute dance based on Euripides’ Medea. It was originally titled: SerpentHeart. Performed by Martha Graham and Company, the dance premiered on May 10, 1946 atthe McMillin Theatre, Columbia University, New York (Music: Samuel Barber; Stage-design:Isamu Noguchi; Costumes: Edythe Gilfond; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). In the video versionof the dance the role of Medea is performed by Takako Asakawa (Video by Merril Brockway,“Martha Graham & Dance Company, Dance in America,” WENT-TV, New York, 1976).

10. Errand into the Maze, a 14-minute dance based on the myth of the victory of Theseus overthe Minotaur in the labyrinth at Knossos. Performed by Graham and Mark Ryder, it pre-miered on February 27, 1947 at the Ziegfeld Theatre, New York (Music: Gian-Carlo Menotti;Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi; Costumes: Martha Graham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). In thevideo version of the dance the role of Ariadne is performed by Teresa Capucilli (Video byMerril Brockway, “Martha Graham & Dance Company, Dance in America,” WENT-TV, NewYork, 1976).

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(1947);11 Clytemnestra (1958);12 Alcestis (1960);13 Phaedra (1962);14 Circe (1963);15 Cortegeof Eagles (1967);16 Myth of a Voyage (1973);17 Andromache’s Lament (1982);18 Phaedra’sDream (1983);19 and Persephone (1987)20 . All these works, which she often referred to as“plays,” use Greek myths and tragedies as a common narrative. However, when ob-serving these dances, it soon becomes evident that Graham went beyond the explicitnarrative. She plunged into the “verbal nucleus of a shared tradition,”21 exposed its

11. Night Journey, a 28-minute dance based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrranus. Performed by Gra-ham and Company, it premiered on May 3, 1947 at Cambridge High and Latin School,Cambridge, Mass. (Music: William Schuman; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi; Costumes:Martha Graham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). In the video version of the dance the role ofJocasta is performed by Martha Graham (Video by Merrill Brockway, “Martha Graham &Dance Company, Dance in America,” WENT-TV, New York, 1976).

12. Clytemnestra, a 90-minute dance composed of a prologue and two acts, performed by MarthaGraham and Company on April 1, 1958, Adelphi Theatre, New York (Music: Halim El-Dabh; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi; Costumes: Martha Graham and Helen McGehee; Light-ing: Jean Rosenthal). The dance story, based on the myths of the Trojan War and Aeschylus’Oresteia, traces the events that led Queen Clytemnestra to murder her husband Agamemnonon his return from Troy. In the video version of the dance the role of Clytemnestra isperformed by Yuriko Kimura (Video by Merrill Brockway, “Martha Graham & Dance Com-pany, Dance in America,” WENT-TV, New York, 1976).

13. Alcestis, performed by Martha Graham and Company, premiered on April 29, 1960 at 54thStreet Theatre, New York (Music: Vivian Fine; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi; Costumes:Martha Graham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). The dance’s story is based on Euripides’ Alcestisand a play by modern poet Theodore Morrison, The Dream of Alcestis, where the relation-ships between the queen and Hercules are symbolically developed.

14. Phaedra, performed by Graham and Company, premiered on March 5, 1962 at the BroadwayTheatre, New York (Music: Robert Starer; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi; Costumes: MarthaGraham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). The Dance followed the plot of Euripides’ Hippolytus.

15. Circe, performed by Martha Graham and Company, premiered on September 6, 1963 at thePrince of Wales Theatre, London (Music: Alan Hovhaness; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi;Costumes: Martha Graham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal).

16. Cortege of Eagles, performed by Graham and Company, premiered on February 21, 1967 atthe Mark Hellinger Theatre, New York (Music: Eugene Lester; Stage-design: Isamu Noguchi;Costumes: Martha Graham; Lighting: Jean Rosenthal). Based on Euripides’ Hecuba and TheTrojan Women, Graham’s dance retold the misfortunes of Hecuba, queen of Troy (Video byMerril Brockway, “Martha Graham & Dance Company, Dance in America,” WENT-TV, NewYork, 1976).

17. Myth of a Voyage, performed by Martha Graham Dance Company, premiered on May 3,1973, at Alvin Theatre, New York (Music: Alan Hovhaness; Stage-design: Ming Cho Lee;Costumes: Martha Graham; Lighting: William H. Batchholder). The dance retold the voyageof Medea, with Takako Asakawa dancing the role of Medea.

18. Andromache’s Lament, performed by Martha Graham Dance Company, premiered on June23, 1982 at The City Center, New York (Music: Samuel Barber; Costumes: Halston; Lighting:Beverly Emmons).

19. Phaedra’s Dream, performed by Graham’s Dance Company, premiered on July 1, 1983 atHerodes Atticus Theatre, Athens, Greece (Music: George Crumb; Stage-design: IsamuNoguchi; Costumes: Halston).

20. Persephone, performed by Martha Graham Dance Company, premiered on October 10, 1987at The City Center, New York (Music: Igor Stravinsky [Symphony in C]; Costumes: Halston;Lighting: Thomas Skelton). The dance retold the myth of Demeter and Persephone.

21. Northrop Frye, “The Koine of Myth: Myth as a Universally Intelligible Language (1990),”


embedded feminine narratives and created new artistic forms for the re-enactment ofthese narratives. “Whenever she dealt with the high drama of mythological Greece,she created masterworks”, wrote Ernestine Stodelle in her seminal book on Graham’sdance story.22

Recent research has focused on Graham’s contribution to the emergence of Ameri-can dance23 as well as the mapping of the influence of Modernism, Psychoanalysisand Anthropology on her works from the 1930s and early 1940s.24 However, only ahandful of studies have delved into her “Greek Cycle” to analyze her interpretation ofthe ancient narratives or to define these dances’ import within her oeuvre.25 By readingGraham’s original interpretation of the ancient narratives and analyzing the uniquecomposition of her dance language and performances, I hope to demonstrate that the“Greek Cycle” definitely places Graham among the modern theatre’s great interpret-ers of Greek myth and tragedy, alongside the playwrights Hugo von Hofmannsthal,Eugene O’Neill, Jean Cocteau, William Butler Yeats, Jean Giraudoux, Jean-Paul Sartre,Albert Camus, Jean Anouilh, Heiner Müller, and Wole Soyinka.26 But more, the “Greek

in: Frye, Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays 1974-1988, ed. Robert D. Denham, Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia, 1990, p. 5. In this essay, Frye discusses myth in the context ofLiterary Criticism. I believe that Frye’s definition of myth as a common narrative is alsoapplicable to Performance Criticism.

