Martha graham, p.48
Martha Graham, page 48
At Montclair State University, the undergraduate dance majors in my Danceaturgy Writing Workshop were eagerly chatting, smiling, coffees in hand, ready and waiting for me outside the seminar room when I arrived for our Friday 8:30 a.m. sessions. They taught me far more than I ever taught them. I also thank my former Department of Theatre and Dance colleagues and Creative Research Center contributors, beginning with emeritus dean of the College of the Arts, Geoffrey Newman, and emerita director of dance, Lori Katterhenry; dean Daniel Gurskis and his cordial administrative staff; professors Jennifer Chin, Kathleen Kelley, Nancy Lushington, Jessie DiMauro Marks, Debra Otte, Linda Roberts, Erhard Rom, Diann Sichel, Maxine Steinman; and, in Peak Performances/Arts and Cultural Programming, special thanks to Carrie Urbanic and Jedediah Wheeler.
I am grateful for family and friends—Andrew Baldwin, Barney Baldwin, Daniel Baldwin, Deborah Plutzik Briggs, Tony Cartwright, Colleen Marie Cavanagh, Karen Davidov, Maxine Davidowitz, Lola B. Fahrer, Roberta Friedman, Ron Gordon, John Haworth, Michael Lyden, Mark Morril, Henry Myerberg, Olga Okaty, Jonathan Plutzik, Bob Reiss, Paul Russo, M.D., and his team, Kenneth Spooner, and Daniel White.
Ali Shaw and her Indigo Editing colleagues, with a special thank-you to Jennifer Zaczek Kepler, have my enduring gratitude, accompanied by multiple sighs of relief, for wrestling my old-school manuscript into twenty-first-century format.
My editor at Knopf, Victoria Wilson, honed in upon what needed clarity in my discourse when it became discursive, astonishing me with her keen eye and oracular gifts. From the day, early on, when Vicky reminded me that Martha Graham’s narrative must take the reader in hand, she was the uncanny, knowing voice of perspective. Her assistant, Marc Jaffee, never lost his sense of kindly bemusement. For their irrepressible energy, I also thank Penelope Belnap in publicity and Matthew Sciarappa in marketing.
My agent, Andy McNicol, at William Morris Endeavor, was far more than a vigilant advocate for my work as an author. Even when we did not see each other for stretches of time over many years, I felt her supportive, upbeat, and agile presence. An attendant and empathic ear, Andy cheered me on when the going (…often) got rough. Her assistants, Clio Seraphim and Brooke Drabkin, were ebullient readers and honest critics. Alex Kane of WME generously stepped in to help in the last lap of the journey.
* * *
—
And finally, as I sit here, in my third-floor study, the door closed and another day dawning, I thank my wife, Roberta, for a lifetime of love.
N.B., Autumn 2022
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES
AAA Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution
AS Arnold Schoenberg
CORC Charles Olson Research Collection
D&C Democrat & Chronicle
DB Dorothy Bird
EH Erick Hawkins
EHC Erick Hawkins Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress
GS Gertrude Shurr
HNAI Handbook of North American Indians
JM John Martin
JMA John Murray Anderson
JRDD Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library
LB Louise Brooks
LKP Lincoln Kirstein Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library
LH Louis Horst
LHCM Louis Horst Collection of Music, New York Public Library
LOC Library of Congress
MG Martha Graham
MGC Martha Graham Collection
MGLA Martha Graham Legacy Archive, Music Division, Library of Congress
MGR Martha Graham Resources
NYPL The New York Public Library
O&G Olive and Gold
RM Rouben Mamoulian
TS Ted Shawn
TSC Ted Shawn Collection, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Archives
WCW William Carlos Williams
WPA Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Works Progress Administration in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
INTRODUCTION
For me, growing up in the Manhattan neighborhood: See B. Morgan, Sixteen Dances, cover and p. 125.
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“It takes about ten years”: MG, “How I Became a Dancer.”
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“In the United States”: Schmuhl, Indecent Liberties, 7.
