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

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
2