Tag Archives: opposition

Graham Technique & Me

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In her autobiography, Blood Memory, Martha Graham wrote:

In those early days a favorite of mine, the critic Stark Young, said to a friend, ‘Must I join you at Martha’s dance concert tonight? All that percussive angular movement—I am so afraid she’ll give birth to a cube.”

It’s true that the shapes made through Graham’s choreography are not the demurely graceful ones of classical ballet and the quality of movement created by her early technique is not classically feminine – that is, silken and smooth – either.

photo (7)

photo (4)During those first few weekends of rehearsals with Jennifer Conley, she spoke to the dancers about “shaping the space” with their bodies. This would be done through a focus on equal and opposite forces. I now know this to be an integral part of Graham technique, which involves isometric exercises designed to highlight and enhance the strength and power of the physical body.

I had no experience with Graham technique – and very limited experience with modern dance in general – before becoming involved with this project. Though I knew, conceptually, who Martha Graham was and what modern dance looked like, I had zero kinesthetic knowledge of this dance form. Therefore, to inform my documentation of Mawr Steps (and for my own edification and enjoyment!) I took part in the warm ups that Jennifer began each rehearsal with. These consisted of standard Graham technique floor work interspersed with exercises tailored more specifically to the choreography of Steps in the Street. I also took an Advanced Modern class during the first half of the semester, in which Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch was teaching Graham technique.

What did I learn about Graham technique through these experiences? The complexity of simple movement! Made so by those equal and opposite forces I mentioned earlier. Martha Graham developed her technique around the relationship between breath and emotion, which is embodied in her method of contraction and release. Breathing in is a release and breathing out, a contraction.

Carrie emphasizes to Dana Nichols the stillness of the torso in this exercise

Carrie emphasizes to Dana Nichols the stillness of the torso in this exercise

 

 

Articulation is through the torso in this language. The pelvis and the head must be the heaviest body parts – they work in opposition to open space and drive the movement.

The dancers in Carrie's class practice balancing/shifting weight while maintaining still, upright torsos

The dancers in Carrie’s class practice balancing/shifting weight while maintaining still, upright torsos

 

 

 

 

Graham wrote, in Blood Memory, of her first days in New York:

I walked to the Central Park Zoo and sat on a bench across from a lion in its cage…Finally, I learned to walk that way. I learned from the lion the inevitability of return, the shifting of one’s body.

 

 

In Jennifer’s words: “The goal of the contraction is expansion.” I found this prompt to be most important to the articulation of emotion and most challenging to physically accomplish.

There is more information about Martha Graham’s technique and the history of modern dance on the resources page of this blog as well as on the Graham Company website. Briefly, however, my experience of the Graham contraction after my first several days warming up with Jennifer and the dancers:

When the dancers begin moving across the floor I gracefully remove myself from the herd to watch in awe and surreptitiously practice my contracting and releasing while taking notes. Dancers, if you’ve noticed my observer’s look turn into one of consternation it is only because I am attempting to: engage new-found pelvic muscles, “scoop out” my abdomen AND effectively contract my sternum (what? yes.) without bringing my shoulders up to my ears. All of which I’m doing on an exhale, trying 1 – not to hold my breath and 2 – to actively expand my torso, opening up space between my vertebrae.

 

Finding Lost Steps

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On Friday we analyzed an image of Graham Company dancers in a strike pose, noting how it illustrated the opposing forces at work in both the form and content of Steps in the Street. Here, the conflict of the mass is of the individual’s experience being experienced communally – and it seems like this friction is inherent in the act of reconstructing itself.

Throughout the first rehearsal Jennifer Conley has emphasized an “intermingling” that should occur – between the steps and the students. Because this piece is alive with history there must be a negotiation between the “then” and the “now” in the dynamic process of its recreation.

Mawr Ephemeral: navigating deceptions of time and space

Mawr Ephemeral: dancing through the deceptions of time and space

 

The tragedy of Miss Graham’s art is that like all dancing it is bound up with time and space, that is, ephemeral unless it can in some way be fixed. (Re-Radicalizing Graham)

 

This statement, made by composer Wallingford Riegger, indicates how important reconstructions are to dance history. This was not recognized by Martha Graham herself, however, for nearly three quarters of her career – she rarely kept her early pieces, notoriously destroying films and photos of them. It was not until she stopped performing in 1969 (at the age of 75!) that this changed, and her first sanctioned revivals of early works did not make it to the public until the late 1980’s.

It is seemingly by a stroke of luck that Steps survived! While other sections from Chronicle have been revived some are only fragments of what they had been – re-staged largely from dancers’ memories – and the larger work in its entirety is considered irretrievable.

In the mid-1980’s partially destroyed and silent footage of the original 1936 production of Chronicle, filmed by the ethnographer Julien Bryan, was found in the depths of a vault. It was by weaving together sections from Bryan’s footage with some recreated choreography that Yuriko (associate artistic director of the Company at this time), supervised by Martha Graham, revived Steps in the Street nearly 50 years after it had been lost.

Though the musical score of 1936 could not be found a different work by its original composer – Riegger’s New Dance – accompanies Yuriko’s reconstruction. This revival of Steps in the Street premiered in October of 1989 during the Martha Graham Dance Company’s Fall Season at New York’s City Center.

 

Getting Started: Martha Graham Tool Kit

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Bryn Mawr's Modern Ensemble gets steppin' (Photo by Tiannan Zhan, BMC '14)

Bryn Mawr’s Modern Ensemble gets steppin’
(Photo by Tiannan Zhan, BMC ’14)

Everyone involved in this early stage of the Mawr Steps reconstruction process came together for an inaugural 3 hours this past Friday evening. Though I have studied dance and performed original (or derivative) works, this is my first time working with a reconstruction. I am now struck by the imbalance in my dance education between the study of history (non-existent) and technique. I don’t think this is unique to my early pedagogical experience (my formal dance training essentially ended when I turned 16) but understanding this discrepancy does lend new significance to the concept of stepping into dance history for me.

A “Martha Graham Tool Kit” has been provided by the Graham Company as part of the artistic support they will be lending to Bryn Mawr’s licensed reconstruction of Steps in the Street. This kit includes, in addition to rehearsal videos and audio, what I have termed the reconstruction bible (I mean, binder…) This binder, which the Dance Program may hold onto until the April performances, has in it:

  • historic background of Steps in the Street
  • press clippings referencing Steps
  • Martha Graham quotes and biographical info.
  • template for the programs distributed at a student production
  • technical instructions – for staging, lighting & costume design
  • archival images of Steps being performed by Graham Company dancers

Jennifer Conley introduced Bryn Mawr’s student dancers (and us documentarians) to the work they would be reconstructing by encouraging active engagement with these materials. We flipped through pictures together, analyzing Graham Company images at Jennifer’s prompting – identifying formal elements and thinking about their emotional or intellectual implications. And through this exercise we came to understand the history, content and choreography of the work as well.

Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham's "Sketches from 'Chronicle'" (Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham’s “Sketches from ‘Chronicle'”
(Photo by Costas / Copyright Costas)

In this image, “the strike,” for instance: the women’s angular, sharp elbows and firmly planted feet indicate strength; the arms crossed over their heads express both resistance and empowerment; the mass structure demonstrates unity but not conformity – an opposition both psychic and corporeal.

Even though I will not be stepping through time on stage in April, the way I began to relate to history during Friday’s rehearsal awakened in me an anticipatory reverence for, and an embodied awareness of, what great value lies in sharing this movement legacy.