22. Ernestine Stodelle, Deep Song (above, n. 2), p. 251.23. Cf. Mark Franko, Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics, Bloomington and Indianapolis:

Indiana University Press, 1995; Ellen Graff, Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City1928-1942, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997; Terri A. Mester, Movement and Modernism,Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997; Burt, Alien Bodies (above, n. 5)

24. See Burt, Alien Bodies (above, n. 5), pp. 166-172. On the Jungian influence on Graham seeMargaret Lloyd, The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance, New York: Dance Horizons 1974, p. 44;Deborah Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image, New York: William Morrow, 1980, pp. 199-233;and Suzanne Shelton, “Jungian Roots of Martha Graham’s Dance Imagery,” in: Dance His-tory Scholars Proceedings. Sixth Annual Conference, The Ohio State University, 11-13 February1983, Riverside: Dance History Scholars, 1983, pp. 119-32. On the Freudian influence on herdances see Joseph Mazo, Prime Movers. The Makers of Modern Dance in America, New York:William Morrow, 1977, pp. 153-196. On Graham contesting the discourses of Freud andJung see Katharine Power, “Maternal Subjectivity and Desire in the Dance Theatre of MarthaGraham,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism XIV.1 (Fall 1999), pp. 65-78.

25. Genevieve Oswald, “Myth and Legend in Martha Graham’s Night Journey,” Dance ResearchAnnual XIV (1983), pp. 42-49, and Marcia B. Siegel “The Harsh and Splendid Heroines ofMartha Graham,” Moving History/Dancing Cultures, ed. Ann Dils & Ann Cooper Albright,Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001, pp. 307-314, analyze Graham’s treatment ofthe mythical female characters in her dances. In Reclaiming Klytemnestra: Revenge or Recon-ciliation, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003, Kathelin L. Komar sets outto “look more deeply into contemporary women and their revisions of classical figures” (p.ix) and uses Graham’s Clytemnestra as an example for the healing power of reconciliation.However, focusing mostly on the dance’s plot, Komar’s treatment of Graham’s Clytemnestrais purely thematic. Moreover, her definition of Clytemnestra as a ballet (pp. vii, 60) removesthe dance from its contextual art-form and betrays a misunderstanding of Graham’s achieve-ments as one of the founders of Modern Dance.

26. I am aware of the danger of lumping together all of these playwrights into one solid group.It is clear to me that just like Graham, each one of them has set out on a journey to the vastland of Ancient Greek tragedy, in a specific artistic quest, writing from a specific culturalcontext and using his own strategies to inspire his contemporary audiences. See e.g. Jean-

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Cycle” reveals Graham to have been an artist who chose ancient myths as the rawmaterial from which to excavate woman’s image—‘herstory’, problems, hopes andstruggles - and to portray them in a new art form, theatrical dance.

Exposing the Feminine Narratives

The “Greek Cycle” dances show a clear transition from the traditional male perspec-tive encoded in the myths to the female perspective that imbues the narratives of thedances. In all these dances a woman—be she Medea, Ariadne, Jocasta, Clytemnestra,Alcestis, Phaedra, Hecuba, Andromache or Persephone—is the center of the perfor-mance and the force driving the plot’s dramatic design. In Cave of the Heart, Medeaoffers us an insight into the monstrous jealousy that motivates her conduct; in Errandinto the Maze, Ariadne invites us to accompany her into the labyrinth as she faces theMinotaur; in Night Journey, Jocasta relives her dual tragedy as mother and wife ofOedipus; and in Clytemnestra, Clytemnestra reenacts the events that provoked hercruel deeds and ultimate fate. Furthermore, Graham designs each dance’s narrative toreveal the heroine’s emotional responses to her own actions as well as to those of theother characters. In Phaedra, Phaedra’s nightmares and daydreams betray her illicitpassion for her husband’s young son, Hippolytus; in Cortege of Eagles, Hecuba bids usto witness her inhuman sufferings as silent accomplices to her ferocious revenge. Re-reading the ancient myths from a modern woman’s point of view, Graham exposes thefeminine narrative shrouded in the myths, allowing the women to relate the events intheir own voice. By doing so, she expresses her own quest for self-definition as amodern twentieth-century woman and artist.27

Throughout the history of the interpretation of Greek myths and their realizationin fifth-century-BCE Greek tragedy, these narratives reflected the male hero’s point ofview. The stories depicted his adventures, actions and misfortunes whereas they rep-resented women as either the direct or circumstantial victims of the male’s decisionsand actions, a pattern Simone de Beauvoir attributes to women’s prehistoric depen-dency.28 While it is true that Euripides was the first to open his ears and his heart tothe sufferings of women, as seen in his portrayal of feminine characters such as Alcestis,Medea, Phaedra, or Hecuba, even he remained a prisoner of his own masculine vision.Despite his sensitivity, Euripides continued to depict women as acting and reactingonly in the defined space of that same male world.29 Medea’s equation of childbirth

Paul Sartre’s reaction to the reception of Anouilh’s Antigone in New York in “Forgers ofMyth” (1946) (in Toby Cole, ed., Playwrights on Playwriting, New York: Hill and Wang, 1961,pp. 116-124) or the explanations provided by Goldhill to the different reception of the firstperformances of Hofmannsthal and Strauss’ Elektra in Germany and England in “Bloodfrom the shadows: Strauss’ disgusting, degenerate Elektra,” (Simon Goldhill, Who NeedsGreek?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 108-177.)

27. The motif at the heart of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, San Diego, New York andLondon: Harcourt, Inc., 1929, or Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, New York: BantamBooks, 1961 (originally published in French as de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, 2 vols., Paris:Gallimard, 1949).

