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Wheeler, f rede rick

SURFACE TO ESSENCE: APPROPRIATION OF THE ORIENT BY MODERN

The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1934

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University Microfilms International

SURFACE TO ESSENCE: APPROPRIATTGN

CF THE ORIENT BY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State university

By

Mark Frederick Wheeler, A.B., M.S., A.M.

*****

The Ohio State University

1984

Reading Ccnmittee: j%)roved By

Dr. Angelika Gerbes

Dr. Seymour Kleinman

Dr. Barioara Ifelson Adviser / Dr. Daryl Siedentop Depa; 'xt of Physiol Education Cc^Ycight by Mark Frederick Wheeler 1984 Blis vork is dedicated to Jan and to my first - and best - teachers, Frieda Wheeler and the late Fred J. Wheeler.

11 AŒNOMIŒGMENTS

I wish, to thank the members of my reading cortinit±ee - Professors

Angelika Gerbes, Seymour Kleinman, Barbara Nelson, and Daryl

Siedentop - for their interest and time, and especially ity major adviser. Professor Kleinman, for inspiration and for his open, yet firm guidance. I thank my friend and colleague. Professor Ann E. Jewett,

University of , for her encouragenent and concrete support for this wcrk. I thank Mrs. Brenda Arnold, Mrs. Judy Mitchell,

Mrs. Donna Sanders and Mr. Gene Turner, University of Georgia, who have been so supportive in their preparation of the manuscript and photogr^hic plates. And I thank Professor Jewett and Professor

Anita A. Aldrich, Indiana University, for treating as a given the

"fact" that I one day must earn a Ph.D.

n x vniA.

February 2, 1949. B o m - Springfield, Missouri

1971...... A.B., Indiana University, Bloaningtcn, Indiana

1974-1976 . . . . Associate Instructor, Modem Dance Program and Coiparative Literature Department, Indiana Itoiversity, Bloomington, Indiana

1976 ...... M.S., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

1976-1978 . . . . Instructor, D^sartment of Dance, Univer­ sity of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

1977 ...... A.M., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

1980-1981 . . . . Visiting Lecturer, Modem Dance Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

1981- ...... Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Dance, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

PÜBLICATICNS

"The Spectacle of the Body: As Education." Journal of Physical Education and Recreation. Vol. 49, No. 5 (May 1977). R^rinted in Dance Dynamics, Washington, D.C.: National Dance Association, 1378.

"Aesthetics and Children: Movenent-Inspired Studies in the Inter- relatedless of the Arts." Aesthetics and Dance. Reston, Virginia: National Dance Association, 1980.

"Sexual Response and the Graham Contraction." Sexuality and Dance. Reston Virginia: National Dance Association, 1981.

Self, Examined" in Religion and Dance. Reston; Virginia: National Dance Association, 1982.

IV TMBTE OF CONTENTS

Page aCKNOMIEDGMENIS...... ill

VIOA ...... iv

LIST CF FIGURES...... vii

LIST OF PLATES ...... viii

INTRODUCTION...... 1

Chapter

I. THE ORIENT...... 7

Introduction...... 7 Religion and Philosophy of the E a s t ...... 10 Oriental Paths to Mindr-Bo<^ Integration...... 28 The East/West Dichotomy...... 42

II. MODERN DANCE...... 49

Introduction...... 49 ...... 51 The Modem Dance/ Diohotcny...... 59

III. SURFACE APPROPRIATICaî...... 6 8

East Meets West: 1784-1912 ...... 68 Ruth St. Denis...... 84 Denishawn...... 89 St. Denis: La îferi and Jack Co l e ...... 95

IV. SURFACE TO ESSENCE...... 104

Martha Graham: Early Career Profile...... 104 East Meets Vfest: 1912-1946 ...... 113 ffertta Graham: Technique...... 138 : Theatre Aesthetic...... 178 Progressive Education and Dance Education...... 184 Ch^xter Page

V. EXPIÛRING 1HE ESSENCE...... 193

East Meets Wfest: 1947-1965...... 193 Iferœ Cunninÿiam: Theatre Aesthetic...... 201 Ann Halprin: 3irprovisatim...... 213 Post-M3d e m Dance...... 216 : Technique...... 226 Erick Havdiins: Theatre Aesthetic...... 239 The East/Wtest and M o d e m Dance/Ballet Dichotcmies. . . 246

VI. ASSIMELATINS THE ESSENCE ...... 250

East Ifeets Vfest: 1966-1984...... 250 Contact Inprovisaticn ...... 263 Ddxxrah H^'s Circle ...... 270 Bcxfy Therapies: Body/Mind Centering...... 274 Oonclusicn...... 286

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 289

VI LIST OF FIGÜRES

Figure Page

1. The T'ai-chi T'u, or "Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate". . . 20

2. One of sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching or Book of Changes 22

VXi LIST OF FIATES

Plate Page

I. Padmakosa hand (lotus bud) ; drawing in 1917 and 1936 editions of Cocmaraswaity's translation of the Abhin^a Carpana of Nandikesvara...... 147

II. "Graham hand" in Martha Graham's "Primi-tive I^steries" (1931)...... 147

III. Danseuse in Buddhist frieze at Borobodur, Java, eighth century, A.D.; plate in 1917 and 1936 edi-ticns of Coamaraswany's transla-tion of the Abhinaya Darpana of Ij&ndiskevara...... 148

IV. Ifertha Graham in her solo "Imperial Gesture" (1935) . . . 149

V. cL K. Saroja in the Bharata Natyam Kirtanam "Kalai Thooki," a sacred song addressed to lord Shiva...... 150

VI. Indrani in a posture based on the classical Karanas, a fundamental movement in Orissi, dance of Tnt^ia. . . . 1 5 1

VII. Scene from îfartha Graham's "Eirfaattled Garden" (1958). . . 151

VIII. Xsnia Zarina in posture of the King of Lasem in the Legong, dance of B ali ...... 152

IX. The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, copper figure in îfedras Museum, fifteentdi century; plate in 1917 and 1936 editions of Coomaraswany's translaticn of the Abhinaya Darpana of Ifendiskevara...... 152

X. M. K. Saroja in the Bharata Natyam Kirtanum "Kalai Thooki," a sacred song addressed to Lord Shiva; posture signifies: "0 Lord! Who danceth with one leg raised"...... 153

XI. Balinese Baris P e n d e t ...... 153

XII. Sitting fourth position of Graham -technique...... 154

XIII. Flying figure in frieze panel of Duladeo tertple in Khajuraho (), eleventh centairy A.D...... 154

viii Plate Page

XTv. %enia Zarina as A^>aras of Angkor Vat; in flying position...... 155

JW. Dancer in the troiçe of Princess Say Sang Van (Phncm Penh, ) in flying attitude...... 155

XVI. Princes rehearsing the tayoungan (ceremonial walk) of the Wayang Wang of Java ...... 156

JWII. Princes rehearsing the Javanese Wayang Wang...... 157

W i n . Graham floor exercise for leg flexibility and center straigth...... 158

XIX. Mrinalini Sarabhai in pose in Mahini Atam, technique based on the Kathakali mode of Kerala (India)...... 159

XX. Tbnic-reflex lunge ending Graham standing turns around the back...... 160

XXI. Position in Graham "spiral opening" technique e x e r c i s e ...... 161

XXII. M. K. Saroja in the Bharata Ifetyam Kirtanum "Kalai Ihooki.," a sacred song addressed to Lord Shi v a ...... 161

XXIII. ffetteo teaching Bharata Natyam at 's School of Performing Arts in 1967...... 162

XXIV. KurukuUa, Nepalese copper figure, c. sixteenth century; rçper hands in position of shooting an arrow...... 163

XW. Martha Graham in her "Three Poems of the East" (1926) . . . 163

XXVI. Martha Graham's "Seraphic Dialogue" (1955)...... 164

XXVII. Xfenia Zarina in posture of the Queen mourning in the legong, dance of B a l i ...... 165

XXVIII. Martha Graham in unidentified piece in the 1920's ...... 165

XXIX. -derived spiraling action of arms and torso initiating a turn...... 166

XXX. Spiraled angularity in scene from îfertha Graham's "Alcestis" (1960)...... 167

IX Plate Page

300Œ. "Simple Spiral" exercise of the Graham technique; spiraling of the torso initiated by a pulling back of the right thigh socket...... 168

Dorothy M. Larcher, E. Weyhe Art Books, Plate I; Barbara Morgan, A m o Press of ühe New Yoric Times. Plate H ; Victor Goloubew, E. Weyhe Art Books, Plates III and IX; Paul Hansen, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Plate IV; Mohan Khokar, D. B. Tbraporevala Sons and Co., Plates V, X, XIX, and XXII; H. Rahman, D. B. Qbraporevala Sons and Co., Plate VI; ^^rtha Swope, Alfred A. Kiopf, Plates VII, XJWI, and XXX; Seamo of Mexico, Crcwn Publishers, Plates VIII, XIV, and XXVII; Walter Spies, Faber and Faber, Ltd., Plate XI; Gene ïümer. Plates XII, XVHI, XX, XXI, XXIX and XXXI; Shri Vatsyayan, S. H. Sangrett, Ifetak Akademi, Plate XXIII; X^iia Zarina, Crown Publishers, Plates XV, XVI, and XVII; Victoria Beller, Dance Magazine, Plate XXIII; Ananda K. Cocmaraswairy, E. Weyhe Art Books, Plate XXIV; Nicholas Muray, Dance Collection of Arthur Ibdd, Plate XXV; Dance Collection, New York Public Library, Plate XXVEH. INTRODUCTION

This study surveys the appropriation by modem dance of many facets of the Eastern world. One could question the scholarly advisability of undertaking a survey of the influence of so broad a source upon an artform as diverse as modem dance. Certainly the topic is large, and the broadly-based treatment to be called for in this introduction oould be view^ as ambitious. But one questioning the feasibility of such a task must be reminded of profound unities within the breadth and diversily of both the Orient and modem dance; the great "unity of diversity" exhibited by both the source and receiver of influence in this survey renders it manageable. In defining the Orient and modem dance- Chapters One and TWo present those overriding unities - within the cultures of Asia and within the conception and practice of modem dance - vhich inspire, facilitate, and make legitimate this study.

Among the specific elenents of the Orient to be observed as influencing modem dance directly or indirectly are judo; karate; t'ai chi ch’uan; the Bharata Natyam school of Indian dance; the

Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching; the dance of Bali; Chinese medical concepts of energy flew between meridians; ancient Indian sculpture; the totality of the yin and the yang; the Kabuki and Nbh theatres of Japan; and a Zen-based aesthetic. Observed will be

^jpropriation of the Orient by over a dozen modem dance artists in

1 2 the areas of movement style; theatre aesthetics; body awareness and human potential; musical acccrcpaniment; and scenic design. Certainly the wide variation in dance activity influenced by seme element of

Asian culture raises the question of how to organize material.

Should material be organized into c h e e r s on separate Asian cultures, bringing into one chapter, for instance, Ruth St. Denis' appropri­ ation of Indian nysticism. Jack Cole's adaptation of Hindu Bharata

Natyam, and both Martha Graham and Erick HavMns' -related attention to breathing and floor postures? Or should material be organized according to the facets of modem dance in viiich Eastern influence is observed, with separate chapters on movanent style, thea-tre aesthe-tic, body awareness, musical accorpaniment, and scenic design? Or, to cite another possibility, should material be organized chronologically?

A body of theoretdcal literature including a theory guiding influence studies might offer to the writer conceptual models suggesting the most appropriate method of organizing vast amounte of material. Yet the scholarly disciplines of dance history and dance critdLcism are as yet not sufficiently developed to have accumulated enough influence studies or conparative stylistûc analyses from which theore-tical constructs of appropriation or influence might be gleaned. "Influence and Imitation" studies are common, however, in ccnparatûve li-terature, notably in its sub-discipline, "litera-ture and tdie other arts" or "mutual illumination of the arts" (tfechselseitd.ge Erhellung der Kijiste). lb be sure, "Ihe notion of influence must be regarded as virtually

■the key concept in comparative literature studies, since it posits the presence of two distinct and therefore coiparable entities"

(Weisstein, 1973:29). In light of such an observation one should

not be surprised that a perusal of ccnparative literary theory produces specific terms demoting degrees of ^propriation. These concepts offer perspective and methodological direction for this

study and, upon analysis, reveal the most cogent plan of organi­

zation for this stu^.

Parody; burlesque; stylization; adaptation; quotation; hnitation;

conscious, direct influence; and unconscious, indirect influence

are concepts rising from a review of influence studies and applicable

to a discussion of modem dance's appropriation of the East.

Acquaintance with these constructs permits one to see said appro­

priation statining from parody and burlesque; beginning with

stylization; moving through imitation, adaptation, and quotation;

moving to conscious and direct influence pervading a dance artist's

technique and theatre aesthetic; and moving on to indirect, less

conscious influence pervading the tangentially related work of many

artists. A survey of the material amassed for this study, then,

reveals in Oriental influence upon modem dance a general trend

away fran surfaœ, vholesale borrowing of Eastem thanes and styles

toward a more enlightened appropriation of the essence of an "otüher"

way to view reality, that of the East. It can be postulated,

therefore, that appropriation of the Orient by modem dance has

moved fron imitation of surface siyle to a prevading influence

of the essence of the East, establishing within modem dance a cult

of mind-body integration. Thus, out of the search for the appropriate organization of material has oome the major thesis and, with it, the title of this study.

Realization of this "surface to essence" trend and immediate identification of that trend as major thesis of the study demanded a historical, chronological organization of material. Further justification for the type of organization selected is the tendency in Western art toward a cycle of the once loyal student breaking away fron his teacher in revolutionary reaction to the master.

As will be discussed in Chapter iVro, Western art is much subject to change, hence, to influence. A chronological arrangement of material more successfully ccnrnunicates this characteristically Western tendency of artist as innovator, as rebel leaving the conservatory to open himself to inspiration by a traditionally non-conventional source such as sane aspect of Oriental culture. It will be interesting to note influence of the East in both master and rebelling offspring.

A thesis corollary to the major "surface to essence” thesis lies in the fact that due to its progressive, enlightened, nature- based birthri^t fran Isadora Duncan, modem dance has been in a unique position to contribute to the West's increasing sophistication

and authenticity of understanding of the East. Modem dance's origin in Duncan's progressive, back-to-nature platform, with

elenents of dress reform, sensual response to music, sex-role questioning, expression as integrating pursuit, and holistic approach

to well-being has imbued this field of art with a special capability

for disseminating in the West the East's characteristic preference for experience over postulation and for mental and spiritual integration with the physical.

MAJOR THESIS: A "surface to essence" trend is discernible in appropriation of the Orient by modem dance.

OOEDLLARÏ THESIS: Modem dance has been a syirptcsn of and, due to its sotiatic origin, a unique contributor to increased authenticity of the West's gaieral understanding of the East.

Returning to the search for appropriate organization of material, the corollary thesis demands that the study be broad-based in terms of conceptions of the Orient, of modem dance, and of the broader cultural matrix in vhich the Orient and modem dance have met. In conclusion, then, the primary and corollary theses together demand a chronological organization broadly based to include a variety of facets of Oriental culture as sources of appropriat:.on by a wide range of modem dance artists related to a vnde range of contem­ poraneous cultural development in the West. The successful presentation of the primary "surface to essence" thesis and providing

sufficient evidence to support the corollary thesis would permit this study to qualify as a document of interest not only to the dance historian and critic, but also to the student of cultural

history at large.

Tb the author's knowledge there exists in the literature no

attempt at a ccnprehensive survey of the ongoing affinities, stylistic

and jhilosophical, between modem dance and the Eastem world.

Walter Sorell's "Notes fran the Zurich Diary: EastAfest" (1981) 6 notes that continuous influence of the East in the work of St. Denis,

Havdcins, and particularly. But the nine page essay, excellent as it is, is not intended to be the exhaustive, thesis- bearing work attempted here. CHAPTER ONE

Ttie Orient

Introduction

Eastem influence upon modem dance, due to the nature of dance as both personal experience and visual aesthetic phenomenon, has been philosophical, stylistic, and subject to synthesis. And. in its openness to influence and seeking after synthesis, modem dance shc%;s itself to be very Vfestem.

An Asian artist uninfluenced the West is fundamentally more interested in perfecting a single gesture transmitted to him by a long line of hereditary teachers than in discovering a nav one, vdiile his counterpart in the West can scarcely wait to escape the conservatory and spread his own wings according to the dictates of his own œnscience (Bowers, 1965:224).

The practice of artists in Asia, at all levels of achievement, studying with their teachers until death begs for ccnparison with modem dance innovators to be observed in this study.

Denishawn was the first systematic and sustained atterrpt to provide in' Vfestem theatre dance a substantive alternative to ballet. It was also the first to find a means of passing the discipline to others. In its cmcept Denishawn was a form of protest. All of the major talents who entered the modem dance field have continued its pattern of protest and reformation (MuDonagh, 1973:38).

Chapter Four will observe Martlia Graham's rebellion against the of Denishawn, and Chapter Five will reveal that Cunningham

and Haw-dns rebelled against, respectively, the theatre aesthetic

and technique of Graham. It will be observed in discussion of these 7 8 individuals that seme Eastern overtones transmitted fcon master to studait ranained in the latter innovator's work and sate aspects of the East appropriated hy the innovating artist were otherwise transmitted to him.

This tendency toward artistic rebellion, observed in Vfestem art in general and exhibited by these and other modem dance artists, is institutionalized in the dance department curriculum vbich has evolved since college and university dance programs began to flourish in the nineteen thirties. The standard academic dance program provides contact with a broad range of movement forms or movement experiences.

Such curricular practice is grounded in the pedagogical faith that, fran exposure to a breadth of movement dynamics the student dancer will derive a catholic movanent vocabulary fran vbich will snerge - in the crucible of movement exploration and catposition studies - sanething new. "The 'tradition of the new' demands that every dancer be a potential choreographer" (Banes,.1979:5). And as will be observed in the following chapters, much that is new, perennially "modem" in modem dance, has been inspired by the perennially constant unities of the East, philosophical and stylistic, presented in this chapter. "The originality so prized in the West is not a characteristic of Asia in general, vhose greatness obviously lies elsehere" (Bcwers, 1956:224).

That vhich consistentd.y presents itself as being different fran one's own culture is held to be exotâc and holds allure for its very novelty. And the East has always represented for the Vfest an exotic

"other." Since long before Marco Polo (1254-1323?) spent twenty-four years traveling through Asia and at the court of Kubla Khan, the

Oriental world has been perceived ly Vfestemers as a world apart. a different vrorld of spice, silk, and unique style. That the

initial influence of the East on Atterican dance was stylistic

should offer no surprise, for that is as it has been with the

meeting of East and Vfest generally. Surely the Vfest was initially

more interested in the stoff of the Orient, with its materials and

, with the arrangement of materials resulting in a style, than with

its systems of thouÿit or its peroration of the human body. The

vrord "Indies'' "referred to the vdiole area (Asia), conjuring up a

picture of riches, panoply and Asiatic spender" (Bowers, 1956:6).

The quest for that other vrorld of style was responsible for the

discovery of the New West, as Christopher Columbus, sailing westward

in search of the East, stumbled on to America before he had reached

the exotic Indian riches of many a Spaniard's dreams.

With regard to perception, the combined cultural effects of a

% s t e m quest for the East is stated succinctly in Rudyard 's

"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" (Kim,

1914). Certainly the Vfest's historical quest for the East and the

ïfest's perception of the marked differences between the cultures of

the eastern and vrostem hemispheres have tended to unify the cultures

of the East in Wfestem perception. But there exist more objective

reasons for viewing the various cultures of the East collectively.

Contributing to the West's perception of the Orient as a unified

other vrorld are actual religious, philosophical, and aesthetic

ccnnDnalities shared among Eastern cultures. 10

Thus, to specify the philosophical and religious differences entering into the constitution of the cultures of the East is at the same time to possess inesc^able interconnections and identities. It is the unity provided hy these essaitial relations and identities vhich merge the cultures of the Oriental Countries into one traditional culture of the Far East (Northrcç, 1946:313).

These basic cultural ccramonalities, in turn, are expressed in the

theatre forms of Asia:

There is a kind of uniformity in motivation, in aim, in style, in execution of dance and drama vdiich connects it all together and makes it "Asian" theatre rather than European, African, or anything else (Bowers, 1956:4).

It is pertinent for this study to investigate the characteristics of Oriental culture which have procrpted numerous voicings of the opinions just cited and vhich have pratpted appropriations of the

Orient by modem dance artists. Such an investigation is pertinent,

for surely modem dance artists' recognition of the unities within

the East have permitted sinplified notions of Oriental style and

consciousness, thus encouraging appropriation. But to what can one

attribute these unities so vndely noted by scholars and partially

accounting for the extent to which the East has influenced modem dance? To answer this question is to observe India as the comer stone of Oriental culture.

Religion and Philosophy of the East

Ancient India's inpact on the rest of Asia has been described as

"one of the most powerful exertions of cultural and religious influence

in world history" (Bowers, 1956:4). A religious and philosophical

survey of the East will reveal "Mother India's" all pervading

influence on, for our purpose here, the cultures of , Bali, 11 and Japan. The reader will be guided in the following survey if it is stated rather broadly at the outset that Buddhism grew out of

Hindu India and that once in China, Buddhian merged with Taoism to form the religious and philosophical system vdiLch caite to flourish in

J^an, Zen Buddhism. The following examination of Hinduism, Buddhism,

Taoism, and Zen Buddhian will discuss the specific relationships betsœen the great religions of the East and will reveal vàiy these countries are sometimes referred to as "Greater India." Ihis survey of thought and a subsequent discussion of the cultural components supporting such thought will oonstitute this study's definition of

"the Orient."

Hinduism

While it was the proselytizing spread of Buddhism out of India beginning in the sixth century B.C. v^ c h thrust Indian culture as far north as China and Japan and as far east as the farther islands of Indonesia, the origin of the "other" culture of the East lies in

Hinduism. The oldest sections of the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of Hinduism, were written around 1500 B.C. The basis of Hinduism

is the belief that the multitude of things and events around an individual are but different manifestations of the sarte ultimate

reality, called Brahman. Identified as the inner essence of all

things. Brahman cannot be oortprehended by the intellect nor can

verbal description convey its meaning. "Inccxrprehensible is that

supreme Soul, unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, unthinkable''

(Maitri Upanishad, 6.17 in Hume, 1931:435). This statement hints at

the origin of the East's preoccupation with the totality of things 12 and is an ancient exartple of the Orient's discounting of intellectual reasoning as a road to understanding or enlightenment.

While Brahman defies description, man's basic need to cannunicate

regarding reality led Hindu sages to break Brahtian down into various

aspects, and to identify those aspects as individual gods. The Vedic

scriptures specify clearly that these numerous gods, among than Shiva, Krishna, Vishnu and the Divine Mother, are but reflections of one

ultimate reality.

This that people say, "worship this god I Worship that god! - one after another - this is his (Brahman's) creation indeed! And he himself is all the gods (Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.6 in Hume, 1931:82).

The Hindu leams of Brahman and of its ccmpcsite gods fron two

broad sources, the Vedas and the epic tales which are communicated

through the various traditional arts of India. The Vedas are

collections of ancient scriptures, the writings of anonymous Hindu

sages sometimes referred to as the Vedic seers. Written in India's

sacred language, Sanscrit, probably between 1500 and 500 B.C., the

four Vedas are recognized as the spiritual source of Hinduism. The

latter section of each Veda, collectively the Upanishads, provides

philosophical and practical comnentary upon the more ancient Vedic

hymns and prayers vÆiich catprise the first section of each Veda. But

the teachings of Hinduism reach the Indian masses through the vast

network of brightly exotic Indian itythology told in sculpture, drama,

dance, and in popular tales collected in huge literary epics. The

Bhagavad Gita, India's favorite religious text, is found in one of

these epics, the Mahabharata. 13 The recurring theme in Hindu nythology is the creation of the world the self-sacrifice of God. In Lila, the play of God, the

Divine becomes the world and, again, the Divine. In the typically magical myth of Lila, the personified Brahman the magician - with his

"magic creative power" or maya - transforms himself into the world.

All forms of nature, therefore, are viewed as ever-changing maya, motivated by karma, the d^Tiamic force behind the divine play, i.e., the dynamically interconnected universe. While Buddhism would come to esglore the psi'chological ramifications of the concepts of maya and karma, the Gita, as the Bhagavad Gita is comnonly called, reminds one that the idea of the importance of living in harmony with one's environment had its origin in Hinduisn.

All actions take place in time by the interweaving of the forces of nature, but the man lost in selfish delusion thinks that he himself is the actor (Bhagavad Gita, 3.27-28 in Mascara, 1970).

To be free from the spell of maya, to break the bonds of karma means to realize that all the phenomena we perceive with our senses are part of the same reality. It means to experience, concretely and personally, that everything, including our own self, is Brahman (Capra, 1975:89).

Again, there are various paths through vhich one can experience

Brahman. In all of the arts transmitting Hindu mystical belief through depiction of nythology, the artist, having attained a state of transcendental calm due to full experiencing of Brahman, attaipts to present "through age-old symbols the spectrum of life only to re-create a similar state of being in the reader or spectator, a state in vhich the latter could experience, however transitorily, the pure bliss (ananda) of art" (Vatsyanyan, 1968:6). This view of art and its religious function emerged as the aesthetic theory of rasa. 14

and it is the close adherence to this theory v^iich results in an

underlying unity to the Indian arts.

