Son of Clytemnestra: Return to the House of Martha - Week 3

The following entries are from a journal kept by former Graham dancer, Peter Sparling, while teaching and coaching for the Clytemnestra Project at Skidmore College. Sparling is presently Thurnau Professor of Dance at University of Michigan; he performed with the Graham Company from 1973-87 and was artistic director of the Graham Centenary Festival in 1994, hosted by U-M and University Musical Society. His last company performance was in “Appalachian Spring” at The Library of Congress in 1998. He has set Graham works on companies all over the world.

June 19:
I find myself typing on my laptop, early morning sun warming my back, while sitting in my car outside the Dance Center at 6:40 a.m., on our last Thursday at Skidmore. I think of the Talking Heads lines, “Watching the days go by…”, and “How did I get here?” The pool opens in 20 minutes. Take me to the water. Perhaps my restlessness stems from the accumulation of evening showings, tonight’s student composition show, the anticipation of the final days, the big wind-up…with no time for a wind-down or celebratory resting on the collective laurels. Martha’s blessing and curse? Yesterday, we blocked out the entire Act 1 of Clytemnestra, as dancers aired their roles in the light of day for the first time. How amazing to witness these beautiful dancers! How well I remember that solitary, hermetic, process of learning a new role—hours in front of a TV monitor, picking up movement from low-resolution images of a past Orestes or Oedipus, re-composing in one’s own muscle memory the outlines of the moving form, then filling them in before the mirror, a step at a time.

I was reminded of the outrageous hubris of this endeavor–tempered by a reverence for the efforts of past performers and for Martha’s genius, the years of discipline and practice, and the limits of the human body to absorb only so much before exhaustion or injury temporarily overwhelm the effort. Company dancers rise and fall; injuries have plagued the cast for the past few weeks. Rehearsal directors negotiate a delicate balancing act of scheduling, casting, and protective ploys to preserve and maintain the ranks. I remember Linda Hodes in particular, watching over my generation of dancers, gently assuring us with her matter-of-fact, worldly-wise attitude. I recall the long tours, the classes in strange studios along the way, or preparations for a New York season, and visits to massage therapists, acupuncturists, suffering the tears, the terror of the prospect of missing a performance, of forfeiting a career.

Linda talked me off the ledge shortly before the company’s 1975 season at the Helen Hayes. Here was my big chance to shine, sharing the stage with Pearl Lang and Rudolf Nureyev in El Penitente, and my lower back went into spasm, making it impossible to bend over or perform the simplest task much less catch Rudi in my arms sideways as we fell together into my low lunge. That was on the Friday before the Tuesday opening, and I had to fly back to Michigan the next day to stand as best man in my older brother’s wedding before returning for Tuesday’s opening night performance. Linda, always the seasoned Graham veteran, (She’d started in Marthas’ company as a teenager.) and inveterate New Yorker, calmed me down and called Martha, who set me up to see her therapist, Dr. Kagan. I also made appointments to see the famous dance surgeon, Dr. Hamilton, and a favorite dance massage therapist, Ben Benjamin. Diagnoses: STOP dancing Graham. Stop dancing. You have lost all your lumbar curve. You have the lower body of an adult athlete and the upper body of an adolescent, with inadequate strength in between to sustain the imbalance. Eat plenty of potassium: bananas, potato skins! Swim on your back every day.

For the Tuesday opening at the Helen Hayes, I somehow scraped myself off my back to perform. Linda commented after the performance that she’d never see me walk so straight in the processional entrance and interludes. And I did not drop Rudi.

I also immediately joined a health club and started swimming. I ate my bananas and potato skins. I did not stop dancing Graham. Instead, I retrained—returning with a vengeance to the Zina Rommett floor barre I’d learned under Zina’s meticulous attention during a grueling tour with the Limon Company to the Soviet Union in 1973). And I’m still re-training (and swimming and eating potassium-rich foods) at 57.

June 20:
I’m packed and ready to drive west into the setting sun following this afternoon’s final student show. Embrace tiger and return to mountain. In a post-production stupor filled with relief and disbelief, Jaki and I sat in our apartment last night and paused to ponder the breadth and depth of work accomplished in three short weeks. Is it that the field demands a multi-dimensional approach to educating young dancers? Or did we set our sights so high to compete with the other terrific summer intensives and meet their standard?

Janet exclaimed at last night’s showing that, although it was her mission in this workshop to embrace media and new forms of dissemination and accessibility, she had no idea we’d be able to take it this far. It was impressive: both open rehearsal and student showing had been streamed live via Internet. The students had not only made their own choreographic signatures in real time; they’d produced their own screen versions. Split into five groups, they had learned sections of Clytemnestra and made their own “new grooves”, re-contextualizing the Name-Callings—Helen of Troy, Paris, Iphigenia, Electra and Cassandra—into their own 21st century readings. Jaki played VeeJay and mixed a fabulous montage of student video studies projected behind the dancing. Student screendances made over the past few weeks were presented, and the full 37-member cast of Panorama reprised last week’s performance, followed by Virginie Mecene’s setting of the opening of The Maple Leaf Rag.

I’ll have plenty of time for further mental de-briefing on the long drive to Buffalo tonight. A stay at a Red Roof Inn, and onward to Ann Arbor tomorrow morning… There is a Paul Taylor Summer Dance Intensive taking place at University of Michigan this week and next; The Children of Martha (sounds like a religious cult) are everywhere! Paul actually played Aegisthus to Martha’s Clytemnestra, NOT her son. So I hold rights to “Son of Clytemnestra”—along with all those of the exclusive cult who have danced Orestes. Alas, what a bloody fate! Redemption? Somehow, I’m feeling a karmic cycle has played itself out and we are ushering in a new age for Martha and her offspring. If this three weeks has been any indication, the new approach is characterized by a more open investigation and acknowledgment of the timelessness of the work. Students of all levels are being given access from multiple vantage points, and the company experiences a full-out reconstruction of Martha’s most epic work—culled from various versions and led by two company members of the pivotal “TV generation”. (Janet and I learned our roles while the originators were still dancing them, and we reshaped those roles as part of Martha’s reconstruction for PSB in 1979.) The bridging has begun, and we by no means are the originators of this effort.

Every successive cast, every artistic director, every rehearsal director, every technical staff, every board member… the names of contributors from the past 50 years are too numerous to mention. Perhaps we will live to see a grand reunion, setting differences aside. The Greeks appealed to Apollo and Athena. The passion of Martha has always demanded fierce allegiance, making betrayals, intrigues and exiles—self-imposed and otherwise–a commonplace phenomenon. In the end, the work, the technique, and the vision will have to carry the day. We are all mere instruments of a dominion of dance. We embody this and give it unique life while we can. I am most grateful for this intense but reaffirming reminder of the glory of Graham.

Signing off.
Son of Clytemnestra

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