This product of a long line of New England forbears was a woman past fifty when she came under my management. Yet she was at the height of her powers, in the full bloom of the immense artistic accomplishment that is hers, a dancer of amazing skill, a choreographer of striking originality, an actress of tremendous power.
The first and by far the most important prophet of the contemporary dance, Martha Graham was originally trained in the Ruth St. Denis-Ted Shawn tradition. A quarter of a century ago, however, she broke away from that tradition and introduced into her works a quality of social significance and protest. As I think over her choreographic product, it seems to me that, in general—and this is a case where I must generalize—her work has exhibited what may be described as two major trends. One has been in the direction of fundamental social conflicts; the other, towards psychological abstraction and a vague mysticism.
About all her work is an austerity, stark and lean; yet this cold austerity in her creations is always presented by means of a brilliant technique and with an intense dramatic power. I made it a point for years to see as many of her recital programmes as I could, and I was never sure what I was going to see. Each time there seemed to me to be a new style and a new technique. She was constantly experimenting and while, often, the experiments did not quite come off, she always excited me, if I did not always understand what she was trying to say.
I have the greatest admiration for Martha Graham and for what she has done. She has championed the cause of the American composer by having works commissioned, while she has, at the same time, championed the cause of free movement and originality in the dance. Yet, so violent, so distorted, so obscure, and sometimes so oppressive do I find some of her works that I am baffled. It is these qualities, coupled with the complete introspection in which her works are steeped, that make it so extremely difficult to attract the public in sufficient numbers to make touring worthwhile or New York seasons financially possible without some sort of subsidy. I shall have something to say, later on in this book, on this whole question of subsidy of the arts. Meanwhile, Martha Graham has chosen a lonely road, and the introspectiveness of her work does not make it any less so. The more’s the pity, for here is a great artist of the first rank.
Martha Graham completed my triptych of modern dancers, commencing with Isadora Duncan and continuing with Mary Wigman as its center piece. In many respects, Martha Graham is by far the greatest of the three; yet, to me, she is lacking in a quality that made the dances of Isadora Duncan so compelling. It is difficult to define that quality. Negatively, it may be that it is this very introspection. Perhaps it is that Martha Graham is no modernist at all.
Modernism in dance, I feel, has become very provincial, for it would seem that every one and her sister is a modernist. Isadora was a modernist. Fokine was a modernist. Mary Wigman was a modernist. Today, we have Balanchine and Robbins, modernists. Scratch a choreographer, scrape a dancer ever so lightly, and you will find a modernist. It is all very, very provincial.
Much of what is to me the real beauty of the dance—the lyric line, the unbroken phrase, the sequential pattern of the dance itself—has, in the name of modernism, been chopped up and broken.
Martha Graham, of all the practitioners of the “free” dance, troubles me least in this respect. Many of her works look like ballets. Yet, at the same time, she disturbs me; never soothes me; and, since I have dedicated myself in this book to candor, I shall admit I can take my dance without too much over-intellectualization. Yet, in retrospect, I find there are few ballets that have so much concentrated excitement as Martha Graham’s Deaths and Entrances.
The choreography, the dancing, the art of Martha Graham are greatly appreciated by a devoted but limited public. The lamentable thing about it to me is that it so limited. She has chosen the road of the solitary and lonely experimenter. Martha Graham, of all the dancers I have known, is, I believe, the most single-purposed, the most fanatical in her devotion to an idea and an ideal. About her and everything she does is an extraordinary integrity, a consummate honesty. Generous to a fault, Martha Graham always has something good to say about the work of others, and she possesses a keen appreciation of all forms of the dance. The high position she so indisputably holds has been attained, as I happen to know, only through great privation and hardship, often in the face of cruel and harsh ridicule. Her remarkable technique could only have been acquired at the expense of sheer physical exhaustion. In the history of the dance her name will ever remain at the head of the pioneers.