There was no ballet company with her, no ship-load of scenery, properties and costumes. Her company was made up of two persons in addition to herself: a lesser Amazon in the person of Meta Mens, who presided over Wigman’s costumes—one trunk—and her percussion instruments—tam-tams, Balinese gongs, and a fistful of reedy wind instruments; the other, a lanky, pale-faced chap with hyper-thyroid eyes, Hanns Hastings, who composed and played such music as Wigman used.
On the day before the opening, I gave a party at the Plaza Hotel as a semi-official welcome on the part of our American dancers, among whom were included that great pioneer of our native contemporary dance, Martha Graham, together with Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and, of course, that champion of the modern dance, John Martin.
Much depended upon Wigman’s first New York performance. A tour had been arranged, but not booked. There is a decided difference in the terms. In the language of the theatre, a tour is not “booked” until the contracts have been signed. The preliminary arrangements are called “pencilling in.” The pencil notations are inked only when signatures are attached to the contracts. If the New York première fizzled, there would be no inking. I had taken the Forty-sixth Street Theatre, and the publicity campaign under the direction of my good friend, Gerald Goode, had been under way for weeks.
It was a distinguished audience and a curious one that assembled in the Forty-sixth Street Theatre for the opening performance. It was an enthusiastic one that left at the end. I had gone back stage before the curtain rose to wish Wigman well, but the priestess was unapproachable. As she did before each performance, she entered the “silence.” Under no circumstances did she permit any disturbance. She would arrive at the theatre a long time before the scheduled time of the curtain’s rise, and, in her darkened dressing-room, lie in a mystic trance. Later she danced as one possessed.
If the opening night audience was enthusiastic, which it was, I am equally sure some of its members were confused. At later performances, as I stood in my customary position at the rear of the auditorium as the public left the theatre, I was not infrequently pressed by questions. These questions, however they may have been phrased, meant the same thing. “What do the dances mean?” “What is she trying to say?” “What does it all signify?” I am not easily embarrassed, as a rule. The constant reiteration of this question, however, proved an exception.
For the benefit of a generation unfamiliar with the Wigman dance, I should explain that her dances were, as she called them, “cycles.” In other words, her performances consisted of groups of dances with an alleged relationship: a relationship so difficult to discern, however, that I suspect it must have existed only in Wigman’s mind. The one dance that stands out most vividly in my mind is one she called Monotonie. In Monotonie, Wigman stood in the dead center of the stage. Then she whirled and whirled and whirled. As the whirling continued she was first erect, then slowly crouching, slowly rising until she was erect again; but always whirling, the while a puny four-note phrase was endlessly repeated. Through a sort of self-hypnosis, her whirling had an hypnotic effect on her. In a sort of mystic trance herself, Wigman succeeded, up to a point, in inducing a similar reaction on her public.
But what did it mean? I did not know, but I was determined to find out. Audience members, local managers, newspaper men were badgering me for an answer. To any query that I put to Wigman, her deep-throated reply was always the same:
“Oh, the meaning is too deep; I really can’t explain it.”
It was much later, during the course of the tour following the New York season, that I arrived at the “meaning” of Wigman’s dances, and that will be told in its proper place.
After the tumult and the shouting had died that opening night at the Forty-fourth Street Theatre, I took Wigman to supper with some friends. As we left the theatre together, Wigman was still in her trance; but, as the food was served, she came out of it with glistening eyes and a rapid-fire sort of highly literate chatter, in the manner of one sliding back to earth from the upper world.