28. De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 132 (= Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 241f.).29. On women in Greek tragedy see Helene P. Foley, “The Conception of Women in Athenian

Drama,” in: Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. Helene P. Foley, New York: Gordon andBreach Science Publishers, 1985, pp. 127-168; Froma I. Zeitlin, “The Dynamics of Misogyny:


with combat (Medea 248-251) is perhaps the best illustration of the fact that women,even in Euripidean tragedy, move, react and talk within the confines of a masculinediscourse. Moreover, whenever Greek playwrights, including Euripides, wished toarticulate women’s reactions to men’s behavior from a woman’s perspective, theyusually stressed what were considered non-masculine behaviors: loss of words, mute-ness and retreat (Eurydice in Sophocles’ Antigone 1244-5; Jocasta in Sophocles’ OedipusTyrannus 1073-1075; Dianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 813-14), or shouts, weeping andlamentation (Dianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 900-911; Medea in Euripides’ Medea 96-115; Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus 170-249). These vocal elements were accentuatedwith movements danced by the female choruses in the tragedies, movements restrictedto a traditional feminine mode.30 Examples include the panic expressed by the chorusin Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes (78-180), the physical aspects of grief as displayed bythe mourning women in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers (22-83), and the frenzied dances ofthe maenads in The Bacchantes (677-774; 1043-1152).

This approach towards female characters and their ability to act and react waslittle altered in later interpretations of Greek myth and tragedy, and it remained fairlyintact even in modern twentieth-century interpretations. Clytemnestra in Cocteau’s LaMachine Infernale (The Infernal Machine), Ismene and the Nurse in Anouilh’s Antigone,or Alcmene and Leda in Giraudoux’ Amphitruo 38 serve as good examples of thetradition’s persistence. Graham, by choosing to narrate the myths from a modernwoman’s perspective, not only significantly altered the traditional narrative of themyths; following Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, Maud Allen and Ruth Saint-Denis, shealso re-defined modern dance as the artistic medium in which women could take‘center stage’ and express their inner selves.31

Graham’s transition to the female narrative within the medium of dance affected

Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia,” in: Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers,ed. John Peradotto and J.P. Sullivan, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984, pp.159-194 and Charles Segal, “The Menace of Dionysus: Sex Roles and Reversals in Euripides’Bacchae,” ibid., pp. 195-212; Laura McClure, Spoken Like Women: Speech and Gender in Athe-nian Drama, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999; Helene P. Foley, Female Acts inGreek Tragedy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

30. It is important to note that we do not have exact notations of the movement of the chorusesfrom the actual performances of the tragedies in Athens of the 5th century BCE. However,following recent research into the performative language of Greek Tragedy we can assumethat those descriptions, inscribed in the textual images of the choruses’ songs, can be usedlike choreographic notes for us to excavate and interpret. On this venue see Oliver Taplin,The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977; David Wiles, Tragedy in Athens:Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997;Nurit Yaari, “Anchoring Thebes: Defining Place and Space in Ancient Greek Theatre,”Drama 3 (1995), pp. 94-110, and the special issues of Arion: A Journal of Humanities and theClassics, 3rd ser., “The Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture,” Part I: Issue 3.1 (Fall 1994/Winter 1995), and Part II: Issue 4.1 (Spring 1996), especially the articles by Albert Henrichs,“‘Why Should I Dance?’: Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy,” in 3.1, pp. 56-111;Herbert Golder, “Making a Scene: Gesture, Tableau, and the Tragic Chorus,” in 4.1, pp. 1-19; and Rush Rehm, “Performing the Chorus: Choral Action, Interaction, and Absence inEuripides,” in 4.1, pp. 45-60.

31. For the transformation from representation to self-expression that takes place in moderndance, see the conclusion in Susan Leigh Foster, Choreography Narrative: Ballet’s staging ofStory and Desire, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996.

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the composition and organization of the plots. First of all, there was a clear shift infocus away from the socio-political and military context that served the Greek mythsand their realizations in Greek Tragedy; Graham preferred the private spaces of homeand family occupied by women.32 Moreover, transforming those places into symbolicspaces, as suggested by some of her dance titles, enabled Graham to chart the female’spsyche, a woman’s inner feelings, emotions and desires as well as her interaction withher roles as mother, wife and lover.33 In Night Journey, for instance, Graham placed theevents in Jocasta’s bedchamber and not in the entrance to the palace, the city’s centralpublic space, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. The dance began with Jocasta’s sui-cide; the incestuous love between the protagonists was depicted—through her eyes—in the form of a “flashback.” From that moment on, the events unfolded as a re-enactment of the incestuous love that would culminate in death; Tiresias and thechorus served as witnesses to her tragic fate. Significant changes were made in thedance’s narrative in order to focus on Jocasta and her relationship with Oedipus, herson. First, elements that linked the plague to the murder and provided the backgroundto the Sophoclean Oedipus Tyrannus—such as Laius’ murder, the Sphinx, the plague,and Apollo’s oracle—were all omitted. No reference was made of Laius’ murder orOedipus’ quest to uncover his identity. Importantly, Oedipus’ punishment (the self-mutilation)—an event that precedes Jocasta’s suicide—was linked only to the protago-nists’ recognition of their incestuous love.34 This purposeful neglect of the male publicdomain in favor of concentration on the female private domain enabled Graham todepict a woman’s inner experiences and inner struggles in dance.

In most of Graham’s dances, the restructuring of the narrative leads to a shift inthe action’s focus. In Errand into the Maze, a dance based on the myth of Theseus andthe Minotaur, the hero is Ariadne, not Theseus. She, the female, enters the labyrinth toovercome the Minotaur. The dance contains no trace of the traditional male hero. Byphysically excluding him from the narrative, Graham suggests that we identify Theseuswith the Minotaur. This implicit equation allows the story’s transformation into an-

32. Women’s link to the domestic sphere is engraved in western civilization as noted by EmileBenveniste, who pointed out the linguistic association of ‘wife’ and ‘home’ in Indo-Euro-pean languages. See Benveniste, Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes: I. Economie,parenté, société, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969, p. 296. This bond is the source of theequation ‘Female:domestic as male:public,’ declared by Freud: “Women represent the inter-ests of the family and sexual life; the work of civilization has become more and more men’sbusiness,” Civilization and Its Discontents, New York: W. W. Norton, 1961, p. 73 (= DasUnbehagen in der Kultur, in: Freud, Gesammelte Werke, chronologisch geordnet [ed. Anna Freud,i.a.] 14. Werke aus den Jahren 1925-1931, London: Imago Publishing, 1948; 5th ed., Frankfurtam Main: S. Fischer, 1976, p. 463; cf. Thomas Parisi, Civilization and Its Discontents: AnAnthropology for the Future, Twayne’s Masterwork Studies 171, New York: Twayne, 1999,pp. 93-111), and further elaborated by the Structuralists. Cf. Michelle Rosaldo, “A Theoreti-cal Overview,” in: Woman, Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and LouiseLamphere, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 17-42. This equality is real-ized in the history of Western Theatre as well as in the configuration of the dramatic andtheatrical space. Cf. Hanna Scolnicov, Woman’s Theatrical Space, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994.

