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

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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