Balance of Power
Graham is an artist of tiny but infinite varia- tion. Her basic material' is deliberately circum- scribed, and with it she builds ballets, not as similar one to another as peas in a pod, but cer- tainly bearing the same sort of inter-relationship as a bundle of Picassos.
For one thing, her themes, at least her serious, tragic themes, can be reduced to one simple basic proposition—the reconciliation of the heroine with her fate. Balance seems to be the key to Graham; her race of heroines are totter- ing magnificently with brooding dignity from couch to couch trying to get themselves adjusted with the past. They cry out not for forgiveness of their sins—forgiveness seems to mean as little to Graham as an empty conch-shell whispering comfortable lies—but for the balance and peace of reconciliation, or, more rarely, of justification.
Balance also finds its place in her choreo- graphy; indeed, it governs it. For years we have accepted the proportions of, say, a classic
arabesque on trust, as our great-grandfathers accepted perspective in a painting, or tonality in music. Graham now comes along, changes the balance of the limbs, twists the arms, alters the relationship of body to legs, of floor to space, and says: 'Look!' At first we think it is a curious sort of beauty. Yet in its strangely natural dis- tortions, its outrageous ploys of off-balance movements kept artificially in equilibrium by miraculous feats of technique, it seems to refer back to a dance as old as the myths upon which Graham ponders
She entertains quietly. Her theatre is a pattern or arena of conflicting forces, achieving a static balance that is like a state of grace. There are so many strands, physical, metaphysical, psycho- logical, emotional, and yet all are woven together by an American show-biz conception of the theatre. Because Graham herself has a long face with sad eyes, because at times she sees everyone as half-naked Greeks being punched-up by the Gods, and because in all her interviews' (for she is one of Nature's interviewees) she makes suc- cinctly oracular statements about dance and art, it is easy to forget her functions as an enter- tainer, or, as' she might say, 'an acrobat of God.'
She achieves a complete unity in her work, so that all her ballets, choreography, dancing, music and design, seem to have been created out of one tissue. The decor, mostly inscrutably beautiful by Isamu Noguchi, is no longer a back- ground for dancing, but actually part of it. The costumes are extensions of the dancers wearing tliem, the music—of comparatively little intrinsic interest—sounds like a pulse in the choreography, an aural impression of its visual design.
To accept her, 'one has to yield to her. It is precisely like one's first submission to twelve- tone music, and it contains just the same discon- certing elements of familiarity and surprise. Graham is an innovator, but what she is giving us is not entirely new. This is still fundamentally dancing and therefore 'seems familiar, yet it is also subtly, hypnotically different in its spatial design, time scale, intellectual content and general feel. To be sure, its standards are the same as those of classical ballet (after all, you approach Schoenberg just as you approach Brahms), but it goes about its business in a different way.
The ballets Graham has brought to Britain this visit are an amazing array, and all but two of them are creations of the last few years. Her genius as an inventor has never burned brighter, and these works, pick them where you will, are thrilling in their newness and awareness.
The masterwork is her full-evening epic Clytemnestra, a purple-and-gold tragedy sus- tained at a level of greatness that gives it a cumulative yet shattering impact. Here is Greek tragedy 'at its grandest, yet like all her tragic themes it is conveyed in a personal manner that makes it 'seem updated and, to use a word Graham herself loathes, contemporary.
In her pieces noires she tends to work within changing time-sequences, confusing at first glance, so that her characters,searching for truth can look back and around as if in a dream or fantasy, Yet Graham is not all tragedy, and much of her work is charming and direct. It is in these Pieces roses that the spectacular sensuousness of Graham's dance invention camel into its own, and in such ballets as the literally blissful Diver- sion of Angels or the mordantly witty Acrobats of God, her splendid company is seen at its best.
As a dancer, Graham herself is past her peak, even though her roles are now carefully tailored to disguise this. But the effulgent glory of the troupe is in Graham's choreography and the grace, deftness and brilliance of her dancers. First in Edinburgh and now in London at the Prince of Wales Theatre, they have at last given British ballet the shock it somehow missed in 1954, on Graham's last visit, when the theatre, like the bandwagon, was almost empty.
CLIVE BARNES
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