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

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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. 8
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. 9
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Page 3 and 4: which the dancer continually renews
Page 5 and 6: in falling the dancer surrendered h
Page 7: As she slides into the ground all t

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

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