33. The titles of the dances The Maze, The Cave and The Night, relate to the female’s body in itsconnection to Earth and Nature. Cf. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (above, n. 27), pp. 136-147(= Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, pp. 246-265).

34. This change already takes place in Seneca’s Oedipus Rex.


other version of the battle between the sexes: According to de Beauvoir “man’s truevictory, whether he is liberator or conqueror, lies in this: that woman freely recognizeshim as her destiny.”35 Carrying this logic to its modernist conclusion, Graham repre-sents Ariadne’s ordeal as an act of liberation: The denouement, Ariadne’s victory overthe Minotaur, signifies woman’s conquest over her inner fears together with her tri-umph over the belligerent male.

A similar strategy is followed in Alcestis. There, Graham shifts from Admetus andhis ‘death sentence’ to Alcestis and her own struggle with death.36 Structuring thedance’s plot about Alcestis’ deathbed, Graham uses the symbolical relationships be-tween Alcestis and Hercules, as developed by the poet Theodore Morrison in TheDream of Alcestis,37 to draw our attention to Alcestis’ confrontation with her options. Inthe depths of her suffering, Alcestis must make “the metaphoric choice between suc-cumbing to unproductivity and forgetfulness (death), as portrayed by Thanatos, orrising regeneratively to the acceptance of life’s pain and risks, as portrayed by Her-cules.”38

In placing the dances within the woman’s “inner landscape,” Graham’s choreog-raphy stresses the emotions—Love, Hate, Jealousy, Fear and Anxiety—that drive Alcestislike Graham’s other female characters. In the program for the first performance ofSerpent Heart (later titled Cave of the Heart), staged at Columbia University (May 10,1946), we read: “This is a dance of possessive and destroying love, a love which feedsupon itself like the serpent heart.”39 In creating an archeology of vengeance, MarthaGraham aims at revealing the origins of Medea’s vulnerability.40 For that purpose,important elements in the myth are again excluded from the dance’s plot: First andforemost, Medea’s two children —who symbolize Medea the murderess but also Medeathe tragic victim—although they appear in several versions of the myth and in Euripides’tragedy do not appear in Graham’s dance; this leaves Creusa and Jason as the solevictims of Medea’s jealousy. Also eliminated is the original time frame for the action(Medea’s success in persuading Creon to give her just one more day before beingexpelled from Corinth); Jason’s reasons for leaving Medea (earlier versions of thetragic plot by Euripides, Seneca and Anouilh, are unclear as to whether Jason marriesCreusa out of love or of desire for the crown of Corinth); Medea’s verbal articulationof Jason’s betrayal as rendered especially in Euripides but also in other versions (Medeaclaims that when she married Jason she betrayed homeland, father and family, whereashis marriage to a king’s daughter deprives Medea of Corinth’s support as a stranger ina hostile city). As a result, the events performed in the dance are limited to thosetaking place within the emotional space of the Medea-Jason-Creusa triangle (neglectedwife-husband-future bride), leaving the Chorus to merely witness the revenge.

35. De Beauvoir, The Second Sex (above, n. 27), p. 172 (= Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 301).36. Cf. The Notebooks of Martha Graham (above, n. 2), pp. 41-46.37. Theodore Morrison, The Dream of Alcestis, New York: Viking, 1950.38. Stodelle, Deep Song (above, n. 2), p. 219.39. Ibid., p. 143.40. On the Medea myth and its reception history see three recent collections of articles: Medea:

Essays on Medea in myth, literature, philosophy, and art, ed. James J. Clauss and Sarah IlesJohnston, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997; Medeas Wandlungen: Studienzu einem Mythos in Kunst und Wissenschaft, ed. Annette Kämmerer, Margret Schuchard andAgnes Speck, Heidelberger Frauenstudien 5 Heidelberg: Mattes, 1998; Medea in Performance1500-2000, ed. Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Oliver Taplin, Oxford: Legenda, 2000.

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Each of Graham’s female characters therefore embarks on a personal voyage thatpermits us to decipher their inner selves, explore their inmost feelings and relation-ships, and clarify the complex network of their motivations and actions. In Cortege ofEagles, inspired by Euripides’ Hecuba and The Trojan Women, Graham’s Hecuba isdriven by the emotions of hatred and grief; it is exactly this emotional pattern—suffering and loss transformed into revenge—that forms the dance’s plot. With theaction situated in a prison camp against the background of Troy’s walls, Hecuba, onceQueen of Troy, becomes the tragic witness of her family’s annihilation and her city’sdestruction. By focusing on Hecuba’s anguish and turning her bereavement into re-venge, Graham chooses “once more to reveal—in contrapuntal characterizations—thebestial and the sublime in human nature.”41

The dance’s plot in Clytemnestra, contrary to that in Cortege of Eagels, is composedas a ‘journey’ into memory. Graham places Clytemnestra, “a towering figure, in amoment of crisis, looking back upon the crucial moments of her life,” in Hades.42 Weobserve her while she recalls the events and characters that brought about her tragicfate and we witness her journey towards reconciliation “in the trial that takes placewithin her imagination, Graham’s Clytemnestra reaffirms and accepts her actions. Herability to do so allows her also to be reconciled with her son, Orestes.”43 Introspectionis also used as the main choreographic device in Phaedra, a dance Graham based onEuripides’ Hippolytus. Focusing on Phaedra’s tragic passion for Hippolytus, Grahamconstructs the dance as a series of daydreams and nightmares intended to revealPhaedra’s sense of guilt and to represent her as another link in a long chain of passion-ate women.44