The physically and mentally integrating discipline of yoga

is another of the paths offered by Hinduism for liberation frcm maya, that illusion of viewing realil^ through man's abstracting,

categorizing mind. Meaning "to yoke" or "to join," yoga functions

to join the individual soul with Brahman. Anong the concepts, rituals,

and spiritual exercises available to the Hindu for the attainment of

enlightenment or total awareness of Brahman, yoga, with its sharing

of a spiritual function with a decidedly physical discipline, has no

counterpart in Western religious or philosophical tradition. Hinduism's

respect for or sanctioning of the body and the sense data perceived

through the body is further evidenced in the fact that pleasures of

the flesh have never been supressed in Hinduism. To the contrary,

erotic mysticism is evident in Hindu tales told in vords, stone, and

dance movement.

As a man, viien in the embrace of a beloved wife, knows nothing within or without, so this person, when in the embrace of the intelligent Soul, knows nothing within or without (Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 4.3.21 in Hume, 1931:136).

No less than Brahman, then, shares a simile with the physical act of

love, for "in Hinduism the physical and sensuous side of human

nature . . . is a fully integrated part of the Divine" (Capra,

1975:90).

This study finds in Hinduism the Orient's oldest and, due to

the extent and degree of Indian influence in all of Asia, most

influential systematic statement of the religious and philosophical

worth of sense data. It is aliveness to sense data, to vhat Northrop 15 in his monumental Ihe Meeting of East and Vfest (1946) refers to as

"the aesthetic ccitponeit of experience," and the realization that man himself is pure sense data c^jable of merging with the viicle, viiich permits the Hindu to truly perceive Brahman and ^ ^ c h permits Atman, or Brahman, to be manifested in the human soul. Hinduism, a socio­ religious system vÆiich considers the body an integral part of the human being and not separated fron the spirit, and vhich considers that integrated human being capable of attaining a perceivable harmony with his environment, pervades the culture of India. It was a culture rooted in such a system in vhich Siddhartha Gautama, the historic Buddha, lived, meditated, and taught. And through the evangelical thrust of Buddhian, Indian culture influenced the religion, philosophy, and art of all of Asia.

Buddhian

In India in the middle of the sixth century B.C. Siddhartha

Gautama, the historic Buddha, offered a psychological interpretation to such traditional Hindu concepts of maya, karma, and nirvana.

Differing frcm the cosmological slant of Hinduism, Buddha's statenents about the vrorld were confined to a recurring emphasis on the inpermanence of "things" and the surety of flux, and on the psychological, spiritual peace (nirvana) to be experienced through acute awareness of this basic characteristic of existence.

The vrord "Buddha" means "The Awakened" referring to the nystical experience of Siddhartha Gautama one night after seven years in ascetic isolation. Sitting in meditation under the now celebrated

Bodhi tree Brddha experienced "unexcelled, carplete awakening," 16 receiving clarification of all prior questions regarding existence.

Following his awakening Buddha returned to the forest, preaching his doctrine to those with vdrrn he had spent years in self-iirposed exile.

Buddha's teaching was organized into the Four Noble Truths.

First Noble Truth Suffering or frustration (Duhkha), the chief characteristic of the human condition, results from difficulty in accepting the most basic fact of life, i±ie fact that "All things arise and pass away" (Dhammapada in Mascara, 1973:113). Buddha's etphasis on this point established at the root of Buddhism the notion

of flow and change as a basic featnire of nature. "Suffering arises,

in the Buddhist view, whenever ve resist the flow of life and try to

clina to fixed forms vhich are called maya, whether they are things,

events, people, or ideas" (Capra, 1975:95).

Second Noble Truth The cause of suffering is txishna, the

clinging to life based on a faulty point of view. Out of ignorance

or lack of awareness of the fluid totality of all forms of reality,

one perceives as individual and separate those things vhich are, in

fact, -transient and ever-changing. This mistaken perception résulta

in a perpetual cycle of action and questioning, known in Buddhism as

samsara. This frustration-generating cycle is propelled by the

endless law of cause and effect, Buddha's conception of karma.

Third Noble Truth It is possible to overccme samsara, to be free

of karma and to attain a state of total libera-tion called nirvana. In

this state of consciousness, like moksha in Hinduism and being "one

vn.-th the Tao" in Taoism, the onaiess of all existence is a constant 17

sensation. "Do reach nirvana is to reach total awakening, coirplete

"aliveness," or Buddhahood.

Fourth Noble Truth Here Buddha offers the Eightfold Path, a plan for reaching enlightenmait or Buddhahood. The first tsro of the path's eight sections deal with right seeing and right knowing, with the prerequisite perception of the human condition as outlined in the first three Noble Truths. The next four sections of the Eightfold

Path deal with right action, i.e., with rules for the Buddhist way of

life, a Middle Way betsæen opposite extremes. The last two sections deal with right awareness and right meditation, describing the final

Buddhist goal of direct mystical e^gerience of reality, like that the

historic Buddha had under the Bodhi tree.

■ Following Buddha's death two main schools of Buddhism developed.

The Hinayana, or Small Vehicle, is the more orthodox school, closely

following the letter of Buddha's teaching. Following Buddha's death

prcminent Buddhist monks held Great Oouncils during which Buddha's

teachings were recited aloud and interpreted. At the fourth of these

councils meeting in the first century A.D., doctrine passed on orally

for over five hundred years was recorded in written form. This Pali

Canon (written in the Pali language) forms the basis of the Hinayana

School.

The Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, is a more flexible system giving

less attention to the specifics of Buddha's doctrine than to seeking

nav applications of the spirit of the doctrine. Based on the sutras,

scriptures written in Sanscrit one to two centuries after the Pali

Canon was set down, the Mahayana has become the more inportant of the 18 tsJD schools. Its relative flexibility has permitted the various cultures of Asia to interpret Buddhist doctrine from their own points of view.

Among the fundamental concepts set down by the historic Buddha and illuminated by leaders of the Mahayana School are those of

"Suchness" (tathata) and "void" or "emptiness" (sunyata). Both of these concepts are related to the distrust of the conceptualizing process, a distrust prcminent in Buddhism and a recurring theme in all Oriental religion and philosophy. Reality cannot be grasped by means of ideas and concepts and is ultimately, therefore, an inccmr- prehensible void. When an individual acknowledges the futility of conceptual thinking, he is free to esqjerience real!by as pure suchness. The Maha^^ana School describes the nature of all things also as Dharmakaya, the "Body of Being. " Dharmakaya is similar to

Hinduism's Brahman. Pervading the material universe and manifesting itself in the human mind as enlightened wisdom (bodhi), Buddhism's

"Body of Being" is at the same time spiritual and physical.

Taoism and Chinese Thought

Centuries before Buddhism reached China in the first century

A.D. there had developed two opposing yet ccsnplonentary trends in

Chinese thou^t. By the sixth century B.C. these aspects of Chinese philosophy had developed into two distinct philosophical schools,

Confucianian and Taoian. Confucianism was the philosophy of social organization, concerned with moral values, society, and government.

As it is the nature-based, mystical aspects of the Eastern world which set it off frcm the Wèst and vhich have so influenced modem 19 dance, Taoism rather than Confucianism will be of more interest to

this stu!^. But despite the fact that Confucianian will be discussed

in less detail, considerable attention must be paid to aspects of

traditional Chinese culture, including seme frcm Confucianism. The

central aspects of Chinese culture to be observed below infuse the philosc^hy of Taoism vdiich has cone to crystalize so succinctly a worldview differing from that of the Vfest, a worldview variously appropriated by modem dance.

Like the Hindus and Buddhists of India, the Chinese believed that an ultimate reality unifies the multiple phenatena we observe.

And like Brahman or Dharmakaya this reality, called the Tao or the

Way, is characterized by ceaseless change. It is perhaps more than anything else the Chinese attention to the nature of this ceaseless change vSiich at once helps to unify an Eastern worldview and vhich

facilitates the relating of that worldview to modem Westem thought,

from physics to art. Ancient Chinese sages' intuitive observation of nature offered realization of and insight into the fact that trans­

formation and change are essential aspects of nature. Their concem with the changing Tao led to the observation that there are patterns within change. With the enlightened realization that any pair of opposites constitutes a totality, pattems of change were observable.

Attention to these pattems enables man to live in harmony with nature,

to beccme "one with the Tao."

The most basic essence of the Tao, then, is the cyclic nature of

its endless notion of change. This idea was given structure in the

concept of the yin and the yang, polar opposites coitprising a totality.

"Life", says Chuang Tzu," is the blended harmony of the yin and the 20 yang" (Chuang Tzu, 1971:ch.22). The relativity of the two concepts is made clear in their origin: the original meaning of the words yin and yang was that of the shady and sunny sides of a mountain. After generations of perfecting the symbolisn of the oonc^Jt of yin and yang, the concept is the most fundamental of Chinese thought. Yin, originally associated with the earth, is further associated with the dark, receptive, female and maternal element. Yang, originally associated with Heaven, is further associated with the bright, strong, male, and creative element. This most central of concepts in Chinese culture enjoys graphic representation in the T'ai-chi T'u, or

"Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate." The constant interplay of two cxstplementary opposites is represented in this circularly symmetrical, yet dynamic arrangement of the dark yin and the light yang. The dot of the opposite element within each ccmmunicates the idea that within each extreme is the seed of its opposite-

9

Figure 1. The T'ai-chi T'u, or "Diagram of the Sxçreme Ultimate" 21 The Chinese attention to change and to the polar opposites

represented by the yin and the yang is carried over into matters of

health (Estrin, 1980), The body is divided into yin and yang parts, with a proper balance of yin and yang elements the determinant of

physical and nental health. This balance is maintained by the flew

of chi, or vital energy. Chi flows along pathways referred to as

meridians. Ihe various meridians constitute the points to which

acupuncture and acupressure are applied ^Aen an unhealthy state

indicates a blocked flew of chi. Ihis blockage has resulted in an

imbalance of the yin and the yang. In a subsequent discussion of

Eastern movement systems, the application of the energy flew concept

in t'ai chi eh’uan will be observed. Subsequent chapters will note

the relationship of the Chinese chi system (ki in Japanese) to energy

flew imagery in modem dance training-

The Chinese became more specific in their observatiai of the

yin and yang components of the Tao, specifying arrangorents of yin

and yang elements and organizing then into a massive systen

representing pattems of change. This system is contained in the

I Ching or Book of Changes, the first among the six Confucian

Classics. One of the most inportant books in the world, the I Ching

takes as its starting point the sixty-four hexagrams representing

pattems of the changing Tao in nature and human events. Each

hexagram consists of six lines vhieh may be either broken (yin) or

unbroken (yang), the number of possible cembinations of broken and

unbroken lines being sixty-four. 22

Figure 2. Cne of sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching or Book of Changes

In addition to the hexagrams the ^ Ching oontains textual material interpreting their meaning for present and future situations.

In the case of divination or decision-making, a ritual using fifty yarrow sticks determines vSiich hexagram diould be consulted for an individual situation at a given mcnent. The following passage frcm the ^ Ching communicates the East's underlying vision of organic change, a vision vdiich has entered the modem dance sensibility.

The Changes is a book Fron vbich one may not hold aloof. Its tao is forever changing - Alteration, movement without rest. Flowing through the six places. Rising and sinking without fixed law. Firm and yielding transform each other. They cannot be confined within a rule. It is only change that is at work here (Wilhelm, 1967:348). The philosophy of Taoism has come to anbody the central tenets of Chinese culture just presented. The most cogent tenets of Taoism, certainly ccnplementary, are a mistrust of reason as a means of grasping the Tao and a reliance upcn observation of nature, ccmbined with irystical intuition, as means of learning the Tao. This stance places Taoism in contrast with Westem philosophical tradition, the 23 very cornerstone of viiich is the process of deductive reasoning. The

Taoist viewpoint is ccmnunicated in a body of rich literature.

The oldest classic of Taoist literature is kncwn in the West as Tao Te Ching/ the Classic of the Way and Power. While the authorship and origin of the work are as vague and nystic as is the

Tao itself, most recent scholarship would have the work, referred to in China as the Lao Tzu, written about the fifth to sixth century

B.C. by Lao Tzu (Old Master). Lao Tzu, vb o s e name is almost synonymous with Taoism, was b o m around twenty years before Confucius.

Chuang Tzu, a contemporary of Lao Tzu, provided a second classic of

Thoist philosophy in the Wbrks of Chuang Tzu. Each of these sources, and particularly the Tao Te Ching, is written in a paradoxical style and owes much to the concrete imagery of the Chinese language for its powerfully poetic quality.

Ihe anti-rationalist stance of Taoian is best understood in the light of Confucianism, its oaiplsnentary counterpart in Chinese culture. The contrast between Taoism and Confucianism is relevant to the East/Wfest dichotomy, and therefore to the m o d e m dance/ballet dichototy discussed in Chapter Two. The Confucianist term Jen, vhich embodies the central theme of Confucianist thought,is often translated as "love," "fellow feeling," or "man-to-man-ness.

Mencius, (3713-289? B.C. ), cottnonly referred to as the Plato of

China, claims that "Jen is the mind of man. "

It (Jen) is the rational nature of man, the conscious ability of discrimination and determinism of things. The entire system of Confucianism is based ipon the pranise of man's rational nature (Chang, 1970:21). 24

Die concept of Jen led Confucianism to create and sanction in society positions of siroeriority and inferiority. The end effect of this philosophy of rational differentiation was the imdermining of direct, inmediate "fellow feeling," as it encouraged ratcteness.

"At its worst, Ccxifucianism is a sterile effort to carry out a

^stem" (Chang, 1970:23). The artificiality and coldness that Jen tended to create led Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu to call for abandonment of the concept. Lao Tzu replaced Jen with Tz'u, a form of love not based on rational principles, but arrived at intuitively and unconsciously. "Through Tz'u subject and object are totally and immediately interfused and the self is transformed into selflessness"

(Chang, 1970:23).

Thus, many aspects of Chinese culture infuse the philosophy of

Taoian, as established by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu in the period between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C.. The religious ritualism of Taoism developing in the first century A.D. is not a particular concern here, for it is the philosophy of Taoism, both in its various ejqjressions and in its direct legacy to Zen Buddhism, vhich has come to so succincly crystalize much of the Eastern worldview variously appropriated by modem dance.

Zen

As the least ancient of the Oriental philosophical systems, Zen

Buddhism is a fusion of many aspects of the East. One of over a dozen schools in the Chinese development of the Mahayana, Ch'an touched China around the first century A.D., triggering an inter­ pretation of the historic Buddha's teachings in light of centuries 25 old Chinese thought. Ihe pragamatism of the Chinese sensibility found in the practical side of Indian Buddhism an inspiration for developing the spiritual discipline of Ch'an, usually translated

"meditation." Zen, as Ch'an is translated in Japanese, becaite active in Japan around 1200 A.D.

The enlightenment experience is the goal of Buddhism in general and, for that matter, of all philosophical systems of the Fast. But

Zen concentrates all of its energy on the attainment of enlightenment, or satori. Directing its attention solely toward this quest, disregarding questions of cosmology or teleology, Zen is closely associated with various disciplines through whose practice one cones to know enlightenment. These disciplines, notable for their relation­ ship to everyday life, include flower arrangement, tea ceremony, arts, and meditation or zazen. The significance of such activities to Zen derives fron the Chinese attachment of great importance to practical, everyday life as the proper arena for attaining eilightenmant. "The Chinese masters always stressed that

Ch'uan, or Zen, is our daily experience, the 'everyday mind' as Ma-Tsu proclaimed" (Capra, 1975:123).

H3W WCTidrous this hew itysterious I carry fuel, I draw water (Suzuki, 1959:16)

Zen satori, then, is the inmediate experience of the Buddha nature of

all things, with the irystical tingle of existence experienced in every

practical act.

The significance for Zen of those practical, everyday disciplines

noted above lies in the fact that each provides a path to awareness 26 not to be gained throu^ the operations of reason or language. Both frcm Buddhism and especially frcm Taoisn Zen inherited a distrust of raticxial processes, including language systans; processes of the mind are incapable of ej^ressing the Buddha nature of existence, or the Tao.

"The contradicticai so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking cones frcm the fact that we have to use language to cormunicate our inner eigerience vdxLch in its very nature transcends linguistics" (Suzuki,

1968:239). Whi.le Hinduism employed nythical language to reflect the paradoxical aspects of reality, Buddhian and Taoism emphasize the paradoxes of existence with the illogical, puzzling writing style noted above in the Tao Te Ching. The characteristically Oriental distrust of reason and language, along with a Japanese propensity for offering facts out of context and without explanation, create the unique stance of Zen teaching.

The concepts of "direct pointing" and the practice of the koan are central determinants of the paradoxical stance pervading Zen literature. The oploying of spontaneous words or actions in order to ejpose the absurdities of linear, deductive thought - a practice of Zen masters prevalent in Zen literature - is referred to as

"direct pointing." The most succinct instance of direct pointing is the koan, a nonsensical riddle whose paradoxical content renders it insoluble. A frequently employed koan asks, for example: "VJhat was your original face - the one you had before your parents gave birth to you?" (Capra, 1975:49) Chce the koan has halted the student's thought process, he is open to the non-verbal experience of reality, to awareness of the suchness (tathata) of existence. 27

Certainly cxitplenisntaJY to Zen's distrust of linear, deductive reasoning and language and to its sense of vender in the mundane is an emphasis ■upon, living cne's life naturally and spontaneously.

Buddhism's belief in the perfection of one's original nature, of one's Buddha nature, is felt in Zen's goal of retrieving that original nature through spiritual training. Ihus, "the process of enlightenment consists merely in becoming viiat we already are from the beginning"

(Capra, 1975:124). And inherent in a philosophy seeking awareness of one's original Buddha nature is a certain passivity, receptiveness, and "will-lessness. " For instance, the master in Zen and the Art of

Archery observes:

What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that vhat you do not do yourself will not happen (Herrigel, 1953:51).

Ihe typically Eastern passivity or receptivily following frcsn a less willful state, from vhat has been termed "noMmind," is manifested in the Zen-inspired Japanese arts in the aesthetic of "no-action."

In the Japanese performing and martial arts an absence of bodily irovCTient constitutes an ideal.

Creating a tension between action and no-action, between motion and rest, plays a vital role in all forms of Japanese art. Hew such a tension is created, needless to say, differs frcm one form of art to another. In performing and martial arts vhich involve bodily movement, the artist deliberately resorts to "no-action" in the literal sense of the vord. In fact, mastering the art of controlling one's body and mind at the critical moment of no-action vhen all motion is frozen is generally regarded as a mark of highest artistic achievement. . . . A master artist is one vho, regardless of the artistic medium enployed, is able to convert a state of no-action into one of high drama, full of imagery and suggestion (Koizumi, 1983:1). 28

Descending directly frran the aesthetic of no-action is vixat in the

West might be called a minimalist tendency in the Zen-influenced

Japanese Nbh theatre, haiku poetry, and visual arts. Modem dance

has been influenced by manifestations in these arts of "an artistic

ideal viiich cherishes the eooncny of effort on the part of the artist

in bringing out the maximal effect" (Koizumi, 1983:2).

Suitinary

The survey of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen just ended

reveals the following philosophical, threads running through each:

(1) mistrust of intellectual operations as means of attaining wisdati or enlightenment, (2) attention to the universe of phenomena as an

interrelated totality, and (3) seeking enlightenment, i.e., awareness of the interrelated totality, through physical-maital-spiritual

integration. Certainly tenets (1) and (2) are part of the same

iitpulse and contribute to the meaning of tenet (3).

Oriental Paths to Mind-Body Integration

The genius of the East has consisted of the formulation of a philosophy in terms of the aesthetic catiponent of things and the development of religious and other cultural forms in terms of such

a philosophy. Observations of a unity of Oriental wcrldviev, of a

pan-Eastem concept of "bodymind" are substantiated by the like

concerns of those Oriental cultural forms to be described below.

The ancient Hindus recognized the importance of providing a disciplined,

systematic means for realizing Brahman. Ihe joining of the individual with Brahman was to be provided by various paths, schools, or systems

referred to as "yocra, " frcm the sanscrit yuj meaning "to yoke" or 29

"to join." Providing paths to physical, mental, and spiritual

integration, i.e., "yoking" the one with the all, the body disciplines

to be observed below are all yoga in this broad sense of the term.

As such all are embodiments of the religious and philosophical climate which spawned them.

Observation of the essential similarities between the following

body systems and of their relationship to a broad Eastern philo­

sophical context contributes to the notion of "Greater India" as

a region possessing great cultural unity. More obviously, observation

of these body disciplines is pertinent because of the philosophical,

stylistic, and pedagogical influence they have had upon modem dance.

While instances of specific appropriation of these forms will be

observed in the discussions of individual choreographers to follow,

an introduction to these movement forms and to their similarities is

appropriate in this chapter defining the Orient.

Yoga

As observed above, the word "yoga" means "to yoke" and inplies

union with the universe. Hinduism has four yogic paths, of which

Baja yoga is that characterized by techniques of physical exercise,

meditation, and breathing. It is a branch of Raja, Hatha yoga, which

is practiced most in the West and which is referred to siitply as

"yoga." The fact that the body figures heavily in the East's search

for enlightenment is no more readily evident than in the discipline

of yoga. In yoga, postures or mudras are assumed by the body for

the release of physical tension in order to further the attainment

of a psychic or spiritual state. Of the many mudras •.-.dthin yoga 30 practice, the crossed leg sitting positiai is the most basic. The sitting practice of attending to one's breath is the most fundamental index to a systsn stressing awareness of the mind-body process and developing individual identification with the universe.

The different kinds of breathing exercises practiced ky yogis make up the great art of , the vrord caning from prana (breath) and ayama (pause). The full significance of pranayama, the science of controlled breathing, can be understood only in light of the Hindu conception of breath as a manifestation in man of a cosmic force.

With its concentration on and control of breathing, yoga practice takes on ritual significance. The Vedas stress such ritual to reinforce a micro/macrocoanic relationship between the body and the universe. Fron the Rg-Veda:

The cosmic winds will be "mastered" as breaths, the cosmic skambapillar will be identified with the vertebral column, the "center of the world" will be found in a point (the "heart") or an axis (traversing the cakras) inside the body" (Eliade, 1969:117).

In the practice of Hatha yoga one discovers the concept of kundalini or key energy. While sate discussions of yoga refer to

a branch of yoga termed "kundalini," it appears to be more correct

to conceive of the kundalini concept as originating in the more

sexually-oriented branch of yoga known as Tantric, and to observe

Hatha yoga borrowing the kundal ini concept fron Tantric yoga.

Involved in the kundal ini concept are the chakras or cakras

referred to above, those seven points on the spine through which

the unified mind and body seek to rise to a further unification with a

spiritual realm. The practice of controlled breathing (pranayama) and 31 and striving after kundalini facilitate the fullest potential in micro/ macxocosmic identification prescribed in the Vedas ♦ Yoga is a system based completely on the Eastern principle of mind-body integration, on the interrelationship of health and spiritual happiness.

Hindu Dance and Sculpture

As noted above the cultural influence of India ipon all of

Southeast Asia is deep and wide-ranging. Nbvmere is the hcmogenity of "Greater India" more evident than in the area of classical dance with, of relevance here, the dances of Java and Bali "heavily indebted to ancient Indian dance forms and techniques" (Massey, 1977:23). Due to this pervasive influence the classical dance of these three countries can be grorped together as "Hindu dance," for each can be traced to the earliest book on dance, drama, and music, the

Natya Shastra of Bharata. Variously dated frcm the second century

B.C. to the third century A.D., the Natya Shastra holds the status of holy writ. While the term "Bharata Natyam" means literally "dance according to the principles of Bharata" and may refer to any of the classical dances of India and those of Bali and Java derived fron them, it more frequently refers to a form, almost always danced hy a woman, virLch originated as a solo temple dance and viiich is the form of Hindu dance throughout this century most frequently seen in recital in New York (Abrahams: 1977).

One would expect Hindu dance to carry great spiritual importance considering the fact that Shiva, the most powerful merber of the

Hindu godhead is himself, as Nataraja, the lord of Dance. According 32

to legaid Shiva's Dance of Creation eternally creates and dissolves

heaven and earth.

His gestures wild and full of grace, precipitate the cosmic illusion, his flying arms and legs and the swaying of his torso produce - indeed, they are - the continuous creaticn-destruction of the universe, death exactly balancing birth, annihilation the end of every coning forth (Zirrmer, 1972:155).

A deciphering of oorrplex Oriental theories of aesthetics reveals

in Hindu art a characteristic concem with enlightened awareness. The

Hindu theory of rasa demands of the artist complete enlightened

identification with Brahman. As the object of Hindu art is sone

aspect of the diadem comprising Brahman, the artist's identification

with Brahman and with its personified ootponents is a prerequisite

for the creating of spiritually representational art.

