1 When Your Heart Falls: The Drama of Descent in Martha Graham's ...

When Your Heart Falls: The Drama of Descent in Martha Graham's Technique and
Theater
By Ellen Graff
Fall: To come down by the force of gravity; drop; descend: to be wounded or
killed in battle: to come down in ruins, collapse: to hang down: to be captured or
conquered: to yield to temptation; do wrong; sin; lose chastity.
Webster’s New World Dictionary
Exploration of the physical act of falling was central for many early moderns. One
of the most remarkable things about these dancers is how they created their own
definitions of the act of falling, largely in contrast to that proposed above by Webster's
New World Dictionary. Falling was not to be a collapse, a defeat, but instead would
create possibilities for exploring an entirely new plane of dramatic space, the floor. It
would be a laboratory for analyzing weight and gravity, issues central to the definition of
the new genre of modern dance (in defiance of the soaring upward thrust of ballet). Fallen
women in modern dance would be cultural adventurers who could reclaim the space of
dance as high art.
I am a teenager in 1955 and I have come to study at the Martha Graham School
of Contemporary Dance. 1 The Company is about to depart on a State Department
sponsored tour of the Far East and I barely glimpse Martha as she sweeps into the large
studio after the Teenage class to conduct a Company rehearsal. The next week the
Company leaves for Tokyo and I learn about the technique and about Martha by
eavesdropping on conversations and listening to explanations of the technique by
teachers in the school. "Martha says. . . " Mary Hinkson introduces me to the sitting fall.
I sit on one hip, my legs bent underneath me. A contraction molds my body, and
establishes its energies -- upwards from the base of the spine and out of the mouth to the
skies, downwards through the pelvis into the core of the earth. My torso falls backwards,
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supported in part by my arms, which extend behind me and maintain contact with the
floor. Through the descent the contraction is maintained and continually renewed; at the
completion of the fall only the crown of my head, my lower vertebrae and hips, and my
feet, which have remained on the ground even as the knees have been released, have
contact with the ground.
I absorb the rich imagery that is a profound aspect of Graham's work; the drama
of the descent backwards and into the unknown, and the joy of the return. The dynamics
are varied. Sometimes the contraction is a quick upbeat, the descent a rapid plunge into
the past. Sometimes it is a slow and sensuous giving in, the contraction deepening,
deepening, deepening, as the body slides backwards.
In the technique of Martha Graham the act of falling is almost always an
embodiment of psychic, as well as physical realities. "Haven't you ever been in a room
where someone you loved, who no longer loved you, walked in, and your heart fell to the
floor?" she once asked, trying to explain to a critic why she had choreographed a
sequence of falls while dressed in evening clothes in the 1940 classic Deaths and
Entrances. 2 Falling is not a literal representation of reality, but instead an embodiment of
inner experience; not a reductive language, but a poetic language that derives its meaning
from the layering of the physical and psychic.
The Classroom
Techniques of falling are an important aspect of every Graham class, even those
for beginning students. Senior Graham teachers who worked directly with Martha
Graham recall various periods in which she decreed that every class should end with a
series of falls. In Graham technique and theater the act of falling embodies the process by
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which the dancer continually renews herself and is a metaphor for the constant
regeneration of life's energies in the face of certain mortality. Preparation for fall cycles
includes strengthening the thighs so that the dancer can negotiate the descent to the
ground and avoid damaging the knees, discovering the power of the contraction and the
release to instantly mobilize the body, and identifying the body's center of weight so that
the action of falling can be controlled.
For example, in the sitting falls, the dancer learns techniques for physically letting
the body sink into the earth while controlling the descent, most often through the
contraction of the pelvic and torso muscles so that the weight of the body is lifted. The
body's energies are never (or rarely) allowed to seep into the floor, but remain gathered,
mobilized for a quick recovery, a renewal of the power of the dancer. In Graham
technique, the fall is rarely a true surrender.
Graham's techniques of falling develop from an exploration of two equal but
opposite forces; the pull of gravity downwards and the resistance to gravity through the
thrust of energy upwards. The Graham dancer deliberately calibrates these two forces in
order to vary the timing and dramatic impact in falling sequences; the body can be hung,
suspended between polar energy fields.
The concept of resistance and the deliberate manipulation of the politics of
surrender are requirements for the physical accomplishment of an astonishing variety of
falls. There are sitting falls and traveling falls, standing falls and falls from elevations. Of
the standing falls there are forward falls, side falls, split falls and back falls. While each
has a different set of physical requirements, and often a different dramatic dimension,
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there is almost always some sense of struggle, followed by temporary surrender and
recovery.
