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

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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 2
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, 3
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Page 9: 4 Based upon the author's experienc

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

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