The artist was indeed like the worshipper vnno saw again and again the Godhead and who atteipted to create the ultimate state of his realization through the specific technique of his art. To a person so ccanditioned, an art creation was a spiritual discipline, in which he had intuitively to knew the truth of what he experienced before he gave it a concrete manifestation in art (Vatsyayan, 1968:5). With the figure of Shiva as crowning example, virtually all of

the Hindu gods and goddesses dance. Indian literatureabounds w/ith

references to dance in the depiction of these deities and ofdemons

of Indian mythology, and the Hindu dancer and sculptor depict then

through the use of poses prescribed metionlously for their abstract

symbolic meaning. The poses which the Hindu dancer utilizes are

identical with those of Hindu sculpture and, as vd.ll be discussed below, "very often the one is a visual representation in movement of the static pose of the other" (Vatsyayan, 1968:21). 33

Among the prescriptions for dance movanent in Bharata's Natya

Shastra is the statement of four ideal postures; slightly bent, equally bent (a symmetrical bending of the knees), greatly bent, and thrice bent. The absence of a straight siçjport leg from the Bharata Natyam vocabulary certainly distinguishes it frcm classical ballet. This prescribing of lew level movenent insures the sense of "jointedness" characterizing Hindu dance. Low level jointedness, the plastique sense of pose, and the firm use of vreigfat imbue Hindu dance with a look distinctly different frcm the Westem theatre dance of the pre­ modem dance era.

Indian dancing seeks to depict the perfect point or the itcment of balance along the brahmasutra (the vertical median), so much so that all movenent energes frcm the sama (the point of perfect balance, akin to the samabhanga of sculpture) and ccxnes back to this. It is movenent of the human form in direct relation to the pull of gravity that Indian dance conceives, which explains its deliberate avoidance, for the most part, of terrific le^s and gliding movenents in the air so characteristic of the Vfestem ballet. In the latter, a position in space where the human form is apparently free fron gravity, is anphasized (Vatsyayan, 1958:30).

To observe this distinction between ballet's defiance of gravity and Indian-derived dance's forceful acceptance of the pull of gravity is to observe one of the principle aspects of Oriental dance, and of the Asian martial arts as well, appropriated by modem dance. This characteristic celebration of the centering function of gravity is directly related to the sculptural quality of Hindu dance, to its ertphasis on pose. It is the use of readily identifiable poses, shapes, and gestures frtsti Asian dance vhich constitutes the surface appro­ priation of the East in turn of the century coimercial theatre 34 entertainment (Chapter Three), in the vrork of Ruth St. Denis

(Chapter Three), and in that of Martha Graham (Chapter Four).

And it is the attention to center and to gravity vÆiich, beginning with Graham and continuing to the present, will be observed as one of the more "essential" aspects of the Orient viiich modem dance has made its own.

While later chapters will note influential recital appearances in the West by accarplished performers of Hindu dance, the nature of

Hindu dance's relationship with ancient Indian sculpture has made it possible for the Westerner to have sane acquaintance with this style of movement without having the pleasure of actually seeing this dance

style in concert or on film. The Mirror of Gesture (1917), for example,

Coonaraswaity's translation of Nandikesvara's shorter catpendium of the

Natya Shastra written before the fourteenth century, contains numerous plates of Hindu sculpture and is referred to ty Martha Graham in her

Notebooks (1973). Vatsyayan (1968), analysing sculptural represen­

tations of dance scenes in terms of dance poses and dance me vouent,

further establishes this close relationship, and thereby explains the

arphasis on pose in Hindu dance. A major syitpboti of the general

religious significance of dance in Hindu belief is the very existence

of strict guidelines for dance, those put down by Bharata in the

Natya Shastra. Such codification of Hindu dance permit the near exact

re-creation of dance poses and movonents in Hindu sculpture, hence

further making possible a unity of style in plastique arts finding

precedent in the calculated exactitude of ancient Egyptian dance and

friezework. For the Wisstem artist -open to influence, the consequence

of this situation has been the fact that viewing a performance of Hindu 35 dance has not been sine qua non for gaining acquaintance with the distinct style of Hindu dance. Ihe close relationship between Hindu dance and sculpture, therefore, has rendered more accessible to the modem dancer the unity of Indian, Balinese, and Javanese dance.

Judo

Derived from jujutsu vdiich had been a traditional Japanese martial art since the sixteenth century, judo originated in Japan in the early 1880's. Now considered a sport, judo was conceived as an art of self-defense. The "do" of judo, karate-do, and aikido translates "way." "Ju" meaning "Gentle," the "gentle way" of judo refers to the traits of flexibility and pliability used in defeating an opponent, to the gentle redirection of the opponent's force facilitating a throw.

Like most of the Asian martial arts and certainly like all those which have had seme influence upon modem dance, judo is a study in energy flow. And because of the prevalence of throws in judo, this martial art is very much concerned with the physical laws of equilibrium and momentum. Instead of teaching the direct opposition to a force, especially an equal or greater one, judo teaches and practices the principle of achieving "maximum efficiency with minimum effort

(seiryoku zenyo) " (Winderbaum, 1977:67 ), a general movanent principle of judo being "push vAien pulled and pull v^en pushed" (Winderbaum,

1977:14). It is necessary, therefore, that the practicing of rolls and breakfalls (ukem.) makes up a large portion of the laical judo class. Breakfalls are more ccstmon than rolls in judo. The circular 36 movement dynamic of aikido, another Japanese descendant of jujutsu,

is more facilitative of rolls to and frcm the floor than is juio.

Karate-Do

The ccnmonly heard "karate" refers to karate-do, a modified form of karate-jutsu, a system of deadly ocmbat developed in Okinawa in the

sixteenth century. Modified for sport and self-irrprovement, karate-do means literally "the way of the open-hand," signifying a hand without a weapon and a heart enpty of evil intentions. CWing to its origin in karate-jutsu, karate-do is descended frcm ch'uan fa, the Chinese boxing vdiich Boddhidharma legendarily brought east frcm India in the sixth century. Karate-do was adopted in Japan in 1922.

Karate-do is characterized by thrusting jabs, punches, lunges, and kicks. In the kick the rpper torso and head are tilted sidways as the leg shoots out frcm the hip, bringing the torso and straightaied kicking leg in line with each other, parallel to the floor and at right angles to the supporting leg. Various styles of Okinawan and

Japanese karate-do exist. Also, the breadth of karate style increases when one considers that kung fu is often referred to as Chinese karate and tae kwon do as Korean karate. While these various systsns share many similarities, differences do exist with regard to training methods and katas, the formal "choreographed" exercise sequences through which the karate student practices the principles of the art.

Karate can be considered as a philosophy based on the belief that a sound mind is achieved through the development of a virtuous character. A sound body is achieved through rigorous training. The natural result of sound mind and sound body is oneness: the cmeness of Sen (mind) and Ken (fist or body) (Urban, 1972:14). 37 T'ai Chi Ch'uan

Msaning "Grand Ultimate Boxing," t'ai chi ch'uan is the major style in Chinese boxing's internal system. The internal systems were created vAien Taoist breathing and medical practices were joined with techniques of the external system of Shaolin Tenple boxing around the

12th century. T'ai chi is a bodily e:q3ression of the I Ching, Book of

Changes) with its individual movements corresponding to the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching.

The most essential form of t'ai chi and that which is learned first is the solo form, similar to a kata in karate. But vhile there are many kata in karate, there is only one form in t'ai chi. The solo form, practiced alone as if against an opponent, is a series of continuous, slow^moving body movements including kicks, strikes, and evasive actions. The movements or techniques have such names as

"snake creeps down," "bring the tiger to the mountain," and "needle at sea bottom." The second part of t'ai chi instruction, "pushing hands practice," involves two people facing each other palm against palm. B y attempting to unbalance each other and lift each other off the ground, students develop a sensitivity to an opponent's intentions and actions.

Making use of their background in solo form and in pushing hands practice, advanced students engage in free fighting. The principle and subtle yielding enable the defender to direct the attacker's strength back against him. "Great strength on the defender's part is unnecessary. Rather, balance, coordination, confidence, timing, and the use of chi (inner powers) are required" (Winderbaum, 1977:159). 38

Attention to internal energy - chi, in the case of t'ai chi and the other Chinese fiiÿiting arts, and ki in those of Japan - characterizes all of the Asian martial arts. But due to its movement foundation in the hexagrams of the I Ching, t'ai chi ch'uan constitutes a play of chi responsible for maintaining yin/yang balance. Due to its development of slow, regulated breathing and blood circulation and its contribution to the inner peace of the student, t'ai chi is known as "læditation inactivity" (Winderbaum, 1977:159).

Aikido

Meaning "the way of aiki" or "the way of ^iritual harmony," aikido is one of the most spiritually oriented of Japanese martial arts. Like judo, this art of self defense was derived frcm jujutsu in the last one hundred years. Around 1925 Master Morihei Uyeshibg, vibo studied with Buddhist and Shinto priests since childhood., integrated his martial and religious training into a self-defense systan he called aikido. It was first taught in the United States in

1953. Aikido's particular concern with mind-body integration has been widely heralded by George Leonard \jbo writes that "aikido's basic teachings erase those barriers the Western mind has erected between the physical and the mental, between action and contorplation"

(Leonard, 1975:49).

Master Morihei recognized that a martial art should not be based on great physical strength, else the loss of strength vdiich comes with age would render the old defenseless. "As a result he began to search for an unlimited spiritual strength which everyone possessed and vhich would grew with the years. This was ki, the internal energy 39 vàiich all people possess but vMcii few are able to utilize effectively.

Aikido makes pecçle aware of their ki and guides them in its use"

(Winderbaum, 1977:11).

The principle of aiki entails harmonizing with the attacker's intentions, movements, and ki. Rather than clashing with the opponent the aikidoist avoids an attack with flCT-r circular movements which direct the attack back to the attacker. Attention to one's energy flew in its relation to the flow of energy of one's opponent is a concept aikido shares with all the Oriental martial arts. The particular directing of ki determines the movement dynamics, kinesthetic and visual, of the various Asian fighting arts. For example, vhile the "gentle way" of judo is the energy principle of "push vAien pulled and pull viien pushed," a corresponding principle of aikido could be summarized as "enter vhen pulled and turn vhen pushed." The various techniques facilitating entering and turning give aikido's movanent a sense of circular flow. In the discussion above, a similar spiraling circularity was observed in t'ai chi ch'uan.

CWing to its origin as an avowed fusion of spiritual concepts with self-defense, aikido lays much stress on the development of a healthy and relaxed body, mind, and spirit. Seeking the harmonious functioning of the total self, the aikido class ooncludes with exercises designed to develop ki. Aikido's very conception as the way of "spiritual harmony" or "aiki" renders it an index into all the movement systans of the East. 40

Surmiary

A sedcing of enlightened awareness of the totality of the universe throu^ jiiysical-niental-spiritual integration has been observed as the central unity of the Orient. Awareness of self and particularly of self as part of the universe, being "One with the All," is to be gained throu^ all of the bo<^ systems just presented. To review, the branches of reinforce that itdcro/macrocosmic relationship between the body and the universe heralded in the Vedas; the Oriental martial arts' goal of self-awareness is openly avowed and relatively generally recognized in the West; and a deciphering of ccitplex theories of aesthetics reveals in the classical dance of Asia corresponding concerns with awareness. Following frcm the East's recognition of the interrelated totality of the universe is an attention to energy as agent of change. îfere again, the Oriental body arts - meditative, martial, and dance - provide systanatic paths to awareness. Prereq­ uisite to enlightened awareness of a universe stripped of the veil of maya and revealed as that all-enccxipassing theatre of energy exchange known as lila by the Hindus, is attunement to the energy vitalizing

one's own body. The Japanese ki corresponds to chi in Chinese, relates closely

to prana in Hindu Sanscrit and is variously translated as "internal

energy", "intrinsic energy," "the life force", "the force form,"

"vital breath," and "spirit." Meaning literally "gas" or "ether,"

in ancient China chi denoted the vital breath or energy animating

the universe. "Ki is the basis of all the Asian fighting arts"

(Winderbaum, 1977:83) and Asians believe that one's ki or chi is stored in the "one point" below the navel (seika tanden in Japanese 41 and tan t'ien in Chinese). Ihe same "one point" vhich is the source of action for the martial artist is the source of the kundalini or key energy phenomenon in yoga. The almost corplete predoninence in

Eastern dance and martial arts of low level movonent, i.e., movement on bent siçporting legs, stans from the sense of firmness or power at the "one point" acocnmodated a bent leg stance.^ The firm, sustained, bound quality of much martial arts movement results from the principle of directing energy from its source at the "one point" out through the trunk and limbs to merge with and redirect an opponent's internal energy.^ The conception of ^ as "vital breath" infuses even the most mechanical of karate katas with an organic movenent quality.

The conception of ^ or chi as spirit imbues movement from the "one point" or "the center," as modem dancers since Martha Graham have called that point below the navel, with self-actualizing significance. As designated above, the cultures of the Orient are unified by philosophical cdtmonalities: (1) mistrust of intellectual operations as means of attaining wisdom or enlightenment, (2) attention to the universe of phenomena as an interrelated totality, and (3) seeking enlightenment, i.e., awareness of the interrelated totality, through physical-mental-spiritual integration. In its quest for enlightenment

Eastern itysticism seeks to extend mere moments of intuitive insight

^ The fully extended leg aesthetic of classical ballet minimizes potential for pelvis initiation of movement, in turn minimizing ballet's potential for "earthiness."

^ Critic Andrew Levinson refers to Oriental dance as being centrifugal, Vfestem dance centripetal (Kirstein, 1969:266). 42 into longer periods of time and ultimately to attain a constant state of awareiess. The preparation of the individual for the intnediate, non-oonceptual eigeriencing of reality is the function of many aspects of the Asian cultural life, including the body disciplines represented above. "The basic aim of these techniques seatis to be to silence the thinking mind and to shift the awareness fron the rational to the intuitive mode of consciousness" (Capra, 1975:37).

This major thrust of Oriental culture, growing out of the religious and philosophical traditions surveyed earlier in this chapter and realized by the disciplines just discussed, is opposed to the philosophical tradition of the West.

The East/Wëst Dichotaiy

"Wfestem thought, unlike that of the East, has by and large rejected direct experiaice as path to the highest knowledge" (Leonard,

1975:49). The tendency of the traditional Vfestem mind to pursue the theoretic ccxtponent of experience goes back beyond the dualistic idealism of Plato. As early as the sixth century B.C. isolated instances of mind/body dualism were developing in the religion and philosophy of that part of the Hellenic world vhich would come to be the philosophical foundation of the West. In terms of religion, a dualistic theory of the soul's deliverance frcm the prison of the body would develop in the Iranian religion of Zarathustra, enter

Thrace, and there influence Orpheus, spread throughout Greece as the

Orphic doctrine of deliverance, be adopted ty the Pythagoreans, and, through his contact with the latter, greatly influence Plato. In terms of early philosojiiical expression of a mind/body dualism. 43 the sixth century B.C. would find Anaxagoras stating that "all things were in chaos vhen Mind arose and made order" (Hamilton, 1948:18).

"Fran Pythagorus (prime about 530 B.C.) onward, despite their many

differences, philosophers of the pre-socratic and socratic periods were united in opposing the rational/intellectual to the physical"

(Siedentop, 1972:32-33). Even in the golden age of Pericles, which

has been referred to as "the golden age of the body" (Fairs, 1968),

Parmenides and the physicist Democritus distinguished the sense world

fron what they declared the real world, and labeled the former

inferior. This tendency to pursue the theoretic corponent in

experience "was carried on and consolidated by Plato, vAien in his

famous lecture on the good he identified the idea of the good with

the theoretic coiponent given only as idea, and branded the immediately

apprehended aesthetic cortponent as a 'bastard' kind of knowledge and

the principle of evil in man and nature" (Northrop, 1946:310).

Aristotle is directly descended frcm his teacher in his restriction

of the divine to the rational principle.

"Whether one focuses on the deliverance theme of PytMgoras,. the fiery soul of Heraclitus, the anti-physical bias of Democritus, the ascetician of Antisthenes, the explicit dualism of Plato, or the irrplicit dualism in Aristotle, one finds a view that dichotcmizes man and relegates his body to a position of metaphysical inferiority" (Siedentop, 1972:33).

While the ancient Hebrav had no word vAiich would translate

"body," leading Siedentop to suggest that it vould not have occurred

to the ancient Hëorew to look at man from a dichotcmous point of view,

the ascendancy of the theoretical component and its attendant mind/body

duality entered Judaism through Philo. And this tendency character­

istic of the West entered Christianity through the Fourth Gospel, 44

St. Paul, Plotinus, and Saint Augustine. "The Manichean and

Necplatonic degradation of otibodiment, eloquently expressed in Saint

Augustine, widened the gap between sensory and 'true' knowledge"

(Leonard, 1975:49). The mind/body duality so firmly established by the thinkers cited above has found in the development of the West theological, philosophical, and scientific reinforcenent. To cite an isolated exanple, "Galilei and Newton, with their distinction between the sense qualities in relative, apparent sensed space and time and external physical objects in 'true, real and mathanatical' space and time, follow Denocritus" (Northrop, 1946:310).

The dualistic, reason-based worldview of the Vfest is at odds with observed philosophical threads running through the cultures of the

Orient: (1) mistrust of intellectual operations as means of attaining wisdom; (2) attention to the universe of phenomena as an interrelated totality, (3) seeking enlightenmait, i.e., awareness of the inter­ related totality, through physical-mental-spiritual integration.

At the basis of each of these principles is an overriding character­ istic of the East viiich can best be understood vhen observed in contrast to overriding philosophical characteristic of Western culture.

It appears . • . that the meaning of Eastern civilization in its relation to the meaning of Western civilization is as follows: The Orient, for the most part, has investigated things in their aesthetic cortponent; the Occident has investigated things in their theoretic oonponent (Northrop, 1946:375).

The general thesis of Northrop's definitive volume Ihe Meeting of Fast and tfest (1946) is that the genius of the East is that it has continuously concentrated its attention upon that aspect of the nature 45 of things vhich can be kncwn only by being ejçjerienced. The West has not. While of course beginning with esqjerience in the gaining of its type of knowledge and returning to controlled instances of that ejçeriaice for confirmation of deduced knowledge, the West has nevertheless derived its knowledge from and expresses its knowledge in logically developed treatises. The West regards phenomena as made rp almost solely of the unseen theoretical component designated only thought and by "postulationally prescribed theory checked through its deductive oonsequences."

The syntactically constructed sentences of these treatises, by the very manner in which they relate the key factors in their subject matter, enable the reader, with but incidaital references to items of his imagination or bits of his experience, to comprehend vhat is designated. Consequeitly, in the West, although ^peals to experience are necessarily present and continuously made by the scientific, philosophic, and theological experts vho verify' and construct its doctrine, it is not necessary for the Vfestem reader to squat upon his haunches, like a sage in an Indian forest, ittmediabely apprehending and cxxntarplating what is designated (Northrop, 1946:315-316).

Northrop, in light of Eastern thought and certainly affirmed by modem physics, observes that all phenomena are part of an ongoing, differentiated aesthetic continuum and that it is the hypothetical, theoretical function of the mind vhich organizes that aesthetic ccntinuum into separate entities. He observes the Vfest's overuse of the theoretic component at the cost of truth-rendering experience.

As regards the three threads running through Eastern philosophy and cultural foxons cited above, "mistrust of intellectual operations"

(1) is a position echoed by Northrop; "attention to the universe of phenomena as an interrelated totality" (2) is viiat Northrop terms 46 awareness of an "angoing, differentiated aesthetic continuum;'' and

"seeking enlightenment through pi^sical-mental-spiritual integration"

(3) presupposes experiencing the angoing, differentiated aesthetic continuum of the self free of theoretical catpartmentalization.

Art in its First and Second Functions

Stenming frcm and contributing to Northrop's central thesis is his ccnparison of traditional art of the East and West. Guided by his distinction between an experiencing East and a theorizing West, this ccnparison permits Northrop to distinguish between "art in its first function" and "art in its seoond function."

Art in its first functicn is to be defined as art . . . idiich uses the immediately apprehended aesthetic materials of the differentiated aesthetic continuum to convey those materials and that continuum in and for thanselves for their own sake. Art in its second function, on the other hand, by the use of theoreticaly controlled and defined techniques such as perspective, uses the aesthetic materials and the aesthetic continuum not merely in and for themselves for their own sake, but also analogically and symbolically to convey the theoretic cotponent of the nature of things of vdiich t h ^ are the mere correlate or sign (Northrop, 1946:306).

As an exanple of art in its first function in the West Northrop cites the American painter Georgia O'Keefe, the details of whose contact with Oriental theories of art will be observed in Chapter

Four. But Northrop holds that most traditional Western art is in its second function, basing as it does its use of the aesthetic cotponent in the scientific principles of the theoretic oonponent. Tb illustrate further this distinction Northrop contrasts the training of a painter in the Orient to that of the Western painter. 47

Consequently, instead of beginning, as does a student of painting in a traditional Western art school, with the laborious copying of the three-dimensional, gecnetrical casts of Greek statues, and then passing on to the three- dimensional living human figure in the nude, to master the use of perspective vdnich the Western postulationally formulated science of geometrical optics has defined, the Oriental painter starts with the elementary brush strokes used in the writing of the countless symbols of the Chinese language. Since these syitbols often merely put on paper in an immediately apprehended form certain characteristics of items of direct experience, it is an easy and natural transition for the painter to pass from the mastery of the strokes used in oonstructing the symbols of the Chinese language to the painting of the richer, more oonplete, immediately ejçerienced aesthetic materials viiich these symbols frequently denote and from vhich, often, they had been abstracted. It is to be emphasized that in the entire process no knowledge or ^plication of theoretically formulated, scientifically verified, postulatioially prescribed theory, either in itself or in its applications, is required {Northrop, 1946:317).3

It is this fundamental difference of viewpoint which Lin Yutang refers to when he notes that to an Oriaital, "a Western painter always seems to have painted the object from the outside, vhereas the Oriental paints it with feeling and with identification of the artist with it from within" (Lin Yutang, 1939:83). Identification of art ccxning "from within" brings to mind the originator of what came to be modem dance, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). The legacy of

Duncan, along with ongoing Eastern influence upon modem dance have come to create a m o d e m dance/ballet dichotcrty to be observed in

Chapter 1V)o and again in Chapter Five. Northrop's distinction between

%Jorthrop's observation relates closely to theories of coitpo- sition and art education developed at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries by Arthur Wesley Dow, inspired by Ernest Fenollosa's studies of Chinese and Japanese art. Chapter Four notes the profound influence of Fenollosa-Dow theory upon twentieth century American art education and, through it, ipcn dance education. 48 art in its first and second functions facilitates an understanding of the role Eastern influence has had on the fonrailation of this dichotomy.

Art in its second function, again, is one of several cultural outcomes of a general tendency of Western culture observed by Northrop.

VSiat has happened throuÿiout our history is that the Vfest became so fascinated with this quest for a more and more adequate theory of its nature, that it (the West) has t^ded to turn the equally primary, real, and basic aesthetic oonponent into a mere appearance and a mere handmaid, vhose sole value is the conveying of the theoretic component (Northrop, 1946:305).

The general philosophical position of the East - its attention to the aesthetic component in its quest for enlightenment and implications of that position including mind-body integration and art characterized by organicism and immediacy - have attracted the dancers of the West described in the following chapters. And vhile

"aesthetic ccirpcnent" and "theoretic component" were not her terms,

it will be observed that Isadora Duncan began an indictment of ballet

for its turning the "primary, real, and basic aesthetic component into

a mere appearance," for its precluding vdnat could be termed "dance

art in its first function. " At the close of this chapter which has

observed varying philosophical tendencies which distinguish East and

Vfest, the genius of Isadora Duncan can be characterized as "non-

Westem." Modem dancers' awareness of the East, increasing throughout

the twentieth century, has permitted them a full recognition of that

genius. OîaPTER TWD

Modem Dance

Introduction

The observation that the originality prized in the West is not so prized in the East relates particularly to modem dance's appro­ priation of the Orient. Repeatedly the Orient has offered material and inspiration - stylistic and philosophical - as exponents of an ever modem modem dance. It is the constant unity of Eastem philosophy and other cultural forms vÆiich helps to account for their ongoing influence upon this ever-evolving Westem dance form. For over three quarters of a caitury modem dance has looked confidently to the constancy of the East for ideas relating to movement, consciousness, and aesthetics. The maverick Westem artist's cmcible of creative ^qiloration has found in the East a constant source, with the perennial constancy of Eastem viewpoint facilitating influence.

An inquiry into the influence of the Orient upon modem dance reveals a conplex intermingling of philosophical factors with stylistic factors. But \hile elements of Eastem philosophy, and such stylistic elements of the East influencing modem dance as

Indian Bharata Natyam, Balinese dance, Chinese t'ai chi ch'uan, Hindu sculpture, and Japanese karate remain relatively constant, modem dance's contact with these ideas and forms may not always be "first hand." The defining conception of modem dance as individualized and

49 50 ever-^nodem, along with icSiosyncxacies of trananissicn of source to receiver, ensure synthesis. This study observes the constant unity of Eastern thought and Eastem movement style transmitted to modem dance first-hand and second-hand, as elemenrs in a synthesis of many elanents creating new movement styles, new ways of perceiving and defining art, and, finally, new ways .of sensing one's self. But before twentieth century American dance's appropriation of the rich culture outlined in Chapter One can be observed, one must attempt to arrive at a definition of modem dance.