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“Make it new”: Pound, “How I Began,” 211.
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“each venture”: Eliot, Four Quartets, part V.
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“In this infancy”: Frank, Our America, 10.
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“the modern dance is”: Stodelle, The First Frontier, 57.
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“We dancers, too”: Ibid., 62.
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“I don’t think she thought”: Catton, “The Great 20th Century Dance Companies.”
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“every act of creation”: McGehee, “An Opportunity Lost,” 71.
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Jennie Graham saved: Lask, “First Lady of the Dance”; Leatherman, Martha Graham, 33; People, “Martha Graham.”
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“was not a friend”: Brooks, “A Bold Step Forward,” 452.
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“I don’t want people”: The Ernestine Stodelle–Louis Horst Collections at the Newberry Library in Chicago contain no MG material. There is no correspondence to or from MG in the Doris Humphrey Papers at the NYPL or in the Doris Humphrey Archive at Goucher College Library. Among the Sophia Smith Collection, the NYPL, and the Library of Congress, less than a dozen letters survive from the four-decade “passionate friendship” of MG and Katharine “Kit” Cornell. When Sali Ann Kriegsman was compiling her history of the Bennington School of the Dance in the late 1970s, MG did not wish to speak with her; nor would MG consent in 1978 to a Columbia University Oral History interview about the Bennington years.
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In the Music Division: MG, notebooks, boxes 274–275, MGC. See also Barretto, “The Role of Martha Graham’s Notebooks,” 53–67; and N. W. Ross, Notebooks of Martha Graham, a compilation of unedited transcripts with no commentary, clarification of attributions, or scholarly apparatus.
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“We were friendly”: Author’s notes from Yuriko Kikuchi’s talk at the Martha Graham School, July 12, 2014; Dunning, “The Graham Company.”
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“What they did privately”: Robert Cohan, interview with author, Westbeth Studios, New York City, May 28, 2014. John Martin, hired in 1927 as the first full-time dance critic for the New York Times, did much to interpret and advance Martha Graham’s work for decades, proposed writing her biography in 1964, but never did, insisting, “We weren’t that kind of close.”
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“approachable to the earnest”: Genzlinger, “Marion Horosko.”
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“against any dramatization”: Kisselgoff, “Martha Graham Dies at 96.”
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She allowed him one: Don McDonagh’s only interview with MG was on October 19, 1968. MG, interview by Don McDonagh, October 19, 1968, NYPL, Performing Arts Research Collection, JRDD, *MGZTL 4-2566.
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Agnes de Mille: See “Early Drafts and Papers Related to Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham,” 196-?–1991, JRDD, *MGZMD 80; on the compositional difficulties of Martha, see McDonagh, “Martha Graham: Fiction and Fact.”
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The book that dance critic Marcia Siegel: Phillips, “Martha Graham’s Gilded Cage.”
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“Marthology”: Siegel, “Marthology.”
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“Looking at the past”: MG, “I Am a Dancer,” Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 99.
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“Martha was her work”: McGehee, review of Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham.
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“Off stage she was really”: Sophie Maslow, interview by Janet Eilber, April 9 and 10, 2001, MGLA.
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“But on stage, performing”: Ibid.
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“the only justification”: N. W. Ross, Notebooks of Martha Graham, 269.
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1: PITTSBURGH
“the soft chain of hills”: WPA, Story of Old Allegheny City, 1–2, 45.
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“the obligatory extra white shirt”: Weber and Stearns, introduction to The Spencers of Amberson Avenue, xiv, xx; Parton, “Pittsburg,” 36.
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“on tightly-adjacent plots”: McLaughlin and Uhl, Nomination Form, § 8; Miles, Resurrecting Allegheny City, 168.
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This enclave of two-: McLaughlin and Uhl, Nomination Form, § 7 and USGS Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, West Quadrant Map; Smith and Swetnam, Guidebook to Historic Western Pennsylvania, 27; Miles, Resurrecting Allegheny City, 168.