By shifting to the feminine in her adaptations, Graham treated an array of humanbehaviors and emotions never dealt with or even perceived in previous interpretationsof classical myths and tragedies. Moreover, by replacing words with movement anddance—offering modern dance as the artistic medium by which women can take ‘cen-ter stage’ and manifest their spirits—she defied the hegemony of the male languageand discourse ingrained in the old narratives. “Dance,” wrote Susanne Langer, “candisplay the ethos of a culture and gives objective shape to the subjective ‘inner life.’”45

A Woman’s Dance Language

The decision to shift the mythical narrative from the male to the female point of viewwas no disjointed, purely intellectual choice but a result of Graham’s dance praxis. Acrucial fact to remember in this regard is that Graham’s choreography was created firstand foremost for Graham herself. Her artistic stance reflected this history: fulfillmentof the dual role of dancer/choreographer constantly required fusion of the individualand psychological in the physical, the recounting/reworking of a personal past throughthe material she molded into dances. “Graham’s works take on a fuller meaning whenwe understand that they reveal familiar inner landscapes through archetypal figures,”

41. Stodelle, Deep Song (above, n. 2), p. 252.42. Anna Kisselgoff’s impressions are cited in Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of

Martha Graham, A Biography, New York: Random House, 1956, p. 334.43. Komar, Reclaiming Klytemnestra (above, n. 25), p. 65.44. De Mille, Martha (above, n. 42), pp. 222-223; see also The Notebooks of Martha Graham (above,

n. 2), pp. 81-84.45. Susanne Langer, Problems of Art, New York: Scribner’s, 1957, p. 12


noted Sondra Fraleigh.46 Joseph Campbell, who introduced Graham to Jung’s theoryof archetypes, described her unique work process in these words: “Her psychologicallinks are worked through her own experiences to emerge fresh and living. She never,never quotes undigested ideas that she has heard in someone else’s voice.”47

All of Graham’s theories and techniques stemmed from this duality of the indi-vidual and the archetypal as transfigured in the psyche of the dancer, character andchoreographer. She describes this fusion in The Dancer’s World:

The Theatre dressing room is a very special place. It is where the act oftheatre begins. Make-up is a kind of magic, the means by which you trans-form yourself into the character you play. You make up your face as youthink she must have looked; you dress your hair as you think she mighthave dressed hers. And then, there comes a moment when she looks at youin the mirror and you realize that she is looking at you and recognizing youas herself. It is through you that her love, her fear, her terror, is to beexpressed.48

Based on her own belief that “movement never lies[; i]t signals a person’s true identityand feelings,”49 she perceived the dancer’s body as “a unified vehicle for expressingthe self through a complete identification with the character.”50

Graham’s dances were created by a woman, the central character was a woman,the main instrument a woman’s body; the medium, the dance movements, were ar-ranged with the aim of revealing the uniqueness of woman’s soul. Following thisphilosophy, her choreography for the “Greek Cycle” demonstrated her constant searchfor the specific movement that would perfectly express the character’s internal motiva-tion as it was exposed in the character-dancer relationship. This union was observed inher performance of Cortege of Eagle, as retold by Stodelle:

If Martha was acting more than dancing in Cortege of Eagle, it was in perfectkeeping with the role of Hecuba. With superb histrionic control, she couldconvey the breakdown of a queen who maintained her dignity despite theravaging forces within her and the accumulative pressures around her bythe subtlest means. Her calm exterior portends unimaginable fury. We seeit slowly manifesting itself when the corpse of the murdered Polydoros isbrought to her. We see it hardening into a premeditated act whenPolymnestor stealthily enters and detaches the gold purse from the deadboy’s neck. Then comes her final appeal to the gods before giving way toanimalistic revenge: seated, she stretches her hand imploringly to heaven,then ritualistically passes it down the full length of her body, touches theground, and resumes the gesture, stretching and bending in mute despair.51

46. Sondra Horton Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics, Pittsburgh: Uni-versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1987, p. 87

47. De Mille, Martha (above, n. 42), p. 278. Cf. also Susan Foster, Reading Dancing, Berkeley, LosAngeles and London: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 43-44.

48. Martha Graham, The Dancer’s World (1957), directed by Peter Glushanok, Dance Collection,New York Pubic Library for the Performing Arts.

49. Martha Graham, “Martha Graham Speaks,” Dance Observer, April 1963, p. 53.50. Foster, Reading Dancing (above, n. 47), p. 42.51. Stodelle, Deep Song (above, n. 2), p. 253.

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Like many other artists working in the first half of the twentieth century, Grahamprobed the Greek models for content and form to do more than establish an individualidentity as dancer and teacher: She used myth and tragedy to construct an innovativeartistic language that would meld dance and theatre.52

Graham’s language of movement evolved during that search. As Sondra Fraleighhas indicated, Graham’s angular movements are important for the construction of her“psychic truth.”53 In a similar vein, Mark Franko has pointed out the various mean-ings captured by bodily contraction: “[A] scooping movement rendering the spineconcave, could suggest sorrow or joy, but could also remain fundamentally obscureand even thoroughly abstract.”54 Contraction and release, dynamic postures that arepsychological and physical “self-portrait[s] of being”55 dominate the choreography ofthe “Greek Cycle” dances: the expressive movements executed close to the ground; themovements emanating from the pelvis; the knee vibrations; the unique body rota-tions;56 the violent pounding on the chest and simultaneous exhaling, followed byexpanding the lungs.57 Susan Foster observes that these movements follow “a cyclicpattern that begins at the center of the body, hollows out and then twists and spirals,opposing itself. The tension established by this relationship between the parts of thebody then radiates from the center out to the periphery and even beyond, establishinga bond between dancer and the surrounding space.”58

These movements, which literally touch everything in the theatrical space, are alsodesigned to be consistent reminders of the link between the female individual and theuniversal.59 Their stylization alludes to a plurality of feelings motivated from deepwithin; it differentiates the movements of women from those of men:

In Graham dances, men characteristically perform simple, angular patternswith strength and directness, and they lift and carry women. Women, typi-cally more restrained in their movements, perform a complex and wide-ranging vocabulary of movements that emphasize twist and turn of thetorso. Although both sexes engage in a similar consecutive patterning of allthe body parts, men tend to provide a stable grounding for women’s overtlyemotional dilemmas.”60

52. Graham’s Notebooks (above, n. 2) are vivid documentation of the mélange of personal im-pressions, bibliographical notes and cultural-artistic associations that feed her during thechoreography of her dances.

