This is a paper I wrote this quarter for Karen Eliot’s 20th Century Dance History class, another great course (but part of what made it a nutty quarter!) A quick thank you to her and my peer reviewers for their feedback!
(And this paper is complete with scholarly references and stuff–I’m really in school! The bibliography is at the end. Which is a better place than in the middle, I guess.)
Mirthful Martha
There are people known for being light-hearted and funny, always good for a laugh. Martha Graham was not one of them. Her nickname “Mirthless Martha,” and dark dances full of psychological turmoil like Night Journey, Cave of the Heart, and Lamentation, are more often what come to mind with mention of her name. Frolicsome hijinks don’t. So Maple Leaf Rag, the dance that is considered her last completed work, surprises with its anomalously fun and parodying romp through Graham’s idiom. Yet this piece is one of the most fitting summations she could have left us: although itself a choreographic trifle, it provides an ideal vantage point from which to survey her lasting power, legacy, and contributions to the dance world.
Graham choreographed Maple Leaf Rag in 1990, at age 96. She died the next year on April 1st. While she was working on Maple Leaf Rag, she was also working on what might be considered a more typical “Graham piece” named The Eyes of the Goddess, which was “a deeply tormented dance about death” (Dance). It was left unfinished, and Maple Leaf Rag is the last statement of her seventy year career. Some have questioned how much might have been choreographed by the dancers, since Graham was increasingly incapacitated by old age, but I do not find this an important debate (Acocella; Bannerman 31). Enough evidence speaks of her involvement in the piece to know that it certainly wasn’t snuck out to the public without her knowledge and approval, even if she didn’t personally choreograph every single step (Dunning; Dance).
The dance world luckily has Maple Leaf Rag preserved on video in a November 1991 live performance, filmed for the Great Performances series. When older works are revived, especially after a choreographer’s death, there is likely to be a germ of worry in the viewer’s mind: “how have the intervening decades changed the version I’m seeing from the ‘original’ version?” But with this performance, just a year after the premier, we have a record of the work that is likely as faithful a representation of Graham’s “original” version as one can have on the not-always-kind-to-dance film medium. While the piece has continued to be performed since then, it is this video to which I refer in the following description. As always, the viewer is beholden to the camera operators and film editors: if I were to see the piece live, I might realize that I had missed some crucial moment that occurred outside of the camera’s frame or was cruelly chopped out by an editor. With that caveat, what is it that one sees in Maple Leaf Rag?
As Maple Leaf Rag opens, a man solemnly carries a woman overhead, followed by a line of dancers curving a series of heavy, earthbound jumps around the stage, all while a low note tolls portentously on a piano. One woman falls to the floor, and as the rest of the dancers exit, she pierces space with her gaze, turns in an anguished spiral, and eventually comes to rest on what looks to be a simple single-rail fence, somewhat reminiscent of the beautifully minimal sets sculptor Isamu Noguchi famously designed for Graham. The scene is set for another of Graham’s brooding dance journeys. Except, as the woman sits down on the “fence,” it bounces irreverently underneath her. It is no Noguchi sculpture, but a “joggle board,” a sort of wiggly, bouncy bench, that Graham found in North Carolina (Dunning). Then a voice—Martha’s voice—intones “Oh Louis, play me the Maple Leaf Rag.” This is what Graham famously used to request of her partner Louis Horst when even she recognized that she was down in the dumps and needed pulling out. The piano launches into the requested music, and with the dark atmosphere broken, bright lights come up, and dancers dart across the stage in pairs, the woman on the joggle board bouncing and directing them cheerfully.
What follows is a delightful mix of visual humor, mocking self-quotation, and just plain joy of dancing. After the brief opening section, the low notes return on the piano and a woman whirls dramatically across the stage, holding her skirt out so that it presents a billowing circle to the audience. She repeats this punctuating pass several times in the piece, between and during sections. Then another Joplin tune starts up, and the stage fills with dancers doing a parody of Graham class exercises à la Acts of Light, including a delightfully distorted prance series. Dancers exit and enter, skipping and leaping. They delight in their movement, goof off with the bouncy qualities of the joggle board, and generally appear to be having a wonderful time. In the next section, dancers pair off to exemplify different qualities of coupledom, much like in Diversion of Angels—except even in that cheerier piece from the repertory, one still doesn’t get to see a man cling to the underside of a joggle board like a monkey and creep down its length to look up the skirt of the woman sitting on it. At which point, astonished, he promptly falls off. Another couple mock tangos their way around, interspersing their high-drama ballroom moment with ostentatiously dramatic contractions and showy lifts. Eventually six couples have settled on or around the joggle board in various poses of embrace, when they are rudely interrupted by a series of five frantic women. These typical “Graham Furies” (Kisselgoff 1999) rage around the stage while the onlookers turn up their noses and exchange looks with each other as if to ask “what’s their problem?”
The final section of Maple Leaf Rag is introduced by a man crossing the stage in a series of typical Graham back attitudes with spiraled torso, emphasizing the percussiveness of his movement by slapping his butt each time he steps into his pose. (Every time I watch this entrance I have to laugh and ask myself “did he really just do that?!” Then in a moment of pure prurient speculation, I wonder if Graham herself might have been known to slap the men’s butts more than occasionally—is she laughing at herself here? Then the choreography and my thoughts move on.) This section even more than the others makes me think of kids on a playground—it’s just fun! A group of women skip through jauntily, two men play on the joggle board like on a jungle gym, leapfrogging, somersaulting, and daringly doing a tightrope walk of its length. Amidst the leaping, playful partnering and general silliness, the woman from the beginning returns, couples skitter across like they did in the opening, and the piece ends with her sitting on the joggle board, brow furrowed: a pretend Martha in a pretend funk.
