There was a star danced

Richard Buckle

MARTHA: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MARTHA GRAHAM by Agnes de Mille Hutchinson, £20, pp.509

What Walt Whitman was, what Emily Dickinson was for America, Martha Graham was: but her poems were written in dance, not words.

Anyone who has read Agnes de Mille's autobiographies will know how well she writes. As a dancer, choreographer and friend of Martha's she is well equipped to tell this epic tale, which has taken her near- ly 25 years, and which could not have been published during Graham's lifetime. (Graham died last April.) Two other biographies had been published and Graham never spoke to their authors again. She destroyed letters, wanting to leave only a legend. But she left a host of witnesses, from whom de Mille has collect- ed evidence. When this great record was nearing completion the author had a stroke, and work was held up until she had learnt to write with her left hand. I hardly turned a page without saying 'Wow!'

Epics can spread themselves: this one contains several other biographies — of Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn, for instance, whose school in Los Angeles Graham joined in 1916 when she was 22, and who considered her hopeless; and of Louis Horst, her ugly ten-years-older lover, accompanist, councillor, who was later to say, 'Martha is spoiled rotten. She has a temper tantrum when she doesn't get what she wants.'

Graham's first recital in New York in 1926 broke even. Nobody had ever before seen dancers 'making friends with the floor' as she and her three girls did. In 1927 John Martin became the first ever dance critic of the New York-Times: he espoused her cause. De Mille considers ter first truly great composition' was Heretic (1929). It contained 'one of her incredible spiral falls'. Lamentation (1930) to music of Kodaly, was a series of 'grief-stricken postures'.

The figure remained seated throughout. Occasionally a tortured foot, Martha's marvellous instep, was drawn up in anguish ...

De Mille analyses in a vivid way the tech- nique Graham gradually evolved, 'stripping off the chassis of the body and exposing the motor'. The spasm of the diaphragm, the muscles used in coughing and laughing, were used to spark gesture'. Hence the famous 'contractions'. 'Martha discovered the knee, the leg hinge'.

Martha, becoming famous, but still very poor at 41, was invited by a delegation from Nazi Germany to take her troupe to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. She said three-quarters of her company were Jews. The Nazis said, 'If you don't come every- body will know about it and it will be a bad thing for you."If I don't come,' she replied, `everybody will know why I didn't and that will be a bad thing for you.'

Until 1936 the Graham troupe was all- female. Enter Erick Hawkins, in his late twenties. Martha fell in love with him. Horst and the girls were aghast. He danced, he was allowed to run the compa- ny, he removed burdens from Martha's shoulders, he instituted projects, he raised money from the famous actress, Katharine Cornell; but he wanted to co-star with Martha — and eventually married her. Until then his toothbrush had never been found in her apartment.

In Spring 1950, backed by Bethsabee de Rothschild, Graham, Hawkins and compa- ny planned to take Paris and London by storm. Martha at 56 was apprehensive, arthritic and fighting with Erick. Paris was a disaster and the London season was cancelled. Hawkins left her.

In 1954 the Graham company tried Lon- don again. The critics of daily papers were unenthusiastic: I wrote for the Observer, which appeared on Sunday. De Mille quotes a letter to her from Robin Howard. `The press very stupid (except, of course, for Dicky Buckle, who suddenly saw the light half-way through Martha's season.') Not true. I was bowled over on the first night and my first (Sunday) article pro- claimed Graham's greatness. Years later in Don McDonagh's book on Graham I read what she wrote to Horst:

London was so hard . . . but a critic named Richard Buckle . .. turned the tide for me. The houses were small at first but then we did finish with filled houses and bravos.

Martha showed her gratitude later.

Robin Howard sold hotels, established a school of modern dance at The Place and founded the London Contemporary Dance Theatre under Graham's former dancer, Robert Cohan. Bethsabee de Rothschild founded two companies in Israel.

Martha had new and more remarkable male dancers to replace Erick, not only Cohan, but Bertram Ross, Stuart Hodes, Robert Powell; and her leading girls, Ethel Winter, Mary Hinkson, Yuriko, were mar- vellous. In the long drama Clytemnestra, with its Noguchi set, she was on stage throughout: just to watch her sitting still was an experience. Yet her life became steadily sadder.

Even with knotted arthritic hands, Martha would not give up, but when she and Horst were to receive doctorates at Detroit University she was so drunk that they missed the train. Horst died soon after. So did other valued collaborators. At 72 Martha gave her last performance. Afterwards she merely took curtain calls.

She went to hospital. It may have been cirrhosis and/or diverticulitis. 'At bottom,' writes the biographer, 'it was despair.' De Mille, visiting, told Martha that her greying hair suited her and she was wise to accept age. 'The hell I will,' she replied.

A stranger, Ron Protas, came into Graham's life and took it over. 'He became more than Louis had been, more than Erick.' She got well, without alcohol. But she began to distrust all her old collaborators: she fired them or they walked out in tears. Protas raised subsidies; and Graham, dressed by Halston, suddenly became big business: she advertised fur coats. Pan Am provided tree flights to Europe. Protas did not keep me out. I felt that Graham's company, now that the famous faces had all gone, lacked personality. In 1978 at an off-Broadway theatre, I saw then met — a dancer, who had wanted to be an actor, and who, I thought, was just what Martha needed — beautiful too. I went to the Graham School to explain.

'Send him along!' I undertook to pay for the lessons. Then, as I kissed Martha good- bye — for the last time — she said, with a twinkle in her eye, 'There will be no charge'. (The young man never turned up. I think he had a drug problem.)