53. Fraleigh, Dance and the Lived Body (above, n. 46), p. 87.54. Franko, Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics (above, n. 23), p. 3955. Martha Graham, “A Modern Dancer’s Primer for Action,” in: Dance as a Theatre Art: Source

Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present, ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen, Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1974, p. 139.

56. “In many of her important works of the forties and fifties, you felt the dancing shudderingalong in huge jerks, propelled by the violently contracting and expanding bodies.” DeborahJowitt, “Monumental Martha” (1973), in: Jowitt, Dance Beat: Selected Views and Reviews, 1967-76, New York: Marcel Dekker, 1978, pp. 70-73, here p. 72.

57. Foster, Reading Dancing (above, n. 47), p. 81-83. For a detailed description of Graham’smovements in Clytemnestra see The Notebooks of Martha Graham (above, n. 2), pp. 345-367 and381-401.

58. Foster, Reading Dancing (above, n. 47), p. 25.59. Ibid., p. 28.60. Ibid., p. 84.


Feminine Narratives as Performance

It was through the dancer’s body, the music, the stage design, the costumes and thelighting that Graham was able to concretize her new personal narratives into powerfulstage images to be realized in modern performances (now documented in video ver-sions of the dances). A crucial factor in all these dances is the transformation of theperformance’s audio-visual components into powerful stage images designed to exter-nalize a woman’s interior landscape.61 In Graham’s performance of her narratives thestage itself became an emblem for her choreographic portrayal of internal experience.62

Graham’s cooperation with Isamu Noguchi, the noted architect who designed thedecor for the dances, and Jean Rosenthal, who designed the lighting, was clearlydemonstrated throughout the performance of these dances. Graham herself designedthe costumes for most of her dances. Using universal symbols, they together created,on stage, a metaphoric space in which Graham could ‘sculpt’ her dance images.

The music for Graham’s “Greek Cycle” was vital for the creation of the dance’semotional space and certainly merits separate research. Graham chose a different com-poser for each dance. She worked with well-known contemporary composers: LouisHorst, Samuel Barber, Robert Starer, Vivian Fine, Halim El-Dabh, William Schuman,Gian-Carlo Menotti, Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, Aaron Copland, and EugeneLester, whose powerful scores translated her inner/mythical landscapes into musicalspace on stage.

Cave of the Heart is perhaps the most apt illustration of this coordination of theatri-cal media. Its four characters—Medea, the Chorus, Jason and Creusa (Creon’s daugh-ter)—all have their own assigned stage area and characteristic movements (Figure 1).The Chorus, represented by one female dancer, sits center-stage on a kind of volcanicaltar: “The volcanic pad is the volcano, the house, birth. It’s the way you go back tolife.”63 The Chorus embodies the Corinthian women, and is linked to the action in avery specific way: The one-woman Chorus is the first to sense the inevitable disaster.She cries mutely, the sound of a witness fated to keep silent (Figure 2). But whenMedea, carrying the wreath of death, starts walking towards Creusa, the Chorus triesto stop Medea—an act far more courageous than any traditional Chorus would everpermit itself; when she fails, she falls to the ground, helpless. Medea’s revenge takesplace despite the attempt to prevent it. Medea herself is imprisoned in a cage of sorts,with ray-like bars that remind us of her ancestor, the sun. This cage is her “house”;there she lies, planning her vengeance. At the dance’s conclusion, the cage will betransformed into the carriage of fire that detaches Medea from her human aspects(Figure 3). Noguchi explained the stage design:

I thought of it as the sun because Medea was the daughter of the sun. Shereturned to her origins . . . It has to do with fire and water. The dragon is

61. Martha Graham’s definition of her dance language is cited in Selma Jeanne Cohen’s enlight-ening analysis of dance’s style: “Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances”(1982), in: What is Dance?, eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, Oxford UniversityPress, 1983, pp. 339-354, here p. 346.

62. Foster, Reading Dancing (above, n. 47), p. 26.63. Noguchi on the decor of Cave of the Heart, in Ballet Review, 2, 4 (1968), pp. 12-18; see also

Martha Graham, “From Collaboration a Strange Beauty Emerged,” New York Times, January8, 1989, and Dore Ashton, Noguchi East and West, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p. 58.

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the storm. It is rain. It is the elements. It goes back to the river, to birth . . . thevolcanic pad that Medea mounts at the end of the dance wearing her flam-ing nimbus dress is where she disappears. She disappears behind it, andwhen the lights come up, it looks as if she’s sinking beyond the horizon likethe sunset.64

Jason, leaving Medea, searches for Creusa. They nurture their love on a road con-structed of five stones. “The five stones leading to the volcano are islands in Greece.They represent the place of passage.”65

The stones, the volcanic altar and the cage compose the space in which Medeaunveils her monstrous jealousy. Three actions take place on the stage: Medea plans herrevenge, the Chorus perceives Medea’s plans, and the couple realizes their pure andnaive attachment (Figure 4). Each action is motivated by a different emotion: jealousy,helplessness and love, respectively. In Graham’s choreography, Creusa takes on a lifeof her own, she assumes a full body, with hands, arms and legs, but most of all eyes,full of the adoration and respect, which follow Jason everywhere. In Jason’s and Creusa’sdance movements, Graham allows Creusa to reveal her gentle character, charm andsubmissiveness—in stark contrast to Medea, whose violent movements tear out of thestage-space.

The movements that Martha Graham choreographed for Medea are based onthose of a snake or a spider crawling in its web. When she plans her revenge she is

Fig. 1: Organization of stage space through props and the assignment of “place”for each of the characters. Medea – Rena Gluck, The Chorus – Rina Schenfeld,

Jason – Ehud Ben David, Kreusa – Nurit Stern in Cave of the Heart,Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.