Throughout the sections there are sly quotations or allusions to other Graham works, the serious sources lovingly mocked by the comic send-up they are given. Having seen many of her important works over the years, I can place some of the references specifically, while others just strike a familiar chord. But what I find most remarkable about the piece, and Graham’s legacy, is that any viewer who has seen a single piece by Graham, or even just photographs and outside references to her work, would instantly recognize the allusiveness and self-parody of Maple Leaf Rag. This is a tribute to the dance technique she built over the years, a system as internally consistent, aesthetically distinct, and instantly recognizable as ballet. While most choreographers of note may be easily recognized by the way they put together movement, Graham went beyond that to create a new way of moving, a radical departure that was more than just minor emendations to the status quo. Maple Leaf Rag would barely be possible, and certainly wouldn’t be funny, if Graham were of lesser stature and her work less distinctive. To be ubiquitous enough to make fun of oneself and have other people get the joke is a rare accomplishment.
When Maple Leaf Rag debuted, of course no one knew that this would be Graham’s last complete work, thought not many more could have been expected from her. The work’s comic appeal made it a hit, and overall, critics acknowledged it as worthwhile frivolity, if not a masterpiece (Dendy 32; Dorris; Kisselgoff 1990). However, Anna Kisselgoff went beyond its light façade to see in it a warning to artists, including Graham herself, against falling into comfortable clichés, and, in reference to the couples who spurn the five “Furies,” an indictment against a society that won’t tolerate deviation from its standards (1990). While I can see how Kisselgoff draws these conclusions, I feel wary that she may be overdrawing them, especially the perceived indictment against an intolerant society. The bulk of Graham’s choreography over the years pointedly portrayed and commented on the human situation, and when Graham had a commentary to make, she was not at all shy about driving her point home. For instance, Heretic exemplifies the clash of an individual against an intolerant society. If there is a commentary to Maple Leaf Rag, I see its main thrust rather being that Graham doesn’t feel the need to confine herself to the seriousness that was perceived as her genre. Instead of warning against falling into clichés, Graham seems more to be celebrating the ability to surprise an audience still.
After Graham’s death, the legal troubles that plunged the company into millions of dollars of debt gave rise to the very real possibility that Graham’s work might largely be lost, despite her towering stature in the field. The company—and thus Graham’s work—was absent from the stage for a time. As the company emerged from underneath the court proceedings and regrouped, it was faced with reintroducing Graham to the viewing public. When enough time has passed to look back on how this still evolving story turns out, Maple Leaf Rag may prove to have grown in importance by playing a role in keeping Graham’s legacy alive. In order to attract new audiences, the company has been planning “audience-friendly” programs rich with historical material that attempt to show the wide range of Graham’s work (Acocella; Scherr). Acocella notes that on a 2006 program, Maple Leaf Rag served as a strategic bit of fun, a chance for the programmers to say “Martha wasn’t so grim, Martha was fun, too.” However, Maple Leaf Rag is fun for a reason: even in its lightness, it bears Graham’s signature ability to “unite emotion and form,” find the right gesture, and astonish the viewer (Kisselgoff 1990). Its unexpectedness while being so identifiably “Graham” throws into relief her wide-ranging abilities, even as the references to other pieces give a wry primer on her technique and corpus of work. These are enough reasons to argue for the piece’s importance: if it can play a part in enticing audiences to venture further into Graham’s work, it will prove to be even more important than its initial circumstances would have suggested.
Works Cited
Acocella, Joan. “Happy Face.” Rev. of Martha Graham Dance Company, chor. Martha Graham. Skirball Center. New Yorker Online. 8 May 2006. 22 January 2008 <http://www.thenewyorker.com>. Path: Search.
Bannerman, Henrietta. “An Overview of the Development of Martha Graham’s Movement System.” Dance Research 17.2 (1999): 9-46. JSTOR. 22 January 2008 <http://www.jstor.org/search>
Dance in America: Three Dances by Martha Graham. Perf. Martha Graham Dance Company. L’Opera de Paris, Paris. November 1991. VHS. Great Performances, 1992.
Dendy, Mark. “Graham without Graham, 1991.” Ballet Review 20.2 (1992): 29-35.
Dorris, George. “Martha Graham Dance Company.” Rev. of Martha Graham Dance Company, chor. Martha Graham. City Center. Dancing Times Dec. 1990: 252.
Dunning, Jennifer. “Martha Graham, at 96, Dares Something Different.” New York Times on the Web. 1 October 1990. 22 January 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com>. Path: Search.
Kisselgoff, Anna. “Martha Graham: Up to her New Tricks.” Rev. of Martha Graham Dance Company, chor. Martha Graham. City Center. New York Times on the Web. 21 October 1990. 22 January 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com>. Path: Search.
—. “Tasty Graham Spiced by Self-Parody.” Rev. of Martha Graham Dance Company, chor. Martha Graham. Joyce Theater. New York Times on the Web. 6 February 1999. 22 January 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com>. Path: Search.
Scherr, Apollonaire. “Martha Graham Troupe Puts Modern Spin on the Choreographer’s Great Works.” Newsday Online. 27 January 2008. 28 January 2008 <http://www.newsday .com/entertainment/arts/ny-ffdnc5549267jan27,0,4526894,print.story>