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Today the area is designated: Historic Pittsburgh Map Index, 1901, Volume 1—Allegheny City: Wards 1–8, 12, and 13, Plate 5; Google Map of Brighton Place and environs courtesy David Grinnell, University of Pittsburgh Library; David Grinnell and author on walking tour and site visit of North Side; David Grinnell to author, May 13–15, 2014; Lisa A. Miles to author, October 19, 2013.
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Named after her Irish: de Mille, Martha, 16; Laura Streett (Vassar College archivist) to author, February 24, 2014; Stodelle, Deep Song, 5.
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paternal grandmother: Contrary to Graham’s assertion in Blood Memory, p.25, that her paternal grandmother attended Vassar, this was not the case. Newburgh, NY, is near Poughkeepsie, which may have been the source for the confusion.
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Martha’s sister: McDonagh, Martha Graham, 8–9; Stodelle, Deep Song, 6; MG, Blood Memory, 27.
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The who’s who: Biographical Review, XXIV, Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Pittsburgh and Vicinity, Pennsylvania, 1897, Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 444–45; Cushing, History of Allegheny County.
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After attending the University of Pennsylvania: Biographical Review, 445; Rooney and Peterson, Allegheny City, 53.
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“I call your attention”: “Miss Dorothea Lynde Dix,” obituary in Harper et al., Annual Report of the Managers of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital for 1887, 12–14.
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Dr. Graham spent ten years: Biographical Review, 445; Twelfth United States Census, 1990, prepared by the Census Office, courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Library and Archives; Weber and Stearns, introduction to The Spencers of Amberson Avenue, xx; Stodelle, Deep Song, 5; McDonagh, Martha Graham, 8–9.
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Martha Graham’s father: Secondhand accounts of Martha Graham’s fourteen years growing up in Allegheny can be found in Terry, Frontiers of Dance, 3–14; McDonagh, Martha Graham, 6–13; Stodelle, Deep Song, 1–7; de Mille, Martha, 16–19; and Leatherman, Portrait of the Lady, 33.
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“My whole life”: MG, interview by Don McDonagh, October 19, 1968, JRDD.
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“I think I was my father’s favorite”: MG, Blood Memory, 41.
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“A bit Olympian”: McDonagh, Martha Graham, 10.
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stern and demanding: Coleman, “Martha Graham Still Leaps Forward.”
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“Pure water”: MG, Blood Memory, 18–19.
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In the second episode: MG, Notebooks, 269, 270; MG, Blood Memory, 20; MG to Don McDonagh, NYPL interview, October 19, 1968; and Stodelle, 267n2, “Graham, reporting her father’s words in conversation with the author.”
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Over the years: Dee Reynolds, “A Technique for Power,” 9. “Far from being direct expression, Graham’s strategy was a very deliberate construction and staging of emotional effects.”
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“You must abandon”: C. Salas, The Life & the Work, 42n3.
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At the turn of the century: McDonagh, Martha Graham, 9; Allegheny City Census, June 5, 1900, Schedule No. 1, Sheet No. 7528, entries for 1531 Fremont Street; Weber and Stearns, introduction to The Spencers of Amberson Avenue, xxvi–xxix; MG, Blood Memory, 21–23.
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In the second-floor nursery: MG, Blood Memory, 32, 34, 35; Stodelle, Deep Song, 6, 267n10; MG, “Piano Lessons,” informal talk to Juilliard students, late 1951, JRDD; Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott; MG recalls “reading everything…” as a child, in her interview by Don McDonagh, October 19, 1968, JRDD.
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“choreographing”: Dunning, “Lessons Learned in Youth.”
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“witches, wee folk”: Genzlinger, “Marion Horosko.”
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“robed in snowy white”: Udall, “Between Dream and Shadow,” 35.
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Weekdays, Martha and Mary: David Grinnell, email to author, August 11, 2014; WPA, Story of Old Allegheny, 144–45.
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“Each and every Sunday”: MG, Blood Memory, 38.
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“smoothed out”: Stodelle, Deep Song, 3; WPA, Story of Old Allegheny, 87