64. Noguchi in Ballet Review (above, n. 63).65. Ibid.


lying on her belly in the cage built by Noguchi, with wire strings enclosing her. Agnesde Mille provides a graphic description of Medea’s solo:

Cave of the Heart contains a lengthy and frenetic solo of jealous and devour-ing passion. It was a dance of such animal anger and frustration as to defysense and sensibilities. It almost evoked disgust. And it was done on theknees, a long pas de bourrée on the knees, including a passage of quivering,carnivorous rage in which Martha would half squat, half kneel, and vibrateher knees in and out like a hungry insect in spasms of evisceration anddigestion—an effect which makes the blood run cold.66

After taking her revenge, Medea stands erect, center-stage. Her body begins tovibrate horribly. When constructing this scene, Graham and Noguchi used severalsymbols—the moon, blood, and a snake—all representing the dangerous frighteningpower of the female, of Medea.67 In the choreographic image, these symbols are real-ized by different performative components: the blood becomes a long narrow redcloth Medea manipulates, the moon a component of the stage design, the snake isrealized in Medea’s movements and their relationships to the confines of the cage. On

Fig. 2: The orchestration of characteristic movements into a powerful stage image. Medea – RenaGluck, The Chorus – Rina Schenfeld, Jason – Rachamim Ron, Kreusa – Nurit Stern in Cave of the

Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.

66. De Mille, Martha (above, n. 42), p. 295.67. Noguchi in Ballet Review (above, n. 62).

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stage, the performance demands that Medea use the red snake-like cloth to develop aseries of violent images. She chews it, spits it out, rolls it around her arm and finallythrows it on the ground. She then falls, twisting her body above the cloth. Nogushidescribes the scene thus: “Medea dances with a red cloth in her mouth. She danceswith the snake in her mouth. Then she spews it out of her mouth like blood.”68 The

Fig. 3: The wreath of Death: Medea, in Noguchi’s golden ‘cage’. Medea - RenaGluck in Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.

68. In the ancient texts as well as in the Medea of Anouilh, the most characteristic portrayal ofMedea is that as a witch (see especially Seneca). Yet here, Graham neglects this image andchooses to characterize her through symbolic accessories and movements. See e.g. Man andhis Symbols, ed. Carl G. Jung, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964, and de Beauvoir,The Second Sex (above, n. 27), pp. 134-140 (= Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, pp. 243-254).


result is an overpowering image of body, movement, and décor. The scenic imagesorchestrated with the audio-visual ingredients of the dance succeed in rendering anintense impression on the audience. 69

The stage images composed for Errand into the Maze focused on the journey intothe labyrinth and the combat with the Minotaur rather than on the individual charac-ters. Graham created a special movement for Ariadne’s journey into the labyrinth. Therapid movements in and out of the entrance with the rope/thread that marks the waythrough the labyrinth, the rhythms of the hand and body, accentuate the difficulty ofentering such a narrowly enclosed space (Figure 5). Ariadne confronts the Minotaurthree times: During the first encounter (Figure 6), she measures her power; during thesecond, the battle remains undecided; during the third, she triumphs. On stage, aminimal number of props intimate the labyrinth: an opening resembling an archaicgate, a rope and a moon shining from above.70 The Minotaur, half man, half bull, isrealized on stage by a dancer carrying a yoke across his shoulders. The yoke invokesthe broad solid neck of a bull. The two horns attached to his head and his make-uperase the difference between the human and the bestial.

Fig. 4: The contrast between the characters is built through dance movements and rhythm.Medea – Rena Gluck, The Chorus – Rina Schenfeld, Jason – Ehud Ben David, Kreusa –

Nurit Stern in Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.

69. Paul Margiel, Chronicles of the American Dance, New York: Da Capo Publishers, 1978, p. 249.70. Although the thread on stage represents ‘Ariadne’s Thread,’ it also has other associations,

for instance, the thread of life, woven at birth and cut at death by the Moirai, the deities ofFate; the umbilical cord; the thread as symbol of life’s ‘journey’.

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Fig. 5: Ariadne facing the entrance to the Labyrinth.Martha Graham in Errand into the Maze, 1947.


Theatre props likewise structure the indoor scene in Night Journey. A bed, repre-senting Jocasta’s bedchamber, delimits the dance space as well as its scenic focus. Thebed was unusual. “Noguchi brought to me the image of a bed stripped to its bones, toits very spirit,” wrote Graham in her autobiography.71 On stage, the “bed” is situatedat the center-back of the stage. To the far right, there is a huge round stone andanother structure, symbolizing an archaic gate. From the bed to the left, more stones,of varying geometric shape, form a semi-circle. At the beginning of the dance, Jocasta,a hangman’s noose around her neck, moves as if dangling.72 Tiresias enters from theright and awakens her—as if to urge her to relive her story. She throws the rope to theground, ready to return to that moment when Oedipus re-entered her life. The Chorus,carrying large laurel leaves, conducts the victorious Oedipus to Jocasta for their firstmeeting. From that moment on, the dance is composed as a series of stage images thatunfold an unchanging, eternal story of love and disaster.

Fig. 6: Ariadne’s first encounter with the Bull. Ariadne – Rina Schenfeld, The Bull – Yair Vardiin Errand into the Maze, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.

71. Martha Graham, Blood Memory, New York: Washington Square Press, 1991, p. 218.72. On the rope as one of the characteristic means of suicide among women, cf. Nicole Loraux,

Façons Tragiques de tuer une femme, Paris: Hachette, 1985, pp. 31-55 (= Loraux, Tragic Ways ofKilling a Woman, trans. Anthony Forster, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987,pp. 7-30), and Eva Cantarella, “Dangling Virgins: Myth, Ritual and the Place of Women inAncient Greece,” in: The Female Body in Western Culture, Contemporary Perspectives, ed. SusanRubin Suleiman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 57-67.

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The couple’s love duet culminates in a tableau (Figure 7). Jocasta and Oedipusbecome entangled in the same rope that served Jocasta to commit suicide in the open-ing scene, a rope that symbolizes the love connecting woman to man as well as theumbilical cord that binds mother to child. Graham uses these movements to reiteratethe ties between the rope-snake-umbilical cord and its role in her theatrical dancelanguage. At that moment, Tiresias enters and crosses—or rather leaps—across thestage to the beat of blind fate, touching every point on stage with his staff, finally toreveal the nature of the pair’s relationship by touching the rope that surrounds them,again with his staff. Revelation of their true identity fills Jocasta and Oedipus withremorse. They begin to twist about. Tiresias takes Oedipus’ victory cape and throws itto the ground; Jocasta falls on their common bed; and Oedipus, after throwing therope to the ground, rushes to the bed, extracts the brooch from her dress and blindshimself with it. The Chorus leads him away. Jocasta then takes the rope, removes herroyal robe, and hangs herself. Tiresias reappears on stage as the symbol of inescapablefate.