Discerning in the widely varied dancing of over eighty years a definition for modem dance is no simple assignment. The scholar taking on such a task frequently includes a discussion of vhat modem dance is not. It is not ballet.

Modem dance in its strongest impulses looks within the individual, whose expressive needs then determine the types of gesture that will energe when the dancer starts to move. The ballet is a formal classical style of dance, and modem dance is expressionistic in its thrust. Where ballet movement begins and ends in one of the five positions of the feet viiich have become the basis of ballet dancing, modem dance does not recognize the convention of only five positions. It asserts that there are as many positions as are needed hy the artist to achieve his effects. In this sense modem dance is revolutionary by definition (McDonagh, 1976:1-2).

Cohen ccnpares modem dance exponents' revolutionary break with

Westem theatrical dance tradition with contemporaneous efforts to expand the existing ballet vocabulary to acccmmodate dramatic needs. 51

The modem dance w a s not satisfied with this degree of change; its e^gonents had first to eliminate all previous forms, then start - as fcom the beginning - with the body and its natural impulse to e>gress its feelings in movement. Because the choreographers differed fron one another in tenperament, in areas of concern, in approacli to movenent stylization, the m o d e m dance was essentially heterogeneous. Only the motivation was constant (Cohen, 1974:122).

Wty such a need to "dig down to the essence of significant movement"? (Cohen, 1966:7) The form of ballet had superceded the nature of the human body.

The ballet had reached such a state of perfection that it could be developed no further. Its form had beocme so refined, so sublimated to the ideal of purity, that the artistic content was too often lost or obscured. The great "ballet dancer" was no longer a r^resentative of a great inner amotion, but had become defined as a great virtuoso ( in Cohen, 1974:152).

Modem dance came into existaice because it had to. It came into existence in recognition of seme obvious facts: namely, that the codification of movanent, technique, and aesthetics called "ballet" was only a part of the way Westerners, including and especially Americans, could dance (HaWcins, 1966:40).

Isadora Duncan

The first artist to recognize these "obvious facts" and to be visible and vocal in that recognition was Isadora Duncan. Willing to create profound art in dance and finding in ballet no exanples of such art, Isadora Duncan looked within herself for the source of dance.

I speit long days and nights in the studio seeking the dance vdiich might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movements. For hours I would stand quite still, my two hands folded between my breasts, covering the solar plexus. mother often became alarmed to see me ranain for such long intervals quite motionless as if in a trance - but I was seeking and finally discovered the central spring of all movenent, the crater of motor power, the unity from which all diversities of movsnaits are bom, the mirror of vision for the creation of the dance - it was fcom this discovery that was b o m the theory on which. I 52 founded iry scirol. The ballet school taught the pupils that this spring was found in the center of the back at the base of the spine. Frcm this axis, says the ballet master, arms, legs, and trunk must move freely, giving the result of an articulated puppet. This method produces an artificial mechanical movement not worthy of the soul. I on the contrary sought the source of the spiritual expression to flow into the channels of the body filling it with vibrating light - the centrifugal force reflecting the spirit's visicai. After many months, vÆien I had learned to OOTicentrate all ny force to this one Centre I found that thereafter v^en I listened to music the rays and vibrations of the music streamed to this one fount of light within me - there they reflected themselves in Spiritual Vision not the brain's mirror, but the soul's, and frcm this vision I oould ejçiress than in Dance (Duncan, 1927:75).

Conceiving of dance in these terms Isadora Duncan was the first to establish the modem dance/ballet dichotcny exhibited in any attarpt to define modem dance, including those vhich began this chapter.

Isadora's career as a dancer and spokesman for a new conception of dance art inspires and animates that dichotorty. Following an observation of that career and of developments in ballet provoking it, this modem dance/ballet dichotomy will be related to the dichotomy between the integrated, experiential East and the dualistic, theoretical Vfest contrasted in Chapter One.

Isadora Duncan was b o m in San Francisco in 1878. Only three ballet lessons at an early age were enough to convince Isadora that ballet was ugly and that she had no use for it. She and her sister did, however, give dancing lessons to neighborhood children. And later, while Mrs. Duncan taught piano lessons, the girls taught sate

form of dancing in the society homes of San Francisco. Already at the age of twelve Isadora had taken a strong libertarian position on

society's treatment of women. Equally early in life Isadora had decided ipon a career in the theater. Auditions for theatrical 53 managers in San Francisco yielded no enploynent, faut fay 1895 the

family had moved to and Duncan had secured her first theatrical engagonent, failled as "Ihe Faun." It was then on to New

York. Of particular interest here, though of little consequence to

Duncan's career, is her appearance in 1898 as a singer in Augustin

Daly's Nstf York production of "Geisha," an exanple of the period's

superficial stage treatment of the Orient to fae observed in Chapter Three.^ Regarding Duncan's farief time in New York, more significance lies in her giving concerts of interpretive dance at the Carnegie Hall

Studios and in the salons of society, and in the indifference with v ^ c h her developing art was received fay turn of the century America.

Isadora Duncan's career as revolutionary spokesman for dance can fae dated frrni 1898 vhen she arrived in London and was acclaimed in arts circles as a dancer and cultural provocateur. In that year she was influenced considerably fay the Greek sculpture in the British

^fiiseum, finding in it her ideal of art as reflector of nature. In

Paris in 1900 Duncan saw a performance of the Japanese tragic dancer

Sadi Yacco and her troupe. In the years 1900-1902 she danced in

Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. In these triuirphal

concerts it was not uncommon for her to speak frcm the stage, dis­

cussing her vision of the art of dance. In the years 1903 and 1904

Isadora visited Greece, perfonted further in Germany, founded a

■*’In ty Duncan writes: "The studpidity of the 'Geisha' was the last straw in ity relations with Augustin Daly" (Duncan, 1927:41). 54

school for forty children near Berlin, and danced in Russia.

Diaghilev, Fokine and Stanislavsky all saw Isadora Duncan's

first performance in St. Petersburg, December 26, 1904. Ihe

school begun in Germany was moved to Paris in 1908, to New York

in 1914, and back to Paris before closing permanently in 1919.

Before her death in 1927 Duncan would dance in Denmark, Egypt,

and South Ttoerica and give further performances in the United

States, Russia, and Greece. Due to her profound influence upon

the dance artists to succeed her, to the continuing inspirational direction of her written and recorded lectures, Isadora Duncan must be considered the first modem dancer.

Writtai accounts and primitive films reveal something of the movement style with vhich Duncan replaced the "false and preposterous art" of ballet (Harris, 1982:15). She created sittple dances with elemental, r^aetitive structure, using the most basic of locanotor

steps. She ran, skipped, and executed moderate leaps. She also made dranatic use of stillness, and she danced barefooted, writing

in "Ihe Dance of the Future," "I believe in the religion of the beauty of the human foot" (Duncan, 1928:54). The key elements in

Duncan's movenent were "the feel of the vhole foot on the floor,

the lean into the hips to take the body’s weight, and the lyric

lift and expansion of chest, neck and head" (Kendall, 1982:20).

"Duncan didn't deal in steps, but forms and shapes" (Gamson, 1982:22)

She irrprovised a great deal and left no school or organized technique

of dance training.

^ Highly acclaimed interpretations of Duncan's dancing are to be seen currently in performances by Annabelle Gamson. 55

What Duncan, did leave behind was a legend surrounding her truly

rare gift of stage performance. Mazo was moved to speculate:

Frcm her writings, and from descriptions of her performance, it appears that Isadora experienced those peculiar sensations of energy that have been described practitioners of yoga and masters of the Oriental arts. The energy is called ki by the Japanese, chi by the Chinese, kundalini in India and orgcne by the followers of pisychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. There are many explanations of the phenomenon, and many more explanations of why it does not exist. Nevertheless, descriptions of the sensations are remarkably similar - a tingling or a warmth flowing throu^ the body. A karate master will tell his students that his not his strength, allows him to break bricks, and the students will put it down to Oriental itysticism until they feel the tingling in their own arms. An artist at the moment of creation focuses all his faculties on the work at hand, exactly as the karate master concentrates his entire being in two knuckles at the moment of impact. The barrier between the oonscious and the subconscious is tenporarily broken, allowing creation to occur, energy flews through the performer and "a great sense of health fills the hall" (Mazo, 1977:42-43)

To read Isadora Duncan’s writings and spoken statements is to come face to face with an organic conception of physicality and creativity. Her words, along with the message implicit in her dancing coalesce in three central, organically related ideas:

Dance should reflect nature. Dance is free and individualized e^gression. Dance movenent emanates from the center of the body.

Duncan's "dancer of the future" was one freely open, receptive

to the dynamic laws of nature, personal and universal. Such

^ Mazo refers to a description of Duncan's presence on stage written by the poet . 56 identification was possible only v^en static laws arising outside of nature were disregarded. 'Ehis call to nature is intrinsic to Duncan's indictment of ballet.

Œîie movanent of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. Vie do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement in the past and vhat will be its movement in the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature. The movanait of the free animals and birds renains always in correspondence to their nature, the necessities and wants of the nature, and its correspon­ dence to the earth nature. It is only vdien you put free animals under false restrictions that they lose the power of moving in harmony with nature, and adopt a movement expressive of the restrictions placed about them (Duncan, 1928:54-55).

The school of the ballet of today, vainly striving against the natural laws of gravitation or the natural will of the individual, and working in discord in its form and movement with the form and movenent of nature, produces a sterile movement vhich gives no birth to future movements, but dies as it is made. The expression of the modem school of ballet, wherein each action is an end, and no movenent, pose or rl^^thm is successive or can be made to evolve succeeding action, is an e2ç>ression of degeneration, of living death. All the movements of our modem ballet school are sterile movanents because they are unnatural: their purpose is to create the delusion that the law of gravitation does not exist for then (Duncan, 1928:55-56).

For the dancer of vhcm I speak has never tried to walk on the end of her toes. Neither has she spent time in the practice of leaping in the air in order to find out how many times she can clap her heels together before she came dcwn again. She wears neither oorset nor tights and her bare feet rest freely in her sandals (letter to editor, Morgen Post, 1903, in Duncan, 1965:24). She was determined to build a school for children where sensitivity to nature and free expression would be nurtured.

When asked for the pedagogic program of ity school, I reply: "Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child" (Duncan, 1928:77). 57 I shall teach than to dance; not in the stilted, outa>xDm tradition of either a fairy, a nyitph, or a coquette, as I found v h e n I was a child and took dancing lessons, but in harmony with everything that is beautiful in nature (Duncan, 1965:23).

Actual practice at the school once it was first established in

Grünewald, was to take the children to the vroods in sumtier to observe "the waving of trees, the flight of birds, or the movanents of clouds. Learning to dance frcm these, we developed a sensitive understanding of nature" (Duncan, 1965:47-48). Irma Duncan refers to nature as "the great teacher," and certainly in her writings Isadora belittles her effect as a teacher, seeking rather to nourish individual expression inspired by "the great teacher. "

Again, of the "dancer of the future":

Perhaps, oh blissful! It may be rry holy mission to guide her first steps, to watch the progress of her movanents day by day until, far outgrowing ity poor teaching, her movanents will becate godlike, mirroring in themselves the waves, the winds, the movements of growing things, the flight of birds, the passing of clouds, and finally the thought of man in relation to the universe (Duncan, 1928:63).

Isadora Duncan's conception of dance as free and individual expression, as "an instinctive thing b o m with me," is further evidenced in another of her notebooks:

Now I could not think that I could teach another vhat had been a gradual evolution of ny own being and a work of all my life. . . . Ihe idea gradually came to me . . . to endeavor to find a school vhose object would be the finding of the true dancing. Not in any way a oopy of Ity dance, but the study of the dance as an Art (Duncan, 1965:46-47).

And when Duncan holds that "the primary or fundamental movements of

the nsf school of the dance must have within them the seeds frcm vdiich will evolve all other movanents" (Duncan, 1928:56) she 58 originates the conception of dance conposition as organic process, revealed in Chapter Five as a touchstone of modem dance and dance education.

The final aspect of Duncan's platform was that dance movement itDves frcm the inside of the body outwardly. Her locating and otphasizing the "coitral spring of all movenent, the crater of motor povrer" within the body, her goal "to conceitrate all my force to this one Centre" constitute a credo for a new chapter in Westem dance and movenent science in general.

Certainly it is possible to view Isadora Duncan's opposition to ballet in broader terms than those concemed only with stage fare. The ramifications of her revolt extend beyond the concert hall and school room. More than the breathing inspiration of modem dance, Isadora Duncan was pioneer of the new age. Were dance recognized as the bearer of philosophical and social trends that it is, Duncan would be grouped with Darwin, Freud, and Reich as initiators of the "somatic revolution" of the twentieth century Vfest.'^

Rejecting ballet as a ceremonious, decorative activity built upon decades of codification and standardization, and rejecting conventions in wanen's dress as vestiges of bondage, Duncan rejected much more.

She rejected the anti-scmatic tradition of the West vhich culminated in the Victorian Age of her youth.

^ In Bodies in Revolt (1970) Ihcmas Hanna observes the West's rediscovery of the body citing "sanatic scientists" Darwin, Freud, Lorenz, Piaget, and Reich and "somatic philosophers" Kant, Kierkegaard, tfeioc, Cassirer, Camus, Merleau-Ponty, and Nietzsche. 59 She believed that the validity of ballet had vanished along with the validity of the aristocratic and corporate mentality which had produced it. She was a child of a new era of individual ism. What she sought was a dance vAiich glorified the self. In other words, she envisioned a personal ritual (Hightower, 1978:106).

The dancer of the fut . "e will be one vAiose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movanent of the body (Duncan, 1928:62).

For me the dance is not only the art that gives e>ç»ression to the human soul through movement, but also the foundation of a complété conception of life, more free, more harmonious, more natural (Duncan, 1928:101).

The Modem Dance/BalletDichotomy

What was it about ballet viiich caused Isadora Duncan to find it

"a false and preposterous art - in fact, outside the pale of all art?" (Harris, 1982:15) Ballet had developed inthe architectonic and mannered Eenaissance-Baroque period in Western Europe. The first codification of the technique was c. 1700 by Pierre Beauchamps, dancing master of King Louis XIV of France. Ihe theatre form of ballet developed both technically and dramatically during the eighteenth century Age of Eeason.

Dramatically, the tenets of the nineteenth century Romantic

Period in literature, painting, and music ware very much felt in the first true flowering of classical ballet, the Romantic Ballet viûch spanned the years 1832-1860 at the Paris Opera. One might expect the Rxentic Period, with its sense-oriented reaction to reason and form and its cal 1 for a return to nature, to have restored some fundamental sensuality to the theatrical dance of the period. And this was the case until mid-century. It was the R^nantic Ballet's dramatic ideal of portraying, in the form of the ballerina, the 60

flights of the spirit vÆiich resulted in the technical innovation of the toe shoe. With increased danands on the principle female dancer to represent an unattainable ideal of spirituality, ballerinas learned to reinforce the tips of their slippers with darning to provide siçport. No one can point to an actual date of invention of the toe shoe, and the blocked toe shoe vrould ccme much later, but technical development sur la pointe was sufficiently developed by 1832 for

Marie Taglioni to be a convincingly ethereal sylj^i in la Sylphide at the Paris Cpera. Whether the ballerina ai pointe be Taglioni's sylph or her successor Giselle (1840), the toe shoe facilitated her portrayal of an ethereal, spiritual quality vhich could cattnune with the earthly aspect represented by the male dancer for no Imger than the duration of a brief pas de deux.

In the second half of the nineteenth century that technical innovation vhich had produced the glory of the Rcmantic Ballet - the toe shoe - succeeded in robbing classical ballet of much of the natural sensuality of dance. An entirely nsv vsy of moving developed for the ranainder of the Potentic Ballet period and for the classical period of the Russian Irrperial Ballet in St. Petersburg.^ The toe shoe had brought the ether world within reach, raising the body's center of gravity froti a saisual pelvis to a chest residing closer to the intel­ lect. In itzs attenpt to create the illusion of leaving the earth

^ Among the masterpieces of the Russian Imperial Ballet still in the world repertoire are The Sleeping Beauty (1890), The Nutcracker (1892), and Svan Lake (1895). 61 classical Ballet is the consurrrate expression in dance of the Wëst striving to overocme the things of this world. ^ The vertical lift of the ballet body encountered by Duncan at the turn of the century could little attaid to inner brea.th and the physically organic ramifications of breath for movement. The dramatic stimulus for the creation of pointe vrork and the body positioning vhich facilitates it - the

Rcmantic ideal of the fleeting spirit world - came to no Icxiger exert its influence in ballet theatre. But the technique has survived.

Classic theatrical dancing has evolved over the past four hundred years - and no doubt will continue to evolve - through an abstract, codified, impersonal vocabulary, but one that is directly trananitted from teacher to pupil. Based on the fundamental principles of the five positions throu^ viiich the body always passes, and the turnout from the center, the system alters gradually during the cottplex historical process of transmission, in miror ways: refinaients, development of strength and skill, shifts of style occur. Deviations frcm the basic line and look also occur, but always return to the standard, reaffirming their roots in the classic tradition. Individual dancers also lend their own particular meanings and style to the standard \ocabulary. But in ballet, changes in materials, method, and style take place within the context of a conservative, academic tradition (Banes, 1980:5).

In that acadanic tradition to vAiich Banes refers is a canon of arm and

feet-leg positions vhich determine and delimit the trace patterns of

ballet movanent. That is, not only shapes of repose are inposed frcm without, but also the shapes of movement are inposed frcm without as

well. Such defining of movement restricts free interpretation of music

or anotion, robbing the dancer of that non-vocabulary-bound aliveness

® It could be said that the germ of ballet's weight-defying character lies in its original relationship to European , vhich is generally characterized by a lifted, free-flow quality. 62 to the "aesthetic continuum" of nature and music celebrated by

Isadora iXmcan. Her ideal of music striking the solar plexus and producing her dance movement is a model for direct stiraulus-response unencumbered or influenced attention to theoretical abstraction.

It is worthvôiile here to state again the EastAfest dichotomy observed in Chapter One. A survey of philosophical and cultural history reveals that in perceiving phenomena and experience, individuals and societies lean toward the intuitive or the cognitive, functioning within paradigriis existing somewhere between the denial of body and of

"the all-embracing, immediately apjprehended aesthetic continuum" and the denial of theoretical abstraction (Northrop, 1946:316). It is generally recognized that the splitting of the earth into Eastern and

Vfestem hemispheres finds the East attending more to the aesthetic continuum of experience and the îfest attending more to the theoretical abstraction vhich differentiates, organizes, and necessarily distances that aesthetic continuum. Surely ballet, the terpsichorean bloom of

European culture, relates to the ascendancy in the West of the theoretical, cognitive, non-sensual paradigm. Isadora Duncan's opposition of the modem vision of dance to ballet established a modem dance/ballet dichotomy vhich relates to that EastAfest dichotcny observed in Chapter One. "That stylistic moment when

classical ballet was challenged to its very bones by Isadora's daring"

(Kendall, 1982:42) contributes much to this cultural hour vhen the

West looks to the East for seme of its lost nature. 63

This inind/bady dualism is reflected in all our institutions and cultural processes. By intellectually dividing ourselves into parts, we encourage intensive specialization and differentiation in all our activities, thereby further encouraging mind/body separatism rather than vdiolism (Eychtwald, 1977:24-25).

It was the "intensive specialization and differentiation" of ballet technique vdiich so repelled Isadora Duncan. In her defiance of the organizing structures of ballet, in her openness to nature as a source of inspiration for dance movement, and in her glori­ fication of a direct stimulus-respcnse process viiereby music strikes the solar plexus to create movement, Isadora Duncan is on the side of attention to "the all-embracing, immediately apprehended aesthetic continuum. " When she stated that movement should spring frcm within the body and not be superimosed upon the body frcm without, i.e., frcm a set of rules imposed by "unnatural" convention or training,

Duncan was opposing the Cartesian mechanistic, deterministic tendency to separate the I frcm the world and the œrresponding tendency to separate mind frcm body.

Highwater cites Duncan's rejection of ballet's use of the body as a mere tool for the creation of pleasant shapes.

Duncan was concerned with the inner, kinetic motivation of dancing, the motor intelligence that provided the dancer with an articulate body. . . . Duncan's inclination to talk about "the science of movanent" was entirely new - scmething Nbverre and Fokine had apparently not considered in their (criticisms of and attaipts to reform ballet tradition. . . . She gradually evolved a theory of the physiology of danœ, insisting that movanent and breathing are inseparable, that all movement is carried aloft and returned to the earth (the center of gravity) by inhalation and exhalation (Highwater, 1978:106-107). 64 % be sure, Duncan conceived of the human body as an organic

structure and of its movanent as an organic, not mechanistic function.

HavA±ns observes that Duncan intuited the kinesiological truth that

"human movanent, vàien it obeys the nature of its functioning, vAien it is not disorted by erroneous concepts of the mind, starts in the body's center of gravity and then - in correct sequence - flows into the extremities" (Hav^dns, 1965:41). Observing with HavifcLns the center-to-periphery charactzeristics of Duncan's movement and philosophy and ci-ting Levinson's distinction between Western dancing as centripetal and Eastern dancing as centrifugal, Kirstein observes that "Isadora's discovery has much in caimon with oriental dancing" (Kirstein, 1969:266).

That is, the West accentaiatzes the extended silhouette, since it is primarily for display, and to te seen, at a distance. The East, atphasizing the visceral centers of movement as circular, move within the enclosed orbit of the body's compara-tive restriction. It is to be done, or felt, rather than to be shown. Isadora's understanding of our organism's psychic and physical center, largely ignored rp to her -time iy ballet-^iasters, indirectly enabled the danse d'ecole to extend itself, (although along iizs own direction), with increased strength and expressiveness (Kirstein, 1969:266-267).^

Kirstein refers to the influence of Isadora ipon Russian choreographer Mihail Fokine, the relative degree of such influence having been debated. As observed earlier, Fokine did see Isadora dance in St. Petersburg in 1905. Having great influmce on Fokine, also in 1905, was a St. Petersburg performance of a group of Siamese dancers calling their work "The Dance of the Hands." Seeing the troupe convinced Fokine that the potential for expression of meaning, lost during the ascendancy of technique, had to be restored to the gestural positions of ballet. 65

Sunnary

Conducting a research survey necessitates the gathering of data serving as "evidence" supporting the scholar's thesis. For this study proposing that the Eastern world has provided ongoing and wide-ranging influence upon modem dance, the author realized the inportance of citing traceable connections betveen the Orient and prominent figures in modem dance. Aware of the ethnic mixture of dancers in the Alvin American

Dance Corpany and of the Oriental ocmponent of that mixture, the author sought some historical precedent for this state of affairs. The author studied the choreogr^hic work of Alley's mentor, Los Angeles-based

Lester Horton (.1906-1953), looking for Oriental thanes, but found few.

Ihen learning of the Japanese dancer Michio Ito's close contact with

Horton during the years 1929-1942, the author felt certain it would be possible to trace in the Horton technique some direct technical relationship to the East.

The author was able to interview Bela LewitslQ^, contemporary

Los Angeles-based choreographer and protegee of Horton vho reports that the Horton technique was created on her dancer's body. Lewitsky is certainly in a position to answer the question: "Are there, through contact with Michio Ito or with other Oriental sources. Eastern elements in the technique of Lester Horton?"

Well, the body's the body. There are only so many things you do with it. And it is inevitable that the same shapes and forces will pop up in different styles and cultures (Lewitsky Interview, 1981).

Lewitsky's response had not supplied the concrete reference soipht by the author. What she had offered was insight far more 66 cen.t2s l to this study than evidence of, say, this clx>reographer's stuc^ of Indian Bharata îfetyam or that choreographer's passion for

Japanese haiku poetry. The fact that in the of the

Vfest there could appear shapes, effort combinations, and centrally rather than peripherally initiated movariait, i.e., movanent reminiscent of the dance and martial arts of the East, was due to the fact that a dancer-choreographer was free to and motivated to

"deal with movanait in as many ways as ity imagination could conceive"

(Cunningham in Mazo, 1977:218). "The body was the body," again, capable of a universe of movanent possibilities and not just a closed vehicle for the shape/effort aesthetic of classical ballet. And for the origin of that free caiception, the Vfestem world owes great debt to Isadora Duncan.