I have learned the fall on ten counts, the first in the series of standing falls. On the
count of one, I plie in first position. On two my body hollows out in a contraction, lifting
the weight of my upper body up without disturbing the thrust of gravity downward
through my legs. On three the descent begins; the contraction deepens and my torso
spirals so that the upper body is twisted against the lower as I shift the center of my
weight into the left hip, freeing my left foot from the floor and allowing me to sit onto my
left hip, careful never to let the bony parts of my body hit the ground. From this seated
position I spiral the upper body even further on the count of four, and place my left
shoulder onto my left knee. The right shoulder is directly above my left, my body curled
into a ball, held firm by the intensity of the contraction. Uncurling the body on the count
of five, I slide the left side of my body along the floor in a smooth line; the knees remain
bent so that my lower legs extend at a right angle along the floor. On the count of six I
surrender momentarily to the forces of gravity, using a contraction to roll my body onto
my back. Then begins the recovery. My body releases on seven, the back arced like a
bow. On eight a contraction knits my body together into a tight ball, ready for the rise. A
release on the count of nine brings me to a kneeling position and on ten I rise.
"My dancers fall so that they can rise," Graham stated. 3
The sense of drama in fall sequences (as in all else in the Graham technique) is
part of the classroom presentation. The standing falls, for example, are classically taught
only on the left side, because the heart is on the left side. The dancer falls as the heart
falls. At other times Graham noted that the left side was the sinister or dark side and that
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in falling the dancer surrendered herself into the darkness, into the unknown. Seemingly
contradictory, these explanations have an inner consistency -- impulses of the heart are
often dark and sinister in Graham choreography.
Of the many images presented during the 1950s and 1960s, when I was a student,
was the idea that the floor rises to meet the descending dancer. "Let the floor come up to
you." For example, in the split fall the dancer begins in a standing position. The power of
the contraction lifts the dancer's weight, allowing one leg to slide forward, while the body
descends between both legs, the torso gradually becoming parallel to the floor. The body
finds a triangular base of support as it approaches the ground; at the completion of the fall
the dancer's legs are in a wide fourth position on the floor, the torso making contact with
the ground. The image of the floor rising -- in contrast to the body descending -- is
accomplished through the act of suspension; in the descent the body hangs, not upon any
external object, but through its own virtual forces. The floor indeed rushes up to meet the
dancer, who maintains a suspended upward thrust until the final moment.
Images that relate to the forward fall begin with exercises on the floor where the
student is directed to imagine the space around herself as an abyss, a chasm, an unknown
field over which her torso may be suspended. Standing exercises in which the torso is
suspended in positions parallel to the floor build upon this. A variation of the forward fall
begins from an arabesque. Rather than work for the stability of the ballet penchee, the
dancer here deliberately moves off the standing leg so that the weight is thrust forward,
the body put at risk while outstretched arms reach across an imaginary divide, before
finally making contact with the ground, as if at the other side of an enormous chasm.
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Of all the falls, the back fall is probably the most difficult, technically. The dancer
uses the contraction to stabilize her weight, then hinges backwards by bending her knees.
The center of weight, the pelvis, must remain over the heels as the torso gradually
assumes a position parallel to the floor. The distribution of the body's weight is equalized
by the thrust of the thighs forward and the plunge of the torso backwards. Preparation for
this fall begins with the exercise on six in the floorwork, specifically designed to
strengthen the thighs in order to support the torso as it is thrust backward. A series of
standing exercises, both at the barre, and in the center, continue this process.
The Theater
Graham's classroom exercises developed historically as her choreographic
explorations demanded new techniques from the dancers. In the class, these exercises
became codified and divorced from the dramatic meaning within the dance. They are
techniques, and while there is an inherent drama in the sequences, it is the choreographic
context that constructs meaning within any dance. Graham's 1947 Night Journey uses
several of the classic Graham falls, each taking its dramatic meaning from the dancer's
relationship to other characters in the work, the sequence of events within the dance, and
the overall dramatic and aesthetic considerations of the dance. 4
Night Journey is Martha Graham's retelling of the Oedipus myth from the
perspective of Jocasta, the Queen. Unconcerned with linear time, Graham begins her
dance at the instant of Jocasta's suicide, when the blind seer Tiraesius forces her to
confront and relive the horror of her incestuous relationship with her son Oedipus.