In contrast to the confined space of Jocasta’s bedchamber, Clytemnestra is set in avast space that represents the “limitless landscape of a woman’s mind.”73 The stage

Fig. 7: Jocasta and Oedipus entangle in their incestuous love. Martha Grahamand Erick Hawkins in Night Journey, 1947.

73. The description is from the prologue to Clytemnestra, introduced, in the video version byChristopher Plummer.


design is marked by several monumental sculptures that form the four ‘sites’ whereClytemnestra’s journey will unfold: On the left is a white throne: Clytemnestra hidesher axe at its foot. On the right, two sculptured stones form a kind of entrance that alsosymbolizes a wall. Farther back stage, a curtain of golden snake-like ropes, an imagereminiscent of huge, round columns hangs between the two sites. To these three sites,a fourth is added in the third act: Clytemnestra’s bedchamber.

Props play a particularly important role in the stage design of this dance. Theirfunctions vary with each scenic image created at each stage of the dance. For example,two spears forming an X are brought on stage by Agamemnon’s soldiers in the firstsacrificial scene. This X represents the altar on which Iphigenia is sacrificed. In thescene of Agamemnon’s return from Troy, the same spears represent the triumphalcarriage that carries Agamemnon, sacker of Troy, in the victory procession. The spearsreappear once more, to represent Agamemnon’s deathbed and, in the third act, whenplaced behind Clytemnestra’s bed, to symbolize Agamemnon’s demand for vengeance.

Another important prop is the red cloth that Clytemnestra carries during thevictory reception. Graham emphasizes its dual role as both a costume and a prop(Figure 8): “a triumphal cape as well as the entrance to Clytemnestra’s bedchamber.”74

When Clytemnestra stands behind her throne, the red cloth seems like two hugewings; afterwards, spread before Agamemnon’s carriage, the same cloth reminds thespectators of the “red ‘carpet’ scene” in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. After Agamemnonfinally surrenders to his wife’s request and treads upon the cloth when walking intothe palace, the red cloth fulfills still another function as the interior curtain or dividerbehind which Clytemnestra performs the double murder.

Although the dance specifically represents Clytemnestra’s journey of recognitionregarding the forces that brought her to her tragic fate, it attends to the fates of othersas well. Clytemnestra is surrounded by women whose tragedies constitute stages inher journey: We see her sister Helen, the adulteress whose infidelity is the immediatecause of Iphigenia’s death—she frequently dances in a joyful and seductive manneraround Clytemnestra, a snake curled around her arms. We also see Electra who, firmin her fidelity to her father Agamemnon, urges Orestes to avenge the father’s death;she brings him the axe and pushes him towards Clytemnestra’s bedchamber where hewill punish the murderers. Finally, there are the two young victims, Iphigenia andCassandra, whose misfortunes directly spark Clytemnestra’s murderous rage. The twowomen appear on stage several times, repeating the helpless movements signifyingtheir fate. Iphigenia, struck with fear, rushes on stage four times, trying to dissuadeher father from fulfilling his vows, hopelessly attempting to escape his grip, crying forher mother’s help until she surrenders to her father’s will. Clytemnestra thus relivesher loss four times. Cassandra also appears on stage several times, first in Troy, thenbefore Agamemnon’s palace, vainly trying to communicate her prophesies. Cursingher fate, she tries to rid herself of her prophet’s staff but she is trapped, her destinyleading only to Agamemnon’s palace and her own death. The very repetition of thesescenes accentuates the tragic impact of Clytemnestra’s journey on the audience.

74. Graham, Blood Memory (above, n. 71), p. 220.

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A Forger of Myths75

“Myth,” says Walter Burkert, “is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference tosomething of collective importance,” it is a “traditional tale applied; and its relevanceand seriousness stem largely from its application.”76 Graham’s choreography, in re-telling Greek myths from a feminine perspective, revived those myths at the same timethat it endowed them with yet a new relevance. For the “Greek Cycle’s” audience,Graham became a “forger of myths,” to use Sartre’s term. In all of these dances,Martha Graham altered both the narratives and the main characters in order to moldthe myths to her personal vision as a twentieth century woman. In re-reading Greek

Fig. 8: The red cloth in its double role as both costume and prop.Martha Graham in Clytemnestra, 1958.

75. Cf. Sartre, “Forgers of Myth” (above, n. 26). I am using Sartre’s title as a metaphoric device.In a way, Sartre’s article can also serve as an example of male’s appropriation of theatre.Although he considers Simone de Beauvoir’s play Les Bouches Inutiles as an example ofthéâtre engagé, Sartre, nevertheless, points out that all theatre seeks is “to present to themodern man a portrait of himself, his problems, his hopes and his struggles” [emphasis mine],p. 120.

76. Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Berkeley, Los Angelesand London: University of California Press, 1979, p. 23.


myth and Greek tragedy from her personal, female dancer’s perspective, she revealedthe feminine narrative locked deep within those traditional male-oriented narrativesand shaped them into dance. Hence, Graham’s contribution is not restricted to thereinterpretation of Myth. She also developed a new rhetoric of movement, an innova-tive performative language that enabled her to express the full expanse of the tragedypenetrating women’s soul. Watching those movements, larger than life yet springingfrom deep within the very center of Graham’s individual being, is like witnessing auniversal motif suffused with the metaphysical unveiled through private experience.At that moment, the tragic is born, but this time the tragic is properly feminine.Martha Graham’s dances are anchored in the Classical Greek tradition. Yet their con-tents, which powerfully express the recognition of woman’s complexity, and theirform, the fusion of dance and theatre, are modern in the extreme.

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.Figure 2. Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.Figure 3. Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.Figure 4. Cave of the Heart, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.Figure 5. Errand into the Maze, Martha Graham Dance Company, 1947.Figure 6. Errand into the Maze, Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel, 1966.Figure 7. Night Journey, Martha Graham Dance Company, 1947.Figure 8. Clytemnestra, Martha Graham Dance Company, 1958.

Credits

Figs 1-4, 6: Photographer: Yaacov Agor. Bat-Sheva Dance Company, Israel.Figs. 5, 7-8: The Dance Collection, The New York Public Library, New York.

Marta Graham Greek

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Transcript of Marta Graham Greek