VJhile Sadi Yacca, the great Japanese tragic dancer, did make a profound inpression rpon Duncan in the International Exposition of

1900 in Paris (as she had rçon St. Denis), Isadora Duncan's choreogram, autobiography, and numerous other writings reveal no other direct inspiration frcm the East. The modem dance world would rely upon Ruth St. Denis, a contsiporary of Duncan, to begin the trend of direct apprcpriation of the Orient by modem dance. But it was only with

Duncan's platform of art inspired by nature, movement f r m within, and freedom frcm convention, only with the original revolutionary breath of her genius that subsequent influence frcm the East would oome to be significant, "essential" in the sense of "surface to essence." Conceived with little contact with Eastem style or thought, but begging for contnisseration with each, "Isadora's art represented the triurtph of self-awareness, wholeness, integration" (Harris, 1982:16). 67

It has been for further generations of modem dancers and scholars, inspired ty Isadora Duncan's statement of the dichotoiry between movement from within and movanent imposed from without to e^geriment with the implications of that observation.® These heirs of Duncan have sought precedent for her vision and have found in the East a ready reservoir. The philosophical platform she bequeathed American dancers, vhen reinforced ongoing contact with the East, would beccme a manifesto of physical-mental-spiritual integration. But not until an Oriental-influenced journey frcm surface to essence, beginning with Ruth St. Denis and the Denishawn Ccmpany (Chapter Three), vDuld Western dance be fully capable of understanding the "physical and spiritual communion that lay at the heart of Isadora Duncan's dance revolution" (Rosenwald, 1979).

Demarcation of that dichotcmy was furthered in the 1930's and 40's by Martha Graham's opaen feud with the ballet establishment. In his Memoirs of a Pallet Master Mictel Fokine recalls a 1931 encounter between Graham and himself during one of New York Times dance critic John Martin's classes at the New School for Social Research in New York. Graham had been asked to present her theories of movement, and following her dononstration, invited questions. Repeated questions from a man vhose identity was unknown to Graham resulted in her rotiarking "You don't know anything about body movements I" The gentleman was , aminent choreographic innovator of the Ballet Russe.(Fokine, 1951:255). This incident was indicative of the mutual lack of respect ballet and modem dance had for each other at this time. Graham dancers vho chose to study ballet hid the fact from Graham. CHAPTER THREE

Surface ^^ropriation

East Meets West; 1784-1912

Scholarly activity begun in the eighteenth century and substantial

immigration of Oriental peoples to the United States beginning around

1850 had by the turn of the century increased American awareness of

the East. America's growing acquaintance with the style of the Orient was evidenced in the popularity of Oriental thanes in the commercial

theatre in the twenty-five years surrounding 1900. And the West's

awareness of Eas-tem philosophy had increased through the slow

dissemination of ideas by pioneering Orien-talists of the West.

Ruth St. Denis (1877-1968), whose "Radha" of 1906 marked the first

appropriation of the Oriait by a modem dance pioneer, was a product of both developmentzs, with her "surface appropriation" of E a s t e m

style particularly syirptoma-tic of the contemporary popular stzage's passion for Oriental exoticism. Below is an account of the Orient's

early journey Westward and of the resulting stylistic and philosophical

climate in vhich St. Denis' dance art developed. Chapters subsequent

to this will reveal in the Vfest an increased awareness of the Eastem world rp through the present day, and will note the extent to vhich

heirs of St. Denis have continued her inspired appropriation of the

Orient. The general cultural surveys included in this and the

remaining chapters make frequent reference to How the Swans Came to

68 69 the Lake; A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (1981) by

Rick Fields to vdiose scholarship the author owes great debt.

Frcm the middle of the thirteenth century vdien Pope Innocent IV sent an envoy to the court of Kubla Khan; to Marco Polo's sojourn to the same court and throughout Asia in the following century; to

Vasco da Gama's voyage to India in 1497 ; to subsequent travels of

European traders, military men, priests, and missionaries to China,

Japan, (Ceylcn), India, Indochina, and Tibet; to the

Portuguese massacre of Buddhists in 1501 and subsequent establishment of the Reman Catholic Church in Sri Lanka; to St. Francis Xavier's and other Jesuits' missionary work in Japan beginning in 1549; to the mid-seventeenth century assault on Sinhalese Buddhism and Portuguese

Catholicism by EUtch Calvinists; to the 1678-9 visit to the court of the king of Siam by an envoy of Louis XIV; a non-tolerant

Christianity jaundiced the perception of Westerners coming into contact with Eastem thought. But certainly more than missionary zeal took Westerners Eastward. Mercantile motives led Europe to the exotic world of tea, spices, and silk, to "an Asia that had been the jewel-like focus for millenia of European dreams" (Fields, 1981:31).

Except for seme recognition on the part of eighteenth century rationalists that the governing systems of China and Japan had seme admirable characteristics. Oriental thought was, if not ignored, abhorred by the Vfest until mid to late nineteenth century.

"It was not until William Jones completed his work in India, that the scientific study of Oriental art and philosophy could be said to have even begun" (Fields, 1981:34). Jones, an Englishman b o m in

1736, was educated at Oxford where he studied Arabic, Persian, and 70 Turkish. Initial faite came with his translations of literary classics of the Orient, but the absence of even academic outlets for financial recognition of his work led Jones to study law. He became an established lawyer, a member of the Royal Society in 1772, and hobnobbed in .ne finest salons with the likes of painter Joshua

Reynolds arid actor Garrick. While the first British settlement on the mainland of India was established in 1612, by 1774 the British

East India Ccnpany was close enough to bankruptcy and the Indian population offering sufficient resistance to colonialization that

Parliament brought the East India Goirpany under British government control, setting up a Supreme Court to protect the interests of the

Indian people. Jones' reputation as a dedicated Orientalist and his experience in law certainly rendered him well qualified for one of the positions of justice on the Supreme Court of India. Appointed to replace a retiring justice, Jones arrived in India in Septenber of 1783.

In January of 1784, only four months after his arrival in India,

Jones called together thirty English , administrators to the Grand Jury

R x m of the Supreme Court of India and established the Asiatick

Society. The Society was patterned after the Royal Society and was established to make scientific and systanatic inquiry into matters

"bounded only by the geogr^hical limits of Asia" (Fields, 1881:42).

The force behind the early studies of the Society was economic: an

understanding of the religion and philosophy of India would facilitate

ruling it. It was Jones' need to understand Hindu law that led to

his study of Sanscrit vhich would ultimately result in his discovery

that Sanscrit and European languages had a cotmon origin in an 71 earlier Indo-European language. This discovery, along with his establishment of the Asiatick Society and his carrying out the first systematic studies in ccnparative religion made Sir William

"Oriental" Jones the single most instrumental Westerner in the laying of groundwork for the twentieth century West's understanding of the East.

At a time when nearly everyone considered the Orientals as titillating exotica, Jones saw, with a historical analogy that has proved prophetic, that the translation and study of Asiatic literature could cone to play the same role in the modem world that the rediscovery of the Greek and Latin classics did in the renaissance of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe. While many of Jones's pioneering efforts have been superceded, his vision of an "Oriental renaissance," (though he himself did not use that term) is still vital to an understanding of the intellectual and spiritual life of the West (Fields, 1981:34).

Excerpts of the Asiatick Society's Asiatick Researches made their way to America making possible the Transcendentalists' interpretations of Indian thought. For instance, hymns to Hindu gods which Jones translated into English poems based on Western classical verse forms used by Pope, Gray, and were reprinted in America magazines.

One of these, the "I^mtn to Narayana," made a deep impression upon seventeen year old Ralph Waldo Emerson when he first read it in 1820.

And it would be in Emerson's library around twenty years later that a young Ifenry David Thoreau wrould first discover Oriental thought.

The Dial (1840-1844) was a literary journal sponsored by the informal Transcendental Club which met at Concord and Boston and which included in its membership Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and

The Dial's first editor, Margaret Fuller. In 1842, when Emerson

succeeded Fuller as editor and Thoreau became his assistant. The Dial 72

turned Eastward. Enerson chose to begin including in issues of the

Dial a series of "Ethnical Scriptures" from cultures other than the

Greek and the Hebrew. As Enerson had crate to have the highest

regard for the Hindus the first such selection had been excerpts frran

a translation of the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma. Oriental influence

in the Dial increased to include Buddhism when Thoreau took over

editorship of the Dial's Ethnical Scripture. Thoreau's contribution

to the Dial in 1844, "frran one of the religious books of the Buddhists

of N^jal, " was the SaddharTnapundarika or Lotus Sutra, a definitive

text of the Maiiayana school. Thoreau had translated it frran a French

translation having just speared in Paris. By 1844 the Dial would

cease publication and Thoreau would go to Walden Pond. î*îhile at

Walden Thoreau would write: "There is an orientalisn in the most

restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east"

(Thoreau, 1906:157). And srane years after leaving Walden:

Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. Tto some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi" (Letter to H.G.O. Blake quoted in Christy, 1932:201).

In 1865, three years after Thoreau's death, a friend would write: "He went about like a priest of Buddha who expects to arrive soon at the

surtmit of a life of contemplation" (John Weiss quoted in Christy,

1932:233).

Emerson once remarked that Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) was "a mixture of the Bhagavad-Gita and the New York Herald"

(Rayapati, 1973:12). Thoreau, meeting Whitman in in

1857 informed Whitman that his work w a s "wonderfully like the

Orientals" (Rayapati, 1973:13). In A Backward Glance Whitman 73

reports that in preparation for Leaves of Grass he had absorbed, with

the classics of Vfestem literature, "the ancient Hindu poems." Leaves

of Grass offers evidence that the work of William Jones and the

subsequent dissemination of Eastem thou^t by Emerson, Thoreau,

and the other Transcendentalists had made it possible mid-nineteenth

century for a curious American to have a speaking acquaintance with the

Orient. In his later Passage to India (1868) VJhitman travels back to

"primal thought .... Back, back to wisdom's birth, to Innocent

intuitions."

In 1878 the English journalist and poet Edwin Amold's The Light

of Asia was received in Concord and published in Boston the following

year. Fully entitled The L i ^ t of Asia, or The Great Renunciation,

Being the Life and Teachings of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder

of Buddhian, the book told the story of Buddha in a manner consistent with Victorian taste. The book was extranely popular, going through

eighty editions and selling between a haJ f million and a million

copies. Having spent tine in India Arnold was able to offer exotic

background to the story of Siddhartha. Gaming through the pages was

an outline of Buddhist thought as it was understood at the time. "He

(Arnold) versified the doctrine of karma, the Four Noble Truths, and

the Eightfold Path" (Fields, 1981:58). In The Light of Asia Arnold

also contributed to a modification of an early translation of Nirvana

as "annihilation," an unfortunate misconception vhich had caused many

a nineteenth century Westem thinker to dismiss Buddhism as a cult

of nihilism.

It has been through leamed scholarship - beginning with Jones

in the eighteenth century, continuing through Bzterson and Thoreau 74 and in such works as Arnold's The Light of Asia in the nineteenth century, and continuing into this century - that Americans have come to know the ghilosc^hy of the East. On the other hand. Oriental style, that more surface aspect of the Orient vdiich had initial influence on modem dance, initially was ccmnunicated to Acericans chiefly through contact with the Oriental peoples who made their way to the West.

Chinese The discovery of gold at Sutter's mill north of San Francisco in

1848 triggered the first large scale iitmigration of Asian people to the Ikiited States. While only a negligible number of Chinese were in America in 1848, by 1852 there were twenty-thousand, by 1860 one in ten Californians was Chinese, and by the end of the 1860's there were sixty-three thousand (Fields, 1981:70-1). Chinese workers lured by the gold rush to Gold Mountain, as they called America, later were instrumental in the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, with work on that project beginning in 1867. Throughout the westem United

States Chinese worked in service capacities, becoming the laundrymen and cooks later to be stereotyped and ridiculed in parodies on the turn of the century commercial stages of New York.

While the Chinese were typically industrious and dependable workers, they were subject to hatred and violence. Reports frcm Christian missionaries in China of the heathen nature of the Chinese fueled the prejudice initially provoked by the novel aspect of Chinese customs exhibited in Anerica. Among the more concrete objects of

Americans' ridicule were the Chinese tenples vhich reflected the mixture of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism which cotrprised Chinese 75 religion, and ^Aich were the center of cultural life for the Chinese in America. The first of these was built in San Francisco's Chinatavn in 1853, with ei ^ t tatples in Chinatown by 1875, and with more than four hundred on the west ooast by the end of the nineteenth ceitury.

Tb Caucasian nei^ibors the taiples - called "joss houses" frcm the pidgin version of the Latinate deos (god) - were suspect at best.

To most Caucasians the joss houses conjured up dark ■%'sterious sanctuaries where thick snoke frcm joss sticks (incense) cijscured the air that was filled with heathen superstition and unspeakable rites. To the more barbarian outsiders, though, the joss houses were, as tenples have always been, convenient targets for terror, and a number of anti-Chinese vigilante grou^, such as the Order of Caucasians, thought nothing of burning the local Chinese tarples to the ground (Fields, 1981:76).

By the end of the nineteenth century increased familiarity with the ostensible characteristics of Chinese culture would take seme of the hatred out of American's ridiculing of the Chinese. Where prejudice was eradicated, fascination with the exotic persisted.

And both would find expression in the popular catmercial theatre of

the day, which by that time had become centralized in New York City.

Japanese

While the Chinese had arrived at Gold Mountain in great numbers

around 1850, the 1870 census found only seventy Japanese in the United

States. The presence of Japanese people here was slow in coming about.

The shoguns' policy of isolation had forbidden Westerners to come

closer to Japanese life than a Dutch outpost at Nagasaki (Fields,

1981:76). Finally in 1854 Commodore Perry and two warships negotiated

a treaty with the Japanese, and in 1860 the first J^>anese envoy to 76

America visited San Francisco, Washington, and New York.^ When in

1868 the newly restored eiiporer granted permission for non-official

Japanese citizens to travel abroad, the way was opened for eventual arrival on the Ikiited States mainland. Ihe stepping stone from Japan to California was to be Hawaii. A stream of Japanese workers to

Hawaiian sugar plantations soon began and continued for sate years, with almost o n e thousand leaving Tbkyo for a three year oontract in

Hawaii in 1887. By 1890 two thousand and thirty-nine Japanese were on the United States mainland, sore having cote directly froti Japan, sate via Hawaii. By 1894 there were around twenty-five thousand

Japanese in Hawaii. When the IMited States annexed the Hawaiian

Islands in 1890, the regioi had a large Japanese population in vhich, despite the inroads of Christian itiissionaries. Buddhism was alive.

Due to their growing presence in the Lhited States ty the end of the nineteenth century, the identiifying physical characteristics, incatprehensible languages, and customs of the Chinese and Japanese had become cannon enough to be widespread objects of stereotyped imitation. But forty-odd years since the gold rush, late in the century vhen the Japanese were arriving in increased numbers, the religious and philosophical backgrounds of the Chinese and Japanese were either overlooked or misunderstood by the American public.

America's acquaintance with the religions of the Orient was furthered, hovever, with the World Parliament of Religions organized

In "A Broadway Pageant" (1860) frcm Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman observed the ero/oy's parade down New York's Broadway: Over the Westem seas hither frcm Niphon cone. Courteous, the swarth-cheek'd two-sworded envoys. Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, iitpassive. Ride today through Manhattan (Whitman, 1980:206). 77

in conjunction with the Columbian Esçosition of 1893, held in

Chicago. While the majority of delegates and audience were Christians,

the non-Christian religions of Asia were well represented. Among the

more influential delegates was the Ceylonese Buddhist Anagarika

Eharraapala, the leader of International Buddhism, and the Japanese

Sqyen Shaku, the first Zen master in America. Shaku's speech, read

in Qiglish, had been translated by his student back in Japan,

D.T. Suzuki. Cne of the other Japanese Buddhist delegates left

thousands of oopies of English translations of Buddhist works. And

imrediately following the closing ceremony of the Parliament,

Dharmapala admitted Charles T. Strauss, a Ne.v York Businessman of

Jewish birth, into the Buddliist fold. Through contacts made at the meetings, the t-forld Parliament of

Religions triggered subsequent East-West dialogue. Dharmapala

returned to the Ikiited States in 1896 lecturing on "The Reconcilation

of Buddhian and Christianity" to audiences in New York, Chicago,

San Francisco, Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Duluth, Minneapolis,

Iowa City, Des Moines, Dayton, and Columbus. Wfcxnen made rro the

majority of his audiences. In a third visit to the United States

in 1902-1904 the Buddhist leader made a point of visiting technical

schools, "convinced that the East needed the technology of the Wëst,

as the West needed the dharma of the East" (Fields, 1981:134).

Dharmapala's idea was to be echoed by many of the Buddhists vho were

determined to bring their philosofiiical religion to the West. It was

during the 1902-1904 visit that Dharmapala lectured to William James'

class at Harvard, outlining the major Buddhist doctrines. Following 78 iSiantepala's talk James observed to the class: "This is the psychology ever^xxiy will be studying twenty-five years frcm new" (Sangarakshita, 1964:78).

Another development of the Wbrld Parliament of Religions of

1893 was the personal contact vAiich. would eventually result in

D.T. Suzuki's traveling to the laiited States. As stated above it was Suzuki vAo had prepared the English translation of the Parliament address by Soyen Shaku, the first Zen master in America (Fields,

1981:126). At the Parliament a friendship had developed between

Soyen and Dr. Paul Carus, a German emigre living in LaSalle, Illinois, a short distance frcm Chicago. Carus was an author of books on science and religion and, as editor of Open Court Press, needed a translator and editor for a new series of Oriaital works. Soyen suggested his student D.T. Suzuki for the task and early in 1897 arrived in the Ibiited States to work with Carus in Illinois. It was \Aile working with Carus on an English translation of Taoism's

"bible, " the Tao Te Ching of La Tsu published in 1898, that Suzuki began Ouflines of Mahayana Buddhism (1907). This, Suzuki's first book in English, commenced his ongoing direction of the Ifest's attention "to the organic, evolutionary nature of Buddhism" (Fields,

1981:139). "Is not changeableness, that is susceptibility to irritation, the most essential sign of vitality?" (Suzuki, 1963:12)

Fifty years later the same D.T. Suzuki's lectures at Columbia

Oliversity would inspire a generation of modem artists, including choreogr^hers Erick Hawkins and and composer

John Cage, the latter two actually present at the lectures. 79

Mearadîile in Japan, an interest in things Western had resulted in visits to the ]jtperial IMiversity of Ibl^yo by Jtoerican scholars, among them Ernest Francisco FenoUosa. Fenollosa, a native of

Salem-Boston and graduate of Harvard, arrived in Tokyo in 1878 to teach political econcny and philosophy (Fields, 1981:147). While at

Harvard Fenollosa had attended the first lectures in the new field of art history, and once in Japan became enthralled with Chinese and

Japanese art. For this cheater's chronology of the Vfest's growing awareness of the East, it should be reported here that Fenollosa's appreciation of Chinese and Japanese art and his application of newly determined principles of art history to Sino-Japanese art would come to convince not cnly the Vfest, but also the East itself, that the traditional painting and sculpture of China and Japan were resources to be treasured. Fenollosa was instrumental in the rediscovery of countless art treasures locked in Japanese temples for two hundred years. By 1884 Fenollosa had acquired enough traditional Chinese and

Japanese art for the Boston Museum to have the greatest collection of

Far Eastem art in the vrorld. West or East. Leaving Japan in 1890 to beccme curator of the Boston Museum’s Department of Far Eastem

Art, Fenollosa was told by the Stporer of Japan: "You have taught my

people to knew their own art. In going back to your country, I charge

you to teach them also" (Fields, 1981:155). Arthur Wesley Dow would

become Fenollosa’s assistant at the Boston Museum and create of

Fenollosa’s theory a practical method of art education. In 1903

Dow would become director of the Fine Arts Department of Columbia

University's Teachers College. The relationship of the Fenollosa-Dow 80

theories of art education to the educational theory of John D e œ y and the effect of both \çxon the conception of dance as creative process for children will be addressed in Chapter Four.

Fields observes that 1890's Boston, the city vhere Arnold's

The Light of Asia had been published and vhose Transcendentalist

Dial had been so instrumental in the early spreading of Oriental

ideas, was full of occult, itystical, and Oriental religions. William

James at Harvard was writing The Varities of Religious Experience

(1902) and Bostonian Itery Baker Eddy's Christian Science, influenced by Indian metaphysics, was spreading quickly. One Sturgis Bigelcw who had traveled to Japan with Fenollosa returned to his well-healed

Boston lifestyle a practicing Buddhist. He gave instruction in meditation to young George Cabot lodge, one of a generation of Harvard

poets susceptible to the irysticism of the Orient, Before his death

in 1908 Fenollosa would ccnplete a pencil draft of Epochs of Chinese

and Japanese Art. His wife would ccsrplete it and traveling to England

to have the manuscript published in 1912, would meet the poet Ezra

Pound, an American e^qsatriot. Translations of Chinese poans within

Fenollosa's text led Pound to expound a theory of poetry which would

cone to have deep influence on modem poetry and on the broader

conc^jt, particularly relevant to this study, of Oriental art and

its relationship to modem Westem art. Ideas in Fenollosa's essay

"The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry," which Pound

would publish and embrace as a manifesto, crop up throughout

discussions of the art of the East and of the constructivist tendency

in modem art. Choreographer Erick Hawkins' essays "Pure Fact"

(1958) and "Pure Poetry" (1966) (Chapter Five) are in the direct 81 line of the Fenollosa essay and Bound's lifelong elaboration of it.

Cne can discern the germ of Northrop's distinction between art of the first function and art of the second function (Chapter One) in

Fenollosa's theories. And Erick Havrfcins, in his praise of the concrete image in dance and sound, acknowledges his debt to Northrop.

Thus through his bringing to a major U. S. museum the world's largest collection of Far Eastem art, in his influence upon art education - and within that category, dance education - through Dow at Columbia's Teachers College, and through his influence içon a new

aesthetic through the iirpact of his posthumous Epochs of

Chinese and Japanese Art (1912) vpon , Ernest Francisco

Fenollosa did much to make possible modem dance's ^propriation of the essence of the East begun by Martha Graham in the nineteen twenties.

But in the twenty-five years surrounding the t u m of tlie century the

American ccnmercial theatre was interested in the Orient only for its exotic surface allure.

Dance in t u m of the century America had no audience save the ccnmercial theatre audience. The study of the essence of the East had been carried out by a relative handful of men and votien. The mass - and it is the mass audience vÆiich sets the taste of popular entertainment - had little serious interest in the Orient. Eliade notes the obstacles to mass acceptance of cultural values differing vastly froti those of the receiving public:

The fact remains that a cotprehensioi of that vast and cctnplex spiritual phenomenon (Eastem philosophy) was not infallibly guaranteed by the possession of such excellent tools as critical editions, polyglot dictionaries, historical monographs, and so on. 82 When cne approaches an ©cotic spiritualily, one understands principally vdiat cne is predestined to understand hy one's cwn vocation, by one's own cultural orientation and that of the historical nonent to vdiich one belongs (Eliade, 1969 :xiii).

Despite the fascinating steps through vAiich essential aspects of the philosophy and art of the Orient came to be known by a growing number of Americans, the general public's conception of the Orient at the t u m of the century was that of exotic "other" vhich was subject to, if not ridicule, then a stereotype of appearances.

As observed abo^'e the Wbrld Parliament of Iteligions of 1893 in

Chicago was held in conjunction with the greater Columbian Exposition.

As instrumental as the Parliament was for the development of America's awareness of Oriental religion and philosophy, so was the Columbian

Exposition for the spreading of non-Westem style in dance. An

American b o m Oriental dancer billed as "Little Egypt" was the scandalous hit of the Exposition, in her way and like the Parliament of Religions, sofing seeds vhich over time would bear fruit in modem dance. Little Egypt was representative of the popular dance fare of the two decades surrounding the t u m of the century vhen "the public did not demand much more than occasional glinpses of an exotic dancer frcm the Far East or the Middle East (McDonagh, 1976:9). Appearing in the midway attraction "The Streets of Cairo," Little Egypt inspired a generation of female dancers to explore the sensual lure of hoochy-koochy or bellydancing. "It took only a year for hundreds of imitation Little Egypts to show up, performing in museums and traveling shows at a charge of ten cents a dance" (tfezo, 1977:70).

Ruth St. Denis would be hii^ily influenced by the phenomenon, but her interests would run deeper. 83

The pelvic sensuality of "Oriental dance" and the stereotyped angularity of Egyptian style were not the only surface appropriation of the Eastem world gracing the popular stages of the day. Musical variety or vaudeville entertainments parodying sane aspect of the

Orient were remarkably catmon during the years 1890-1915- Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado Had achieved great success in England and in the United States in the 1880s, and it could be said that its cheerful mocking of an Asian culture and playful exaggeration of seme aspects of Japanese style set the example of much that was to follow on the catmercial stage. Chapter TWo noted producer Augustin Daly's

"Geisha" in which an unknown Isadora Duncan reluctantly sang in 1898

(Duncan, 1927:40). Also, David Belasco mounted a production of Madams

Butterfly in New York in 1900 (Brockett, 1968:514). Ewens' guide to

American ttoical Theater (1970) describes the following shows, each produced in New York and most having runs around the country: Wang

(1891) ; A Trip to Chinatown (1893) ; The Wizard of the Nile (1895) ;

The Fortune Tteller (1898) ; A Chinese Honeymoon (1902) ; The Sho-Gun

(1904) ; A Trip to Japan (1909) ; and Chin-Chin (1914).