Graham uses the split fall to signal choreographically Jocasta's descent into her own past.
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As she slides into the ground all that she has been avoiding, the knowledge of her
relationship to her son, rushes to meet her.
The ways in which a Graham dancer plays with meaning and shades the drama of
confrontation, surrender and reconciliation, are accomplished through manipulation of
the forces of gravity, techniques taught in classroom exercises of falling. Jocasta resists
the gravitational force initially by suspending her weight upwards, then succumbs,
signaling her willingness at this point in the dance to confront her role in the tragedy,
before rising to relive events of the past.
One of the most dramatic falls in the dance is performed by the chorus of the
Daughters of the Night. The "mad" dance that occurs towards the end of the ballet is
fraught with gestures that provide clues to the tragic ending to come -- the blinding of
Oedipus and the suicide of Jocasta. The Daughters of the Night claw at their eyes, curse
the circumstances of the tragedy. Suddenly, rising high onto the balls of their feet, the
chorus plummets downwards in the back fall, into the void, into the unknown, and into a
world turned upside down by murder and incest. Plunging backwards, the dancers land
on their shoulders. But the dancers’ hips and torsos remain raised above the earth,
forming a bridge. We understand that the Daughters of the Night have not surrendered
themselves to this upside down world; the tragedy is never completely theirs. They are
commentators on the action and their bodies will be mobilized again quickly.
The dance ends as both Jocasta and Oedipus come to understand the truth of their
relationship. Oedipus responds with a great scream. He reaches out, as if across a great
abyss, and supported by the Daughters of the Night, falls forward, into darkness perhaps,
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ut not into the unknown. His fall is a deliberate act; eyes wide open he acknowledges his
role before blinding himself for the future.
The final choreographic movement of the dance is also a fall. Jocasta has faced
and relived her past and now can complete the act contemplated at the beginning of the
ballet -- her suicide. Drawing a rope around her neck she tightens it and falls backward.
In perhaps the most literal representation of falling in the dance, she hangs herself. This
final falling sequence emphasizes the downward thrust of gravity, minimizing the upward
resistance, and thus establishing dramatically her surrender to mortality. In Blood
Memory Graham describes the ending. "There is a moment of simulated strangling, and
she [Jocasta] does a back fall. She does not land in a position. She lands in a figureless
sprawl, a blot on the ground, like one of those Rorschach blots. She lies there in
nothingness." 5 The metaphorical death that Graham confronts in all the fall sequences
becomes literal here. The dancer will not rise. Giving in entirely to the forces of gravity
Jocasta is without hope of rebirth, or ascent.
After the fall on ten counts I learn the fall on four, then the fall on three, then two
and finally on one. A contraction momentarily suspends my body before I surrender in a
daring rush to the ground, followed by a glorious ascent upwards, on a single count.
Here in the safety of the studio, I am able to risk everything. I have experienced a sense
of my own mortality, and the power of dancing to renew my spirit. I am ecstatic.
1 The movement descriptions throughout are based upon the author's memory of exercises taught at the
Martha Graham School in the 1950s and 1960s when she was a student.
2 Martha Graham, Blood Memory, p. 258. Also as quoted by Linda Hodes in Martha Graham, Steps of a
Giant, Insiders' Stories. Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Bruno
Walter Auditorium, January 4, 2003.
3 Martha Graham. "A Modern Dancer's Primer for Action," in Dance: A Basic Educational Technique,
Frederick R. Rogers Ed. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
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4 Based upon the author's experiences in rehearsal and performance and upon the 1961 film of Night
Journey, directed by Alexander Hammid, Martha Graham in Performance. Produced by Nathan Kroll.
Kultur International Films.
4 Graham, p. 216.
Works Cited
Graham Martha. 1991. Blood Memory. New York: Doubleday.
Rogers, Frederick R. Ed. 1969. Dance: A Basic Educational Technique. New York:
Macmillan.
Ellen Graff is a former Martha Graham dancer. She has a Ph.D. in Performance Studies
from New York University and her book, Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York
City 1928 - 1942, received a Special Citation from the De La Torre Bueno Prize
Committee in 1998. She was Director of Programs at the Martha Graham School of
Contemporary Dance from 2011 – 2007. Prior to this she headed the MFA Program in
Choreography and Dance at California State University Long Beach.
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