While not as easily documented, the Oriental specialty number was a carman feature in vaudeville shows and in such off-shoots fron vaudeville as the first quarter of the century editions of the

Ziegfeld Follies (1907-1925, 1927, 1931, 1934, 1936-37, 1943, 1957) and Greenwich Village Follies (1919-1928). First dancing in New York in of 1906, Ruth St. Denis was a product of this era of popular variety entertainment in which Oriental style of movement, dress, and decor were standard fare. 84

Butti St. Denis

Ruth St. Denis (1877-1968) was a struggling stage performer finding occasional roles in musical theatre productiorsvhen a poster picture of the goddess Isis advertising Egyptian Deities cigarettes gai/e her career direction. As discussed above, there was plenty of reason for St. Denis to believe that an American audience would find her interpretation of the East entertaining: the Orient had been an

American stage fascination for decades. But the would-be dancer frcm

New Jersey had a vision of presenting Oriental dance art of more depth than the stylistic parodies and travesties described above. By presenting Oriental dance, costume, and architectural styles seriously, and by teaching a generation of American dancers Oriental dance styles,

Ruth St. Denis insured that the Orient would figure in the development of m o d e m dance.

Ruth St. Denis' obsession with the Orient developed early in life. The image of exotic ancient Egypt, very much in the air at a critical time in her artistic development, began the lifelong obsession vAiich led St. Denis to write: "Seme strange element within myself never really came alive except when it was identified with the Orient"

(Sherman, 1979:43). In her youth there had been in her New Jersey home the books Egypt Through the Ages and another about Egypt entitled 2 The Idyll of the White Lotus. Also during childhood St. Denis had

2 Also in the Denis library and introduced to Kuthie Denis at an early age was Science and Health (1875) by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Sciaice, whose oontact with Oriental nysticism was noted earlier in this chapter. In her autobiography St. Denis identifies Eddy's book, along with Arnold's Light of Asia and a translation of the Bhagavad Gita as constant companions in her travels (St. Denis, 1939:48, 306). 85 been moved by the Palisades Park pageant "Egypt through the Centuries. "

The pageant and books contributed to a vague impression of an exotic East a world away.

Egypt was very much "in the air" at a critical time in St. Denis' artistic development. Recent scholarship reveals that St. Denis was

influenced substantially by Genevieve Stebbins' fusing of Oriental

thought and body discipline with the ^stem of Delsarte. An 1892 matinee performance by Stebbins, attended ly Ruthie Denis, closed with the pantomine "îyth of Isis" (Shelton, 1978:41). And a year later

the midway attraction The Streets of Cairo made Little Egypt the toast of the Chicago Ebgosition. Since Napoleon's excursion to Egypt in

1798, resulting in the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, much excavation

and scholarly research on Egypt had served to inform the West of the

style of the East. And Augustin Daly who, from the period 1869-99 was "one of the most influential figures in the American theatre"

(Brockett, 1968:503) set the stage for Little Egypt vhen he brought

a troupe of Indian Nautch dancers to New York in 1881 (Todd, 1950:25).

Following a period of employment in David Belasco's production

Du Barry, St. Denis was determined that her career as a creator of

stage magic begin with a piece entitled Egypta. The dance-play was

to present one dçy in the life of ancient Egypt and at the same time,

show the lifespan of that civilization. Seeing Japanese dramatic

dancer Sadi Yacco and her troupe at 's theatre in Paris

in 1900 had permitted St. Denis the opportunity of seeing Oriental

dance ranoved from the context of American light entertainment of 86 of the day.^ She sought more than vdTat Shawn later referred to as

"a hootchy-kootchy. Little Egypt sort of show" (îfezo, 1977:96).

During the time that St. Denis was doing library and other research, a trip to the amusement park at Coney Island removed Egypt

frcm center stage in her theatrical vision, and India entered. A midway attraction billed The Streets of New Delhi offered an Indian

village enlivened snake charmers and nautch dancers,^ both of vàiich

St. Denis would oome to portray. St. Denis' previous library research

expanded to include the dances and other customs of all Oriental

cultures. She w n t so far as to recruit individuals of Oriental

descent and, in her mother's New Jersey ^jartment, rehearsed them in

scenes of the Indian dance which was to become "Radha."

Early in 1906 "Radha" was seen in various settings and created

a sensation. When vaudeville-Broadway producer Henry B. Harris

invited the managers of New York's vaudeville theatres to a matinee

performance of Radha, St. Denis gained two bookings. At the same time

St. Denis had secured some engagements in the salons of New York society, a forum vdiich had also welcomed Isadora Duncan. A group

of women prcminent in society sponsored a matinee performance at the

^ As observed in Chapter IWo, Isadora Duncan saw Yacco during the same Paris season.

^ In a 1917 ooirmentary on vhat he describes as being the first performance in the United States of authentic Nautch dancing, by Roshanara and her associate Ratan Devi, Gocmaraswairy provides the derivation of the term. "Indian culture like that of the old Greeks - enplcys a single name for the coimon art of acting and dancing; and this word Natya, in its Indian vernacular form beccmes Nautch" (1917:61). 87

Hudson 'Theatre on March 22, 1906. The performance, vhich consisted of "Radha," "The Cobras," and "The Incense," marked the true beginning of St. Denis' success; it prcnpted Harris himself to take on management of further performances, and it created for St. Denis invaluable newspaper publicity.

On March 25, 1906 the New York Times headline read:

BRINGIN3 TTMPLE DANCES FROM THE ORIENT TO BROADWAY HINDU TYPES AND CEREMCNIES IN A NEW JERSEY GIRL'S NOVEL EXHIBITICN

Out of the jaws of vaudeville a group of New York votien vho still keep a wary eye out for rç>-to-date novelties have snatched a turn vÆâch they hope to make more or less of an artistic sensation. A set of Hindu dances performed by a New Jers^ girl with a rather convincingly clear notion of vhat she is doing, constitute this latest find. . . , The fascination of the Orient is eternal. Women's clubs that have sipped tea over pretly much everything from Sun Wbrship to Mental Science generally fall back on Eastern lore for things to be enthusiastic about.5

St. Denis had made a name for herself. The turn of the century public ejçjected something a little risque frcm the Orient, and

St. Denis' bare feet and legs were played up heavily in publicity releases. But the itysticisti of these pieces gave the audience more than a glirtpse at sensuality; with their in-troduction to irysticisn,

St. Denis* offerings were for the audience an expanding kind of experience. The fully developed cos-tuming and sets inspired the audience's full committment to her art.

Earlier in this chapter it was noted that ten years earlier, during the 1896 U.S. lecture tour of Buddhist leader Dharmapala, women made up the largest part of his audiences. 88

Duncan dressed her art in austere passion, and the pc^jular audiences c o u M accept neither the performer nor the dance. St. Denis 1st her Orientalia serve as a disguise. She cloaked the meaning of her dances in rich regalia; she danced stories, frcm behind the stagecraft, and she triunphed. Ruth St. Denis' dance, unlike that of Isadora Duncan, was shew biz (Mazo, 1977:76).

The dance movanent under all this theatrical splendor was subdued in these early dances: an evocative walk, a subtle turn of the head, marvelous undulation of the arms (Cohen, 1974:119). St. Denis' was

"shew biz" with a difference.

The vaudeville audience as a whole did not ccnprehend her aspiraticms. At first there was a distinct gasp of amazement, vronderment viiether to disapprove of the audacity or to resent the lofty conception. But in each audience were a few vdio responded unreservedly to the beauty of the appeal and went out and told others of the rare vision they had seen. These, in turn, spread the good news, until the manager was surprised to find at each performance a stream of people of a type not usually seal at a vaudeville performance, vto came just before Radha's appearance and hurried away as soon as her curtain fell, and vÆc came again and yet again (Caffin, 1912 in St. Denis, 1939:66).

Following seme touring on the East ooast, St. Denis had three performances in London and an engagement in Paris beginning

September 1, 1906. She then spent almost two years performing in

Germany. While there she was able to do considerable research in

Egyptian and Orieital history in the libraries and museums of Berlin,

and "Nautch" and "The Yogi" were created there. A successful return

engagement in London brought St. Denis home to further sew the seeds

of an American audience for dance. One of her first projects would

be the full length "Egypta," inspired years earlier by that cigarette

advertisement graced by the figure of Isis. More engagements in

New York and touring the Ikiited States would follow, as would more

dance pieces inspired by the Orieit. 89

Denishawn

In Denver in March of 1911 St. Denis' performance of "The Incense" brought tears to the eyes of a young man who was considering a career in dance. His name was . In 1914 Shawn answered St. Denis' call for a male dance partner, they began their dancing career together, and married. In February of 1915 in San Francisco, Ruth St. Denis and

Ted Shawn produced their first joint piece of , "The

Garden of Kama," an East Indian dance drama suggested by Laurence

Hcpe's then popular India's love Lyrics (St. Denis, 1939:173). Later in 1915 the two established the in los Angeles.

Throughout the long, though frequently interrupted history of the school, scheduling of instruction remained fairly constant. The

Denishawn day found Shawn teaching stretch class, ballet barre, and free movement early in the noming, St. Denis taking over mid-moming with various techniques of Oriental dance, and St. Daiis leading yoga meditation in the evening.

Later in 1915 the school developed into a cortpany vÆien St. Denis and Shawn invited eight fotiale dancers to tour with them. The first

Denishawn tour of 1915-16 was unsuccessful financially, but a subsequent year's stint in vaudeville, a terrain known well by

St. Denis, managed to keep the ccxtpany and school solvent. The pattern repeated itself frequently with St. Denis and Denishawn: attempts at affording to dance a serious function outside the popular cotmercial stage had to be periodically subsidized by tours in vaudeville viiLch were artistically less satisfying to St. Denis the rrystic. Nevertheless, in both forums her Orientalism was the 90

trademark. In a listing of St. Denis' choreography^ pieces with

Eastern themes make up no less than fifty-four of one hundred forty-

four pieces spanning a fifty year period of choreographic activity.

Ruth St. Denis Choreograply Based on Oriental Hienes frcm "Choreochronicle of Ruth St. Denis" (McDona^, 1976:31-34)

1906 1918

Cobras Dance of the Royal Ballet of Incense Siam Radha Danse Siamese An Indian Itertple Scene 1908 Nautch Syrian Sword Dance Nautch Vision of Yashodhara A Shirabyoshi The Yogi 1919

1910 Ooolan Dhu Egyptian Suite (with Ted Shawn) Egypta Kuan Yin Ihe lotus Pond Little Banzo Orientale 1913 Street Nautch Dance Three Ladies of the East Bakawali 0-Mika 1921

1914 The Beloved and the Sufi Impressions of a Japanese Chitra Hunting Tragedy

1915 1922

Ihe Garden of Kama East Indian Suite A Lady of the Genvoko Period Japanese Suite 0-Mika Arranges Her Flowers Street Nautch and Starts for a Picnic 1923 1916 Inpressions of a Japanese Review of Dance Pageant of Storyteller India, Greece, and Egypt Ishtar of the Seven Gates (with Ted Shawn) 91

1926 1957

A Burmese Yien Pwe lb a Chinese Flute Festival of Saraswati Invocation to the Buddha Javanese Court Dancer The Soul of India White Jade A Yioi Pwe (with

1927

Dance of the Red and Gold Saree

1928

The Batik Vender Black and Gold Sari Three Coolie Girls

1929

Burmese Dance Dojoji A Figure fron Angkor Vat Kwannon

1930

Angkor Vat A Buddhist Festival Nautch Dance Ensemble

1931

Dance Balinese M o d e m Nautch Salome

1933

Balinese

1941 Adventures of Marco Polo

1949

Buddhist Nun 92

The Denishawn School and Gcitçany vrould cane to provide the mainstream of dance instruction and entertainment in the United

States until the early 1930's. In doing so Denishawn would verse a generation of professional dancers, including Martha Graham and

Jack Cole, in the movement ways of the East. In 1916, before the

United States altered the First World War, joined the school as acootpanist and Martha Graham began study at Denishawn.^ In 1917 with Shawn entering the service and St. Denis playing the

Pantages vaudeville circuit, Shawn, the real administrator of the school, a^ced Graham to teach. After the war St. Denis and Shawn toured together and with their separate cotpanies, with sunmers usually free for teaching at the school in Los Angeles. By 1923 branches of the Denishawn School had been opened by former students in Boston, Rochester, Minneapolis, Wichita, San Francisco, and

Berkeley. And irtportantly, Shawn had opened the Denishawn Studio in New York in 1922.

In the fall of 1925 Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and the Denishawn

Corpany began a tour of China, India, Japan, Java, and other parts of Asia. The year and a half tour vhich enabled the Oriental dances of St. Denis and Shawn to return to their source was the first tour to Asia by an American dance corpany. Response to the corpany's performances was exceedingly positive. Terry distills the iirpact of the tour rpon theatre in the countries visited:

Chapter Four offers more information regarding Graham's pre- Denishawn dance background, as well as her time as Denishawn pupil, teacher, and dancer. 93

Their inflTJoice was prodigious: in Japan, Japanese critics recatmended that if Japanese theatre was to be affected by the West, the Denishawns should be the model; in India St. Denis’s ncnethnic Indian dances were credited with, contributing to the renascence of India's classical dance; and China's greatest actor- dancer, Mei-Fang, was so iirpressed with the length of St. Denis's scarf, for she was a tall wonan and he a short man, that he did away with no one knows how many hundreds of years of tradition and adopted the St. Denis scarf length, which irtnediately became the authorized onel (Terry, 1969:145)

In Japan one critic wrote that vhen historians write of relations betsreen Japan and the ISiited States "they cannot ignore the caning of the Denishawn dancers in 1925 to Japan," and another that

Denishawn's vrork revealed the use of principles "synpathetic to true

Oriental souls" (Terry, 1969:142).”

St. Denis and Shawn took the cpportunity of the Oriental tour

as occasion to increase their awareness of, and if possible in the

case of St. Denis, to deepen their devotion to tie East. In Japan

on August 15, 1925 Ruth St. Denis wrote, "I have cone to gather the

essences of these isles. I am as one returned home, a home of

dreams fron viiich I have been exiled" (Terry, 1969:142). Both studied

with local dance masters throughout the tour and purchased native

costumes. They returned to tour the United States in 1926-27 with

new pieces inspired by if not actually created during the tour.

Denishawn's Oriental tour resulted in the bringing of more than

dance productions back to the States. St. Denis' brother Buzz, vhose

Thirty years later Denishawn alumna Martha Graham would tour the Orient with her cotpany. Terry notes that "vdiile in Indonesia, the press, saying that they had long srpposed that Aierica was a land of 'money, gadgets, and bonbs, ' had discovered through Graham's art 'that America has a soul'" (Tterry, 1969:142). 94 keen sense of business and of public taste guided St. Denis throughout

her career, was stage manager for the tour. Buzz acquainted himself with and aoguired a wide range of Asian wares and ijçon return frcm the

tour opened the St. Denis Asia Bazaar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, with two branches subsequently opening elsevhere in California. The

success of yet another enterprize through vdiich the name St. Denis

brought the Orient to the Anerican ccaisumer was largely due to the

fame of Ruth St. Denis and Denishawn.

The triurtphant Oriental tour, the triunphant hcmeccttiing tour, added to the triurcçhant three-year pre-Orient Mayer tours of the United States and Canada, had made Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn the most famous theatrical artists, on a national basis, in America (Terry, 1969:150).

Such fame was evidenced in 1927 viien the two were engaged as the stars of the touring corpany of the Ziegfield Follies, with St. Denis'

"Dance of the Red and Gold Sari" and Shawn's "Cosmic Dance of Shiva"

Follies audience favorites.

But despite such popularity and resulting financial gains, the

cormerciality of the Ziegfield tours and of numerous tours before left

the irystical side of Ruth St. Denis unfulfilled. And it was that

aspect of her sensibility which had drawn St. Denis to the Orient

originally. True to the pattern observed above, however, spending

time on the lucrative cotmercial stage was a necessity for the

realization of the more serious, progressive aspects of the Denishawn

platform. In this case the lofty project was Denishawn House, to

be a permanent center for the Denishawn philosophy of eclecticism in

dance. Denishawn House was dedicated in 1927. 95

The fifth Denishawn appearance at New York's lewisohn Stadium in the suturer of 1931 was the oortpany's last. Admittedly, foreclosure on the Denishawn House irortgage in 1933 was a syirptcm of the Great

Depression econcsiy, but it also ^mholized the end of the major period of Denishawn influence. Following the closing of the Denishawn House and Shawn's increased work with a corrpany of male dancers based at

Jaoob's Pillow, Massachusetts, St. Denis worked with church related events and generally faded from the public eye. While her career would experience a renaissance in the late nineteen thirties and forties, spearheading a new wave of interest in Oriental dance, the important thread of appropriating the Orient had passed frcm the surface imitation and parodying by the turn of the century commercial stage and its descendant Denishawn to the more physically integrated adaptation of the Orient by vhat had come to be termed "modem dance."

While for this study the career of Martha Graham to be discussed in

Chapter Pour is the most noteworthy offshoot of Denishawn, the thirties and forties further felt the influence of St. Denis'

Orientalism in the areas of authentic Oriental dance and popular entertainment.

St. Denis: La Meri and Jack Cole

In 1937 St. Denis was invited to be a part of Dance International, a large festival held at New York's Rockefeller Center. 'Bvo Oriental solos and her "Balinese Trio," placed in the same part of the program with Graham, Doris Hunphrey, (all Denishawn alumni),

Hanya Holm and , were received enthusiastically. Her success in the Dance International appearance and her having been 96 associated there with the modem dance movsnait convinced St. Denis that there was extended professional life for her in the performance and promotion of dances of the Orient. St. Denis* professional association with La fferi, originating at the time of the festival, would in the early forties result in establishment of organizations furthering the study of and potential appropriation of Oriental dance.

And the recognition of St. Denis' stature in the development of

American dance, originally recognized at the Dance International festival, extended to her being asked in 1938 to found the Dance

Department at Adelphi ISiiversity on Long Island.

Certainly an inspiration to St. Denis and a catalyst to the renewal of the sixty-year old's creative contact with the Orient was the career of La fferi. B o m Russell tferiwhether Hughes at the turn of the century, La Meri had begun her career performing ethnic dance on the vaudeville stage, as St. Denis had done twenty years before her.

La Meri's popular stage career began in the mid-twenties, and it will be remanbered that 1925-1926 saw the Denishawn tour of the Orient.

Fran this beginning in vaudeville. La Meri would come to tour the world, dedicating her career to the accurate reproduction of ethnic dances observed and studied in over twenty countries, among them

India, Burma, Java, the , China and Japan. Her quest demanded acquaintance with language, eastern, and costume, and La Meri's scholarly cultural research initiated the field of dance ethnology, ffeeting St. Denis around the time of Dance International in 1937

La Meri acknowledged the debt owed St. Denis for creating an American audience for Oriental dance and for helping to bring about a renaissance of classical dance in parts of Asia. 97 ]ji 1940 in New Yoric St. Denis and La Meri established the School of Nai^ viiere both tau^it and gave performances. One concert arising frcm this association offered a succinct observation of the different artistic inpulses guiding the careers of St. Daiis and La Meri.

The program was built on solos designed to be a sort of eigository counterpoint. First I would do the classical version of a dance, say, of India or Java; Miss Ruth would then do her own ronantic version of the same dance. As she e^qJlained it in her evening speech, "La Meri will do these dances as they have beai done for centuries in the land of their origin, Ihen I will do than as I d a m well please" (La Meri, 1977:152).

In 1941 La Meri's Ihe Gesture Language of the Hindu Dance was published, and in 1942 St. Denis and La Meri ccmbined the School of Natya with the Ethnologic Dance Centrer.

La Meri's dedication to accurate reproduction of Oriental dance, aided iy the fame and public stature of St. Denis, insured for

Americans increased opportunity for observing and studying the dance of the Orient. Itesulting reoeptiveness to Eastern dance would encourage the careers of numerous native dancers, the New York performances of wfacm are recorded in Abrahams' "Performance Chronology of Asian Dance in New York City 1906-1976" (Abrahams, 1977). Among these dancers was the Indian Shanta Rao vho first danced in New York

in 1957 and vhose dancing so moved Erick Ha&kins in the late nine-teen

fifties and sixties CHavkins, 1965:39). Surely the organizath-OTial

groundwork of the St. Denis and La tferi union was precedent for the

teaching of Bharata Natyam at New York's School of the Performing

Arts throughout the nineteen sixties (Anderson, 1967). And in general

cultniral terms, no survey of the ISiited Staties' rising awareness of 98

A s i a w o u l d b e conplete without recognition of La Meri's vital

oontributian through the performance, teaching, and published

scholarly examination of Asian dance.

Like so many of his generation an adolescent named J. Ewing

Richter saw a performance hy Ruth St. Denis and was inspired to pursue a career in dance. The dancer vAio was to beccme

Jack Cole trained in the Denishawn School in New York, toured with

the Denishawn Dancers, and danced with Shawn's male cotpany and with

Denishawn alumni Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. He would go on

to distinguish himself as performer and choreographer in late

vaudeville, night club revues, Eroadvray musical comedies, and motion

pictures, earning the label "father of modem jazz dance" (Leticia

Jay in Giordano, 1976:65).

In 1938 Cole became a faculty member of the Dance Department

St. Denis had just founded at Melphi Ihiversity, and that year he

choreographed "Oriental Inpressions. " It was vhile -teaching at

Adelphi that Cole happened upon the cultanral juxtaposi-tion which

became the trademark of his phenomenal career in stage and screen

dance. Having just taught a class in East Indian dance Cole played'

a recording of ccntieiporary popular music. He executed seme East

Indian hand movementis to the thirties music, and the result

can s-till be discerned in almost any performance or class of jazz

dance. As Cole's piece "East Indian Classic -to Jazz Tapo" is dated

1941, vdiat has been tented his "Hindu modem idicm" (McDonagh, 1976:149)

and "swingtime Orien-tal dance" (Terry, 1978:149) was well estzablished

by the -time he choreographed his first Broadway musical (Scme-thing 99 for the Boys) and his first motion picture (Mson Over ), both, in 1942.

Cole had been brought to Hollywood by Columbia Pictzires and in

•the years 1942-1961 crea-ted the choreography for nine films. In the mid-forties "his style of dance became the recognized standard for musical films and theatsr productions for the next taventy years"

(McDonagh, 1976:148). During the forties he created a concert groiç for studio dancers on the Columbia lot, including Gwen Verdon and

Buzz Miller, and oon-tinued to dazzle audiences with his choreography and performance on the popular stage. Cole's choreography for the

Ziegfeld Follies in 1942 (1943) included "Hindu Serenade," perhaps his signature piece. In his "East Indian Dance," performed at New

York's La-tin Quarter n i ^ t club in 1947, ''the accent is placed ipon detailed moveientis, upon Hindu hand gestures, the slight shift of the neck, the meaningful fluthering of eye muscles" (Iterry, 1978:191).

As stated at the outset of this stucfy, artistic appropria-tion can take -various forms ranging from paro<^ and -travesty through a more respec-tful imita-tion -to a less defined "inspiration. " A form of artistic apprcpriation observed in -ts and composers, termed

"quotation," ccmes to mind in the case of Jack Cole.

He is not an orthodox "modem" dancer, for though his move­ ment is extranely individual, it enploys a great deal of objective material - from the Orient, frcm the Caribbean, frcm Iferlem (Martin, 1948 in Giordano, 1976:27).

But despite Cole's "quoting" specific aspects of East Indian dance and despite the fact that he did create seme pieces with Eastern thanes, it should be emphasized that Cole created a new ^niamic in jazz dance which was felt in all of his choreography, regardless of 100

there or setting. For "the influences that he has invoked have been oonpletely absorbed into his own motor idiom" (Martin, 1948 in

Giordano, 1976:27).

The style of East Indian dance incorporated into the jazz dance dynamic by Cole has remained in the dance form. Looking back to the time Cole's innovation was first being felt. Steams observes vhat he terms "a Hindu exercise" in the "barroom, girls" section of 's revolutionary dream ballet in Oklahoma:

(1943). Writing in 1959 Steams observed the influence up to that year of Cole's particular appropriation of the Orient.

Flooding 7V, the theatre, and occasional concerts are presentations vhich are generally labeled as jazz or "modem jazz" dance. Bits of ballet, Hindu, acrobatic, and abstract modem movenents battiLe for supremacy .... Taking totally unrelated movements frcm Hindu dance . . . a dancer will extend one arm upward with the hand drooping, throw out her hip on the other side, and rotate her head in "Oriental" fashion. . . . The overall effect is supposed to delineate the "bad" girl, a part of the stock-in-'trade of such capable theatre performers as Qtfen Verdon (Steams, 1959:30). Ihe close association of Cole and Gwen Verdon, the identifica-tion of Verdon with the East Indian-inspired movement described above, the general success of Miss Verdm well into the nineteen seventies, and

Miss Verdon's close working relationship with contenporary Broadway and Hollywood choreogr^her Bob Fosse have been ins-trumental in the ongoing influence of Cole. Verdon first worked with choreographer

Fosse in Damn Yankees (1955), and starred in his Redhead (1959) and

Sweet Charity (1966). 101 In the show itself. Miss Verdon is first "discovered" (as the old stage directions go) in silhouette, and the pert placenait of the hips establishes the trademark not only for Miss Verdon but for Sweet Charity (Terry, 1966 in Giordano, 1976:88) .

It could be said that in Fosse's work after Sweet Charity the trademark has shifted to the choreographer himself. Pippin (1972),

Chicago (1975), and the film All That Jazz (1979), each contains the type of posturing described by Steams above as "stock-in-trade."

In his review of Sweet Charity Terry points out a characteristic of

Fosse's work closely related to the "hip posture" under discussion.

The visit to the Fan-Dango Ballroom may not be, in the strictest sense of the term, a dance number, but it sure is a brilliantly choreographed musical number in vAiich the postures, stances, gestures and weary collasses of the one time ten-cents-a-dance girls are brilliantly, taiderly and bitingly visualized" (Terry, 1966 in Giordano, 1976:88).

Such staging without dance movanent across the floor, but with sculptural posturing resembling Bharata Natyam or even t'ai chi, also appears in Pi^in and Chicago and has without doubt become a

Fosse tradanark. The fact that the author finds no evidence of Fosse having worked directly with Oriental dance or with Cble before the letter's death in 1974 attests to the potential vitality of indirect transmission of influence. Ongoing evidence of the influence of Cole's appropriation of East

Indian dance, and not strictly associated with Verdon or Fosse, are: the "jazz fourth position" of the legs and feet; the rolling, alternating isolations of the shoulders; head and neck isolations; and hand gesturing in which the back-hand wrist and the heel of the 102 hand alternately lead, all frequently observable in contemporary jazz dance performance and codified in the jazz dance techniques of Luigi (Luigi and Wÿdro, 1981) and Gus Giordano (Giordano, 1976).

Jazz dance is not in the line of modem dance's appropriation of 1±e Orient leading fron vaudeville imitation and Denishawn inspiration to the relatively sophisticated awareness of Eastern sensibility and mind-body integration to be discussed in later chapters. St. Denis' and Denishawn’s role in that develpnent, however, and Cole's origin in Denishawn offer occasion for reminding the reader that the Western dancer's surface-oriented interest in the "other" style of the Orient did not vanish with Miss Ruth's poses in stark profile or with the undulating of her "Cobra" hands.

Surntiary The fact that "some strange element" within Ruth St. Denis

"never really cane alive except vhen it was identified with the Orient" (Sherman, 1979:43) is to a great extent responsible for the instance of cross-cultural influence inspiring this study.

Denishawn's development of a method of training dancers outside the ballet acadary and its development of a large audience for non-ballet dance helped to bring about the modem dance movement.

And with that organizational groundwork Ruth St. Denis' original imbuing of stage treatment of the Orient with serious purpose is responsible for the appropriation of the Orient recurring in the history of modem dance. Due, again, both to the seeds of mental- plysical-spiritual integratioi in the philosophy of Isadora Duncan 103 and to the increased awareness of the East by the West in general, this appropriation has increased in sophistication.

And as observed above it was in the second quarter of the twentieth century that the nature of Anerican dance's appropriation of the East was to begin the shift frcm surface to essence. By

1890 the Oriental presence here made possible parodied imitation on the popular stage; by 1906 knowledge of the East permitted

Ruth St. Denis' "Radha"; by 1927 solo Oriental numbers made

St. Denis and Ted Shawn the stars of the touring Ziegfeld Follies.

But by the 1930 ' s the most progressive and fruitful thread of apprcpriation of the Orient had passed from surface imitation to the more physically integrated adaptation of the Orient by

Martha Graham. In 1926, vhile Denishawn was touring the

Orient, in New York Graham gave her first independent concert.

In 1931, the year of the last appearance by the Denishawn Dancers, Graham's revolutionary "Primitive %steries" was choreographed. Preceding its discussion of Martha Graham's pivotal position in the surface to essence phencmenon characterizing modem dance's appropriation of the East, Chapter Four will resume this chapter's account of the ongoing increase in American contact with the Orient, particularly those developments in scholarship and religious practice which by the nineteen thirties and forties had increased the East's presence here, hence feeding the interest of Martha Graham and her heirs. CHAPTER FOUR

Surface to Essence

Martha Graham: Early Career Profile

In this as in many discussions of modem dance, the career of

Martha Graham serves as a pivot point. In terms of both body technique

and theatre aesthetic, it was for Graham to explore the full potential

lying in the Oriental heritage she personally inherited fron St. Denis.

Her technique retains much of the primitive Eastern line vhich

St. Denis popularized in the West. And it was Graham, with her breath-inspired movanent dynamic of contraction-release and the rest of her technical warm-iç> vhich places the pelvis firmly on the floor, vho first objectified the gospel of modem dance which Isadora Duncan had been able only to state subjectively; dance movement is initiated

frcm the CENTER. locating this point inside the body and conceiving of energy flowing outward from that CENTER, Graham opened up new vistas of the East for appropriation by modem dancers.

Ifer technique would inspire the technique of Erick HavÆdns

(Chapter Five) vdiich would subsequently offer much to a growing cult of self-awareness through movement and to the body therapies vhich

stem frcm and nourish modem dance in the seventies and eighties

(Chapter Six). Graham's borrowing from Eastern theatre, particularly

Japanese Nbh and Kabuki, in her dance theatre's tr^tment of time would set the stage for Merce Cunningham's theatre of the moment

104 105 (Chapter Five) vdiich would, in turn, spawn the philosophical and

non-dance aspects of post-modern dance (Ch^Jter Five). Since these

two trends, that toward dance as therapy and that toward dance as

egalitarian activity for actualization, were nurtured by Hasdcins

and Cunningham, they have an organic link to the technique and

theatre of Martha Graham. In the nineteen seventies these trends nerge in a cult of Eastern-inspired holistic health for vdiich an

actualizing non-presentational dance form serves as focus - the

Contact Inprovization movement (Chester Six). In both the area of

body technique and theatre aesthetic, then, and in the culminating

area of mind-body integration observed in this study, those eleonents

embodying the so called "essence" of the East have origin in the work of Martha Graham.

In the spring of 1911 vdien Martha Graham was seventeen years old

and living in Santa Barbara, California her father took her to Los

Angeles to see her first dance performance. The dancer was

Ruth St. Denis. ^ Among the dances seen by Graham that night were

solos fron St. Denis' full-laigth dance drama Egypta. The delicately

graceful St. Denis, exotically costumed and moving to Oriental music,

became the young ffertha Graham's idol. And while no attempt will be made to place importance on the fact, it is interesting to note that

Graham's first amateur dance appearance took place that following

August of 1911 as one of thirty-seven "geisha girls" in a Santa Barbara

theatre's depiction of The Mikado. Returning to school in the fall

^Ted Shawn had first seen St. Denis only one month earlier, during her week's run in Denver. 106 of 1911 Graham gave vp her previous extra-curricular activities for dramatics.

In 1913 a nineteen year old Graham left heme to enter the junior college of the Cumnock School in los Angeles. A school brochure of the time explained that atmg the etphasis of the school was "self- expression" (McDonagh, 1973:19 ) with rather advanced study in dance and drama part of the curriculum for the iççerclassiten. As noted in Cheater Three, the Denishawn School had opened in los

Angeles in 1915, and many students shared Graham's adulation of

Ruth St. Denis. Having spent three years at the Cumnock School,

Martha Graham graduated in the spring of 1916. With a bit of a weight problen and only three years of junior college dance training behind her, Graham enrolled in Denishawn's suirmer session.

Graham's relationship with St. Denis began on rather shaky ground. As dedicated as this late-starting student was, St. Denis told Shawn that she oould not help Graham and did not want her in class. More practical than St. Denis, Shawn took her into his class.

Graham's characteristic determination and Shawn's inspiring guidance resulted in St. Denis' subsequent use of Graham as a demonstrator in her classes. Graham's first public appearance in a professional dance ocnpany was later that surtmer of 1916. "A Dance Pageant of

Egypt, Greece, and India," created by Shawn and St. Denis, was

presented first at the Greek Theatre on the IMiversil^ of California

at Berkeley carpus and a few weeks later in San Diego. While the

pageant was shortened for a vaudeville concert tour, the conservatively

raised Graham was not ccmfortable with the idea of performing in

vaudeville and did not perform her minor role on the tour. 107

When he began basic training in the wartime U.S. Amy, Ted Shawn invited Graham and others to live at the Denishawn Studio and teach classes. While the war ended before Shawn was sent abroad, and he was discharged late in 1918, Graham continued to teach at the small house vàûch was then the Denishawn studio. She kept the school in operation vdiile Shawn joined St. Denis cm tour. By 1920, with increased notariety of the Denishawn Company resulting in high enrollments, the school moved to a more suitable location. As a matiber of the Denishawn staff, Graham lived on the third floor of the new building, decorated in Oriental fashion by St. Denis and Shawn.

Having placed the school on firm financial footing and having organized small Denishawn companies and individual dancers on the vaudeville circuit, Ted Shawn set out to create a major dancing role for Martha Graham. Ip to this time Graham had danced only minor roles with Denishawn, such as that of a Japanese house-boy 2 assisting St. Denis in a dance about flower arranging. As

St. Denis appeared at the time to have a monopoly on the dance of the Orient, Shawn turned to the Americas for material for a piece for Graham. A story frcm pre-Colcmbian history inspired "Xbchitl," first performed in June, 1920 and subsequently on tour on the Pantages vaudeville circuit. As well as having soloist stature on the tour,

Graham was the troipe's paymaster.

2 "Ifer convincing performance led to a plan to turn her into a Japanese boy was to be billed as a great Denishawn discovery. Her protest about vdiat would happen vhen her breasts were fully developed was brushed aside; she would sinply be bound rp. Her mother learned of the plan and said no and saved her frcm an ambiguous early career" (Leatherman, 1966:47-48). 108 While St. Denis and Shawn had done a good deal of touring apart, a contract for an English and U.S. tour brought their ccmbined forces back together in 1922. The tour meant that Graham's solo work would be seen in a ooncert setting rather than just on the vaudeville circuit viiich Shawn preferred. Included in those pieces seen in the 1922-23 Denishawn tour were Graliam's solos "Moon of Dove,"

"Serenata Morisca," "Lantern Dance," and the large-scale "Xbdhitl."

It was on this tour that Graham was seen by two individuals who would acme to give her employment. While the work provided by John Murray

Anderson would keep Graham in the Denishawn mold, supplying still more experience in the theatrical Orientalisms of St. Denis, that later offered by Bouben Mamoulian would provide Graham with the opportunity to begin her search for the Graham style of movement. The Orient would play some part in both instances.

John Murray Anderson was Broadway producer of the Greenwich

Village Follies. In the audience for one of the twelve New York Town

Hall performances of the 1922-23 Denishawn tour, Anderson went backstage seeking to hire Graham at the end of the tour. With

St. Denis firmly the leading dancer of the Denishawn Ccmpany, and with Graham's personal situation also making a departure from Denishawn attractive,^ she accepted the offer. Graham was the second Denishawn dancer to join the Greenwich Village Follies.

Graham's romance with Louis Iforst, musical director of the Denishawn Ccmpany since 1916, had become increasingly frustrating for her.

^ Among Denishawn alumni St. Denis lists "Ada Forman, vÆio for many years was a featured dancer with the Greenwich Village Follies" (St. Denis, 1939:174). 109 Graham appeared in tvo numbers in the fifth annual edition of

the Greenwich Village Follies vàiich opened on September 20, 1923.

Among other performers in the quickly paced revue was comedian

Joe E. Brcwn. The close entertainment link between Denishawn and

Broadway is evident in the fact that one of Graham's Follies numbers was her Denishawn solo "Serenata Mnrisca." She also appeared in

"The Garden of Kama" "arranged" by Michio Ito, the Japanese dancer vdx)se talents had been seen in York since his arrival fran Japan in 1916.^ As mentioned in Chapter Ihree the first joint work produced by St. Denis and Shawn had been entitled "The Garden of Kama," premiering eight years earlier in San Francisco. Ito's "Garden" began with an Oriental flimflam song, "Pale Hands I Loved Beside the

Shalimar. " Clearly, Graham would have to go further than Broadway to

e sc^ 5e the surface Orientalisns she had known as a manber of the

Denishawn Conpany. Also seeing Martha Graham dance on the 1922—23 Denishawn tour was

Rouben IVfemoulian. Jfemoulian, an Armenian Russian, had just founded

the School of Dance and Dramatic Action as part of the

Eastman School of Music recently established in Rochester, New York by Eastman-Kodak industrialist, George Eastman. Maraoulian first saw

Graham dance vhen the Denishawn Ccnpany played the Eastman Theatre in

Rochester, took note of her name at the time, and saw her again during her second season with the Greenwich Village Follies.

In 1929 Ito would leave New York to work in los Angeles until World War II would necessitate his leaving the country early in 1942. Among Ito's students were Lester Horton, Agna Enters and . 110

Having beccme aware of her need to e^lore the full dramatic potential of dance, to find in dance a means of engrossing her own life, Graham had agreed to be on the faculty of a school to be opened by the Follies' John Murray Anderson and by Robert Milton in

November of 1924. Rouben Mamoulian was seeking for the Eastman

School just such an innovator in dance to contribute to productions fusing all of the theater arts into an organically conceived viiole.® ife had seen qualities in Graham's dancing vAiich suggested to him the likelihood of her contributing to such a project. Along with

Esther Gustafson, a Duncan-inspired dancer, Graham was asked to head the Department of Dance at Eastman. She began teadiing there in September of 1924 and after the Anderson-Milton School opened in

New Yodc City in November, ccranuted between New York and Rochester.

While more of a departure than the Greenwich Village Follies,

Graham's year at the Eastman School was not sufficientiLy removed fran Deiishawn fare. Mamoulian productions for vhich Graham was responsible for choreography were almost all ethnic or period pieces, among them a production of "The Flute of Krishna." But during her time teaching at Eastman Graham was able to begin in earnest the quest for what the dance world has come to know as "the Graham technique."

And she was able to inspire the artistic devotion of three female dancers who, along with Graham herself, would leave Eastman for New

York and coiprise the first Graham carpany.

6 Mamoulian would cone to realize this artistic principle in the original stage productions of Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahcma (1943), and Carousel (1945), the latter two choreographed by Agnes de Mille. Ill

In Nsw York on April 18, 1926, Martha Graham, at the age of thirty-tsro, gave her first independent dance recital. In costuming, decor, and particularly in the lyrical movenent in Graham's solo

"Tanagra" to the music of Satie, she emphasized the Oriental, exotic look which had worked for her in Denishawn and in the Greenwich

Village Follies. Dancers in kimonos and chiffon shifts, and the shiney lacquer finish of a piece of scenery contributed to an inpression of the eighteen piece program as being "in the shadow of Denishawn"

(McDonagh, 1973:50). In various performances later in 1926 Graham would present "The Three Gopi Maidens" (from "The Flute of Krishna"),

"Scene Javanese," and "Three Poems of the East," and early in 1928

"Chinese Poem" (McDona^, 1973:303-324). While Graham's first concert was not a dramatic departure frcm her roots, it did mark the beginning of a phsicmenal choreographic career still continuing fifty-eight years later. And by the early nineteen thirties her appropriation of the Orient would pass from surface imitation and thanatic appro­ priation a la Denishawn to a more physically and aesthetically

in-tegrated assimilation of the East.

Martha Graham's interest in the style and philosophy of the East was influential in the development of the Graham technique and of the

choreographer's theature aesthetic. Growing up in Santa Bargara she

had "lived with an elanent of the Orient in the shape of Japanese

and Chinese servantzs, gardeners, launderers, cooks which left itzs

mark permanentiy upon her" (Leatzherman, 1966:34). It was an interest

in the Orient which had drawn Graham to St. Denis in the first place

(McDonagh, 1973:41) so it was not surprising that an interest in

Eastzem style and philosophy remained with her even after leaving 112 ths Oriental trappings of Denishawn. When leaving Doiishawn and joining the Greenwich Village Follies in 1923 Graham rented an

^ 5artment in the Village not far frcm the Gotham Book Mart. The store's owner, Frances Steloff, had an interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, and the store had a sizable collection of books on

Oriental subjects. Graham was in the store frequently, and learning of their mutual interest in the East, Graham and Steloff formed an irtportant friendship.^ In 1925 Graham met the Japanese sculptor- designer vho, hy 1973, would design -toenty-two Graham sets CMoDanaçh, 1973:303-324). While the 1935 design for "Frontier" would mark the beginning of thei r highly innovative ooUaboration,

Graham's meeting Noguchi even earlier in her career is significant in a history of her developing theatre aesthetic. Steloff and

Noguchi were Graham's direct personal links with the grcwing extent and intensity of America's awareness of the Orient.

The degree of Martha Graham's appropriation of the Orient was determined by the amount of information available for satisfying and further stimulating her considerable curiosity. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century Eastern sensibility was being felt increasingly in the Itiited States in the related areas of art, psychology, and education. To appreciate the degree of Graham's particular awareness of the East from the time of her first seeing

St. Denis dance in 1911, to her joining Denishawn in 1915, to her move to New York in 1923, and ip through the early nineteen fifties vhen

Along with nourishing Graham's growing interest in Asia, it was Steloff vho borrowed one thousand dollars to finance Graham's first independent concert in 1926. 113

her appropriation of the Orient both in terms of dance technique

and theatre aesthetic had been accoiplished, one must resume Chapter

Hiree's survey of Oriental inroads into Western culture. A listing of references to the Orient in The Notebooks of Martha Graham (1973) inform this discussion and will be found at its close.

East Meets West 1912-1946

The previous ch^Jter’s look at the East's growing contact with the United States ended with the posthumous publication of Ernest

Fenollosa's Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art in 1912, and noted the profound affect that work had rpon the poet Ezra Pound and, through Pound, upon twentieth century English and American poetry.

Pound was responsible for the publication of other posthumous works of FsioUosa including "Noh" (1916), vhich Graham quotes in the

Notebooks. Certainly the influence of Fenollosa was wide-ranging.

To reiterate, the Bostonian Fenollosa had first travel to Japan in 1878 and returned with his art collection in 1890 to establish the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Department of Far Eastern Art.

Remaining curator of the Museum until his death in 1908, Fenollosa lectured widely, spreading his doctrine - developed while observing the extent to vhich art was integrated into Far Eastern culture - that the American people should be taught fundamental aesthetic principles in public schools, so that art could be made equally available to all" (Bose, 1977:30). It is almost certain that tlic democratic strains of John Dewey derive some inspiration from

Fenollosa. Through indirect influence upon Dewey and the general progressive movement in education, and through direct influence 114 içon Arthur tfesley Dow and Ecw's students at Iteacheis College,

Coluitfiaia University, Ernest Fenollosa had an irrportant affect upon the conc^JtrLon of dance education, which, anerging in the nineteen thirties, will be c±)served at the end of this chapter.

Fenollosa and Arthur Wesley Dow, his assistant at the Boston

Museum, had developed a new method of oonposition and Dow, as Director of the Fine Arts D^artment at Columbia University's Teachers College beginning in 1903, fonnulatied a practical method of art education.

Through Dow's program at Columbia, Fenollosa's reflections upon

Qrien-tal art were to have an inpact ipon a prominent strain in modem art in America. In 1914 Georgia O'Keefe (1887-) enrolled at

Teachers College for the purpose of studying with Dew. Class notes reveal that Dew assigned Fenollosa's Ipochs of Chinese and Japanese

Art (1912), as well as the letter's review of Gonse’s L'Art Japonais

(1883). In the Far Eastern art she came to know through Dew and through the writings of Fenollosa, Georgia O'Keefe found an alter­ native to acadetiic art preferable to the developing at the tdme, vhich she considered European. She chose to paint familiar images of nature, influenced by Fenollosa's "curious mixture of notions derived frcm Brerson and Thoreau together with Buddhist g quietism and detachment" (Rase, 1977:31).

g Bose observes further that Fenollosa was "instrument:al in reviving the interest in Oriental concepts that the -transcendentalists had begun to explore during the mid-nineteenth century, drawing on European Rcraanticism and Eastern religions in conceiving their CTOtional this-worldly nature religion as an alternative to conventional Nev England Protestantian" (Bose, 1977:31). This tum- of-the-century revived interest in natuire influenced Isadora Duncan, thirteen years old when Fenollosa returned frcm Japan in 1890. 115 In 1908 O ’Rsefe had met the photogr^her

(1864-1946) vto would oome to be called "the founder of modem art

in America" (New York Times obituary). Ihey married in 1924.

Beginning around 1908 at his gallery "291" at 291 Fiftii Avenue in

New York and at subsequent galleries including An American Place opening in 1929, Stieglitz, more than any other individual, was responsible for the recognition of photography and of modem painting

and sculpture as serious art forms. He staunchly defended modem art, providing a gallery for its display when no other New York galleries would shew it, and launching the careers of American painters including

Max Weber and O'Keefe. O'Keefe's study of Far Eastem art at Columbia

was to have multiple ramifications, as it seems likely that "the

association between O'Keefe and Stieglitz had a strong influence

not only upon their own work but on the entire development of modem 9 American art" (RDse, 1977:29).

The years viiich found Dow and O'Keefe at Golurrbia had seen

increased Eastem activity elsewhere in New York, including the

beginnings of an American 1 ^ Buddhist movenent. In 1916 Sokei-an

Sasaki came to New York, fifteen years before he would found the

Buddhist Society of America. During these early years in New York

the Japanese Sokie-an oo-translated sane of the poems of vhich

were published in The Little Beview, co-edited by Ezra Pound (Fields,

In relation to his distinction between "art in its first function" and "art in its second function" discussed in Chapter Ctie of this study, Northrop writes: "It is the great achievement of Georgia O'Keefe in certain of her paintings that she has given us this differentiated aesthetic continuum in its purity with all suggestion of the theoretical corpoient in -the natnre of things, of i ^ c h it is the sign, emitted (1946:303-304). 116

1981:178). Hs faecaite a common figure in the ambiance of Greenwich

Village shared Steloff's Gotham Book Mart and the Greenwich

Village Follies. It was in 1916, again, that the J^anese dancer

Michio Ito, vÆo in 1923 vrould use Martha Graham in the Greenwich

Village Follies, began his career in the vaudeville theatres and cabarets of Naf York.

The following year the cily of Boston, vAose transcendentalist

Dial had published excerpts frcm Hindu lore in 1842, vAiich had publi^ad The Light of Asia in 1879, and vAich had brought Fenollosa and with him the world's largest collection of Far Eastem art to the

Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1890, reinforced its position as an

American harbor for E a s t e m culture. The nane "Coctnaraswaity" viiich appears in Graham's Notebooks refers to Ananda K. Gocmaraswairy

(1877-1947). B o m of English and C^lcnese parents and spending his youth in England and Asia, Oocmaraswamy brought his entire personal art collection to the Boston Museum in 1917, founding within the d^sartment Fenollosa had established, the first subdepartment of

Indian art in an American museum.

Cocmaraswany's career as museum curator, art historian and critic,

and scholarly spokesman of an Oriental worldview was eminently distinguished. The Goonaraswany works cited in The Notebooks of

Martha Graham are Mirror of Gesture, first published in 1917 and in

a second edition in 1936, and The Transformation of Nature in Art,

published in 1935. A translation of the Ahhinaya Darpana of

Nandikesvara, an early ca m p endium of the Natya Shastra, The Mirror

of Gesture offered photographs of Indian dance in sculpture. The

years 1932-1947, the period of Oocmaraswamy's tenure as Pesearch 117

Fellow at the Boston Museum, were the most prolific of a career producing fort^-five books or museum catalogues, and 125 articles or reviews dealing with Eastem culture published before his death or posthumously. The extent of Gocmaraswaiiy's influence upon American art of the period, and his inportance in the general network of

Oriental influence operating in these fervent years are suggested by

Graham's references to his work, by a 1924 paper by Oocmaraswamy entitled "A Gift frcm Mr. Alfred Stieglitz," by St. Denis' writing in 1939 that CoCTnaraswany's Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism (1916) had traveled with her "year after year" (St. Denis, 1939:247), and by choreogr^her Erick Havdcins' (Chapter ELve) hcmage to Oocmaraswamy in his essay "Pure Poetry" (Hasdcins, 1965:51).

In History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927) Coctnaraswaity offered the following "List of Museums in vhich Indian Art Is

Represented, " citing thirteen museums in ten cities in North America.

AMERICA; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; New York, Metro­ politan Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Art Institute; Cleveland; Philadelphia, Penn^lvania Museum and Universily Museum; Chicago, Art Institute and Field Museum; , Art Institute; Washington, Freer Gallery; Newark; Cambridge, Fogg Art ^tuseum; Montreal.

Berlin, Museum fur Volkerkunde; PreuBische Staatsbibliothek; Lipperheidesche Bibliothek.

Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery.

Ceylon, Oolcrabo Museum and Kandy Museum.

Copenhagen, Glyptothek.

FARTHER INDIA: Burma, Rangoon, Pagan; Siam, Bangkok; Cambodia, &c., Saigon, Phnom Pen (Musée Sarrault), Iburane. 118

Hamburg^ Museum fiir Kunst and Gewerbe.

INDIA; Calcutta, Indian Museum, and Bangîya Sâhitya Parisad; Madras, Government Miseum; Bombay, Prince of Wales î4aseum; Lahore, Panjab Museum; Mathura, Archaeological Museum; Patna; Ajmere, Pâjputâna Maseum; Jaipur; Rajshahi, Varendra Research Society; NSgpur; Dacca; Samath; Bhopal; Lucknow; Srinagar, ^ri Prat% Singh Museum; Camb3, Bhuri Singh Museum; Jhalrapatan; Haidarâbâd; Karachi, Taxila; lÊlandâ.

Java, Batavia.

Leiden, Ethnographisches Reichsmuseum.

London, British Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum; India Office; Homiman Museum.

Manchester, Museum.

München, Museum fur Volkerkunde.

Paris, Musœ Guinet.

The year 1927 also marked the publication of The Tibetan Book of

the Dead (Bardo Thotrol), edited and caipiled by W.Y. Evans-Wentz,

another scholar cited by Graham. An American vho had earned his

degree in folklore at Oxford, Evans-Wentz traveled in Asia in 1919

and the nineteen twenties. In 1919 in Tibet he met the actual trans­

lator of the text with whan he prepared the English edition. With

The Tibetan Book of the Dead Evants-Wentz opened the doors of the

West to the art and culture of Tibet which in the nineteen sixties

and seventies would contribute imagery to the "psychedelic" cult

surrounding use of the drug ISD. The significance for Martha Graham of Evan-Wentz' publication of

The Tibetan Book of the Dead deepens in light of the profound influence

of the work of Carl Jung (1875-1961) upon the choreographer. Graham's 119

'*ityth period" of the nineteen thirties and forties, observed in seme detail later in this chapter's discussion of Graham's theatre aesthetic, was predicted upon her own realization through Jungian p^choanalysis, of the rich truth of Jung's psychological ccmmen- taries on Western, Chinese, and Indian thought, on archel^^pal , myth, and religious art. Jung wrote in his "Psychological

Connentary" to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodal has been ity constant catpanion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights (Jung, 196Q;xxxvi).

"What most inpressed Jung was the clarity of the book's psychology, the way it instructed the dead, as well as the living, to recognize all ^pearances and visions, iiAether beautiful or terrifying, as reflections of consciousness" (Fields, 1981:286-287). One familiar with Martha Graham's dance pieces based cti nyth readily recognizes in her work the strong influence of The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Jung's interpretation of it. Before this chronological survey leaves the year 1927 it must be observed again that in this year Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn vere the headliner stars of the national tour of the Ziegfield Follies, and the first series of D.T. Suzuki's Essays in Zen Buddhism was published in England. The year 1929 saw the publication of Richard

Wilhelm's German translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower:

A Chinese Book of Life with a "European Ganmentary" by C.G. Jung.

The joint work, published in English translation in 1931, was among those classics of Eastem thought vhich Jung was instrumental in introducing to the West. Already in 1916 ' s Psychology of Ctnsciousness, 120 vàiich. Graham quotes in The Notebooks, Jung was deriving information and insight from the literature of the East. The extent of involvanent of Jung's woric with Eastem thought by the early nineteen thirties had warranted the interest of Cocsnaraswaity vb o found Jung's work in the same vein as his own and with vÆian Jung shared some personal oorre^sondance (Oocmaraswamy / 1977:203). Fields offers further observation of Jung's involvement with Eastem thought in these years, writing: "As early as 1934 Carl Jung had recognized that

Zen and psychotherapy had a ccnmon concem (Fields, 1981:205).

The practices of Asia were entering American life as well. As noted above in New York in 1931 the Japanese artist Sokei-an Sasaki founded the Buddhist Society of America, a lay group practicing

Zen meditation, or zazen. In 1931 Sokei-an had eight students, in

1938, thirty (Fields, 1981:181). The nineteen thirties saw the beginnings of growth in Americans' awareness of Eastem movement forms. Uday Shankar, the Indian dancer vho had appeared in New York and london as Krishna in Anna Pavlova's "Radha-Krishna" in 1924, r etu m e d to India in 1930 to be instrumentzal in the renaissance of

Indian classical dance vhich Denishawn's 1926 visit had helped to

spade. In 1933 Shankar's troupe appeared in New York, creating a

sensation.la Meri's research and performance of Indian Bharata Natyam developed throughout the thirties, with, again, St. Denis and

In a 1968 interview Shankar recalled; "At that time, the wCTven in Jtoerica started painting their hands and feet red, like our girls. They wore Indian saris" (Kisselgoff, 1968). Things Indian caused a similar sensation at the time of Shankar's interview. The highly acclaimed sitarist Ravi Shankar, younger brother of Uday Shankar and once dancer and musician with the Shankar troupe, contributed to the Oriental overtones of the late nineteen sixties and seventies as influential mentor of the Beatles rock group. 1 2 1

La Meri opening the School of Natya in N o t York in 1940. Msanvhile judo was taught at the University of California in Berkeley in 1935, marking the introduction of Oriental martial arts to United States colleges and universities (Winderbaum, 1977:136).

Dissemination of an Asian vrorldview through scholarly means continued. By 1932 an in depth awareness of early Eastem influence içon the West was exhibited in Arthur A. Christy's Hie Orient in

American Transcendentalism. The 1927 publication of D.T. Suzuki's

Essays in Zen Buddhism and two subsequent editions of the vork by

1936 had secured Suzuki's reputation in England and the United States.

In that year Suzuki left Japan to lecture in Ehgland at the World

Congress of Faiths. There he enchanted an Englishman named Alan Watts, then tventyMone years of age. While The Notebooks of Martha Graham make no reference to the work of Suzuki, as early as 1941, the year of her "A Modem Dancer's Primer for Action," there is seme evidence in Graham's philosophy of dance technique of her contact with the growing dialogue between Zen and psychology initiated by Jung.^^ It was at this time that Graham herself was undergoing Jungian psycho­ analysis. The West's increased awareness of the Buddhist worldview came via Dwiÿit Goddard's highly influential The Buddhist Bible (1932) and his publication throughout the nineteen thirties of many of the sutras; through Suzuki's numerous publications throughout the thirties

Affinities between these two systems of thought, predicted by William James in the first years of the century, inspired the Conference on Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis in Cuemavaca, Mexico, in 1957. 122 and forties; and through Alan Watts' The Spirit of Zen (1946).

Buddhistic overtones in Graham's philosophy of dance technique developing during these years will be observed toward the end 12 of this chapter's discussion of Graham technique.

Notes frcm Heinrich Zimmer's spring 1942 and spring 1943 lectures at Columbia University yielded Ziirmer's Philosophies of India/ published posthumously in 1951. Graham quotes the work, alternately referring to

Zinmer; to Joseph Canpbell, editor of the book; and to E.B. Havell, the scholar to vtose unpublished The History of Aryan Rule in India

Zirtmer-Caitpbell makes significant reference. The ranaining author dealing with the Orient vAcm Graham cites in The Notebooks in Santha

Kama Rau, an Indian vhose Hone to India was published in 1945. While

Graham makes only topical reference to the Chinese, several comprehen­ sive studies of Chinese culture were published in the nineteen thirties and forties, including Chiang Lee's The Chinese Eye (1937), Younghill

Kang's East Goes West (1937) and Lin Yutang's jyy Country and % People

(1939).

lihile the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan in

1941 had the effect of slc^.dng seme aspects of East-West contact, it provoked the publication in 1946 of F.S.C. Northrop's The Meeting of

East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding discussed in

Chapter One. Uie fact that such a multi-leveled ccarparison of "The lyfeaning of Western Civilization" and "The Meaning of Eastem

12 Chapter Five, noting connections between Zen Buddhism and the work of choreographers Merce Cunningham, Erick Hav^dns, and those of the Judson era, observes Suzuki and Watts as chief transmirters of the highly appropriated Zen. That discussion begins with Suzuki's celebrated lectures at Columbia University beginning in 1950. 123

Civilization." cxjuld be written irdicates the vast amount of information regarding the East available to the interested American -

Martha Graham, for one - at mid-century. COMPLETE lIST OP REFERENCES TO THE ORIENT IN THE NOTEBOOKS OF MARTHA GRAHAM (1973)

Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOKfi mrrator- "The Eye of Anguish" 64 a woman The figure of Maya - The world's illusions - Kali "The everlasting Divine Drunkenness of Dream"

Tb this she danoes with the Danon - She has become a "The Eye of Anguish" 71 witch in their eyes & her lover a Dation & the child an oriental-like figure of evil beauty

Tbnight in Deaths & Entrances while standing I "Deaths and Enturances" 87 suddenly knew what witchcraft is - in microcosm - It is the being within each of us - sometimes the witch, sometimes the real being of good - of creative energy - no matter in what area or direction of activity. The witches' sabbath is the anger we know at tûmes. The sacrament is taken but the wine of life is the blood of death - It is the abonination vhich is partaken of rather than the essence of life - vhen I lose my tenper it is like a witches' sabbatlt - the Black Mass - the world is given over to the powers of darkness & the rule of the blood - It is Kali in her terrible aspect - It is Shiva the destroyer - It is Lucifer - "as proud as Lucifer" - the obverse of God - This, too, is what D. & E. is about - only I did not know enough to quite s>ee it through - t-" Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOKS

Might brings the song to the heart which invites the "I Salute love" 11 0 images. Night, the umbilical cord of memory. Night brings a conterplation of the heart's world

lines frcxn Balinese book on night - love is Life I salute my love 'J.irLs is a celebration of a night -

Bali turn & arabesque Fragments for Solo Dances; 154 Repeat "Deaths and Entrances"

2 Darts - 1 Bali turn wide 2nd extension with step draw - 2X Fragments for Solo Dances: 154 "Deaths and Entrances"

Rise into 2 Bali turns to Center Fragments for Solo Dances: 158 Kneel front - "Night Journey" Rise into Javanese foot movement with leaves 2X go upst. backward lifting r. knee 3X

Cave - Solo I. Fragments of Solo Dances: 162 Position - on floor - As in "Letter" "Cave of the Heart" Beats on shoulders - use of arms rise into Bali attitude on knees

to in Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOKS Eating snake - with knee ripples Fragments for Solo [tances : 163 St. r - "Night Journey" Spit it out with fall to floor Rise to 4th on knees - Rise into wide forward fall - Rise into Bali turns & attitudes 2X to center - Spasm-like contraction toward snake -

Wrap snake around r. arm Fragments for Solo Dances" 167 gesture to r - with snake on arm - "Night Journey" Rise into Bali turns to Center

"What after all is the secret of Indian greatness? "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 167 Not a dogma or a book, but the great open secret that all knowledge & all truth are absolute & infinite, waiting, not to be created, but to be found; the secret of the infinite superiority of intuition, the method of direct perception over intellect, regarded as a mere organ of discrimination. (Ideals of Indian Art - E.B. Havell) Coomaraswami

The Soul wanders - the flight of the alone to the "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 183 Alone - The Path - the landscape of the journey is life - the Dark Meadow - the place of retribution - Destiny - Karma

"Gods, sacrificing, rendered homage to the "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 184 sacrifice" Rigveda 10, 90 - (Jung - 465) KCT\ Reference Study or Piece Page in bPTEBOOKS

"In the same manner that the world originated thru "The Dai:k Meadow of the Soul" 184 sacrifice, tliru the renunciation of the retrospective mother libido, thus, according to the teachings of the Upanishads, is produced the new condition of man, which may be termed immortal" Jung - unconsicious 466

There is something here it seans of the struggle "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 190 between the Atlantic and Pacific cultures. It is the Pacific that emerges stronger - but with a sustained note of the other under it like a vibration There is a unity. Almost it seans there sounds the sacred syllable that is a symbol of that Unity. How can that be comiunicated? What symbols of theatre can I enploy to make it evident?

The Place of Transformation - The Place of "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 197 discipline Jung 416

"he heated himself with his own heat." Jung 415 (Kundaline?)

Ihe Place of transformation is really the place of the uterus. Absorption with one's self (introversion) is an entrance into one's own uterus, & also at the same time ascetism. In the philosophy of the Brahmans the world arose from this activity among the post- Christian Gnostics it produced the revival & spiritual re-birth of the individual, who was b o m into a new spiritual world. The Hindoo philosophy is considerably more daring & logical, & assumes that creation results from introversion in general, as in the wonderful hymn of Rigveda, 10, 29 . . . Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK

"What was hidden in the shell "The Dark Meadow of the Soul" 197 Was b o m thru the power of fiery torments. (Continued) (Oont.) Frcm this first arose love, As the germ of knowledge, The wise found the roots of existence in non-existence, By investigating the heart's inpulses." Jung 416

2 - Moon Rise Evangels heavenly messengers "The Trysting Tent" 225 Moon Set

Deep Dark Incredible quite Dance with red - ritual killing - sacrifice - Kriss - (fan) purple Trance - rose -

Second Part "The Trysting Tent" 226 Moon Rise to Moon Set small daggers Queen of underworld - Kriss - Furious hand dance of men -

"As in ancient India, so in Babylonia, disease "The Bronzeless Net" 253 was often conceived as a bond attached by a demon. 'They spread out their net; where the anger of the gods weighs, they fall upon him, envelop him as with a garment, rush at him, spout poison over him, bind his hands, fetter his feet.'"

to 00 Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK "Movement never lies" at 4 or 5 that was an "The Bronzeless Net" 270 admonition - "Lie" in a Presbyterian household was and still is a clanging word which sets whispering all the little fluttering guilts vAiich seek to beccme consumed in the flame of one's conscience -

"God . W)o is pure act" - Cocmaraswami Transf. 11 -

Gestures - "expressions & suj^rts of spiritual resolve" 583 (Phil, of India Zinmer)

294 Tibetan Yoga - W.Y. Evans "Notes for dances never 275 W48 choreographed"

In SCTTfâ way Tam Lin has a quality of the Noh play. "Tam Lin" (never choreographed) 279 It might be used in its sinplicity as a theme - and treated emotionally as the Noh demands first of all - that very emotionalian creating the form, dictating the conventions, creating the elegance & the poignancy.

"Thus may my divine mission be crowned with success, "Notes for dances never 293 and may I attain to the body of glory" choreographed" Psychic Energy 391 (little known Tibetan ritual by means of which the yogin seeks to transcend ego-oonsciousness & attain to consciousness of the Self.) Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK "Noh has been a purification of the Japanese Soul "Notes for dances never 297 for 400 years. Kabori Enshu classified the 15 choreographed" virtues of Noh, among which he counted mental & bodily health as one, calling it 'Healing without medicine.'" "Dancing is especially known by its circulation of the blood, to keep off the disease of old age." 48 "The Heart is in the Form" 52

(I steal, I am a thief, & I enjoy it, because I "Center of the Hurricane" 303 steal from the illustrious ancestors of the past I am a Pirate - I bring lovely things from unJuicwn & unknowable places - Spices, silks, jewels, jades - ivorys -

I fear it may be a series of "quotes" & yet what "Center of the Hurricane" 304 else can I do? "Gifts of passage" Santha Rau

"noble artificiality of Indian dramatic technique" Studies for "Saint Joan" and 326 1 Mirror of Gesture "Heloise and Abelard"

Phaedra - 3 little phrases "Phaedra" 338 1 ) queen step - step to r in profile with 1 . foot - turn & take Javanese step to front - r. plie r. arm gesture L. arm gesture - & turn to back arms high w o Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOKS queen step - 2 phrases - "Phaedra" 339 step in profile 1 . Javanese step with r to plie A lunge - r hand out to T. Then legs together - walk in profile to H. 1. hand Out in rejection - B Repeat (on this H. makes sani salaam)

After Hippolytus kicks dagger & leaves - "Phaedra" 340 Phaedra on floor in fall - 2nd 1 ) pick up knife - rises - dart - dart - turn around bed kneel salaam on floor sit in twist

Clytemnestra Prologue III Studies for "Clyteraiestra" 347 (She has done staggering walk to st. L. on Iphigenia exit music) 1) Treading D. St. L ending in Bali attitude 2) Knee vibrations 2X going into Bali turn ending in Bali attitude

Dance of Vengeance with Sward Studies for "Clytemestra" 348 4) loud Dance of Vengeance 2 hip crawls to sword Lyric - sit in lotus Studies for "Clytarmestra" 348 w Dance of Vengeance Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK

1 2 ) 1 . leg across r (plie - Studies for "Clytemnestra" - 350 (1. leg in Bali position) Dance of Vengeance A sword in 1. r. arm gestures to throne little bourree B Repeat A. going into bourree change to r. Repeat Bali position

15) Dart to r - Studies for "Clytormestra" - 350 (step into) Dance of Vengeance Bali attitude - 1 . leg across r. knee plie - (step into) Turn on r - (step into)

7) Bali attitude (as in 1 2 ) "Clytarmestra" Dance of Vengeance 357 (sword in left) 2nd version small bourree Bali attitude bourree Bourree Bali position - Cave turn - (as in 13) take cape - 9) Wrapping bourree to st. L - 10) A. Dart Bali attitude turn on r - Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOKS

B. Repeat all this A. "Clytemnestra" Dance of 357 Dart. (as in 15) Vengeance (Oont.) Bali 2nd Version Dart (Continued) Bali Dart bali

Long note - I rise & walk swiftly to st. r. end Studies for "Alcestis" 361 of barre 1 ) 2 slew 3 fast 3 slew 4 fast. 2) accented walk st. L. & up to 1. end of barre, face front - 3) Javanese step 3 fast 2 slow beat of arm 2 slew 2 fast - 4) tipping backwards moving st. r 3 - hold 5 - hold 5) face front 3 twists upstage to barre center 6 ) Slew Javanese 6X

10) Javanese step forw - Studies for "Alcestis" 361 2 slew w 3 fast - w Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK II. Exit of David & Helen as she walks over v M p - Studies for "Alcestis" 364 On trumpet held note walk swiftly to r. comer of barre.

1) Javanese steps 2 slew 3 fast 3 slow 4 fast 2) walk, to St. L. II II barre 1. comer.

3) Javanese steps Studies for "Alcestis" 364 3 fast 2 slow arm stroke 2 slow 2 fast. 4) tilting back step to st. r. 3X pause 5X face front 5) Turning step up to barre 3X 6) Slow Javanese 6X? Hold

10) Javanese step together Studies for "Alcestis" 365 2 slow 3 fast Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK

13) Javanese step as Bert is being bound in vMp. Study for "Alcestis" 366 a) 3X slow b) 7X short for Bert c) 2X slow arm beat d) 2X slew -

6) Take bali arabesque to face r on 1. "Night Jounrey" Dance II 372 Repeat L. knee across r. facing front. 7) Kneel on r facing front L. in 4th - open almost at once into 2nd return to 4th - open to 2nd - kneel on L & take bali arabesque on floor to face r. Recover to 4th front slowly rise with branches opened downward in silence 8) Balinese step forward with r. foot toeing in & "Night Journey" Dance II 372 opening in 4th.

10) Pass r. leg behind into bali attitude, both knees "Night Journey" Dance II 373 bent - body profile to r.

5) dart - turn - dart - turn - dart - turn "Clytemnestra" Prologue, 381 into face front - feet close - arms - Javanese Clytemnestra I in 2nd elbows straight

7) Kneel crawls - d. stage r. - 2X "Clytemnestra" Prologue, 381 H (hold in same as 5 Javanese) Clytemnestra I UlW Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK

2) Stroke into Bali attitude on L. "Clytemnestra" Prologue, 383 2 knee vibrations Clytemnestra III Bali attitude Bali turn -

3) Repeat (1) "Clytemnestra" Dance of 384 finishing in Bali turn to L on r at end of phrase - Vengeance

16) "Bali" attitude with r behind into "Bali" turn on R. "Clytamestra" Dance of 384 Vengeance

20) a) quick step draw to r "Clytemnestra" Exultation 386 facing back b) turn to Egyptian bcw to r

7) Lyric (hold Paul tales 1. hand "Clytemnestra" 389 accents bends her over to touch knife

lift 1. foot bali attitude

2) Knee vibration 2X at st. 1. "Clytemnestra" Prologue II 393 into Bali attitude & " turn - Repeat

New Version : To be considered "Clytamestra" Sleep Walking 394 Treading 1 wide sit in 2nd - Reference Study or Piece Page in NOTEBOOK

11) Loud Clytemnestra" Dance of 395 Bali turn into profile facing r 1. ft. front. Vengeance with Sword

14) Loud "Clytemnestra" Dance of 396 Bali turn Vengeance with Sword

"The story told in the Natya Sastra is that Indra, Later Thoughts on "Heloise 421 the Lord of the Inmortals, entreated Brahma to devise and Abelard" a pastine accessible to all castes . . ." (20)

"... and put a spell upon the dancers, freezing them into Immobility, til Indra hurled his banner & put them into flight. And so the first theatre was built. . ." (21)

"But the mirror which reflects this image is Later Thoughts on "Heloise 422 gesture ..." (21) and Abelard" "The noble artificiality of Indian technique" (Mirror ofSesture (1))

"Tidal season of exchanges Later Thoughts on "Heloise 422 East & West, west to east, east to west, & west and Abelard" to east again. . ." (Occidental Mythology - Canpbell - 4)

w 138 Martha Graham: Uechnique

In Martha Graham the two foci of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis merge in a classical technique of modem dance. TO see a Graham class or concert is to see realized the organization of Duncan's naive call for movement from within. As revealed in a ocnparison of the various bocty sh^ies of the Graham technique with those of Indian, Balinese, and Javanese dance and as The Notebooks of Martha Graham testify,

Graham carried on American dance's serious treatment of the Orient begun by St. Denis.

Graham's lifelong respect and admiration have been given to St. Denis, vho was her first inspiration and vhose Oriental technique, religious ejq>ression, and theatrical presentation have been translated, greatly altered, into the Graham style" (Mazo, 1977:158).

But Graham's appropriation of the East differed from St. Denis'.

The former was less an imitation, more an informed assimilation and

synthesis. In Tokyo during the Graham Company's Far East tour of

October, 1955 through March, 1956 Graham had been asked if she would

borrow from the Japanese dance she had been observing. Her response sheds light on the pivotal position of her career with regard to the

"surface to essence" thesis of this study.

She answered that she would not copy Japanese dance forms unless she knew their spirit, that copying only the surface of something would be pointless. In a profound way, Graham's ansiver articulated the difference between herself and her first teachers, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, who went all over the world collecting dances and using them in their own brand of eclectic programming. Graham would not borrow anything until she understood the core of the art, and then viiat she reproduced would reflect the original source only tangentially (MoDcnagh, 1973:244). 139 In Graham's vrords;

I am a thief - and I glory in it - I steal fran the present and frcm the glorious past - and I stand in the dark of the future as a glorying and joyous thief - There are so mary wanderful things of the imagination to pilfer - so I stand accused - I am a thief - but with this reservation - I think I knew the value of that I steal and I treasure it for all time - not as a possession but as a heritage and as legacy (Graham, 1973:303)

Development of the Graham Technique

Mazo observes 1926 through 1930 as the period during vhich the

Graham technique evolved. It should be recalled that except for her classes at the Cumnock School, Graham's only formal training in dance had been in the ethnic, primarily Oriental styles and Dalcroze exercises taught at the Denishawn School. Such was the basis of her work rç» to the time of that first independent concert in 1926. But during the period 1926-1930, in vhich she presented sixty-eight pieces, "her style pulled further frcm Denishawn prettiness with every concert. Those vho were absent frcm a single program missed a stage

in her develcçment" (Mazo, 1977:160). It was out of emotional,

dramatic needs within Graham's pieces of choreography that the

fundamental elanents of this most codified and universally taught

of modem dance techniques originally came. "Her aim has always

been to translate anotional experience into physical form" (Mazo,

1977:157). When she left Denishawn in 1923 Graham stated: "Life

today is nervous, sharp, and zigzag. This is vdoat I aim for in ny

dances" (Cohen, 1974:120). This dramatic aim is reflected in her

early work, noteworthy for its percussiveness and sharp edges. With 140 Graham, the curved, undulating arms of St. Denis’ Oriental lyricism gave way to an angular accentuation of the joints. Taping the potential for angularity in the Oriental styles she had learned at

Denishawn, Graham brought tiie "nervous, sharp, and zigzag" aspects of m o d e m life to the stage.

Among factors nerging with Graham's Denishawn background to produce the heavier, more angular movement style which was evolving was the German eapressicnist work of choreogr^her-dancer Mary Wigman.

Horst had s ^ n her perform in Europe and upon his return to Na/ York early in 1926 shared with Graham and with her dancers pictures and accounts of the satber, foreboding art of Wigman. In 1931 Wigman's visit to the United States permitted Graham to experience the German innovator's dance art firsthand. For his part Iforst was creating for

Graham's work musical conpositions whose harmonic dissonance served to corplement, perhaps encourage her developing movement (%namic.

Exerting further influence ipon Graham in this formative period was the dancing of the Swedish dancer Bonny Johansson. Johansson's dancing had a heavy quality, partially due to her use of the floor.

Johansson sat on the floor to teach. Surely St. Daiis' appearing on stage and teaching class in the cross-legged sitting position of the

In light of the percussiveness of Graham's early work, one finds of interest a statement made by St. Denis early in her career in 1906: "Flexibility, combined with great strength, as you find them in the tiger, for example, should be the dancer's ideal. No motion should be sharply a b r u p t . Ihere must be no angles. A cat lies down in a series of curves. Ihe rhythmic motion of a dance should similarly include only lines that never turn sharp comers. " A desire to return to a more subtle sculptural ^namic would contribute to Erick Havkins' leaving the Graham Cotpany forty-four years later in 1950. 141 yogi was preœdent for Graham's subsequent floorwork, but it was seeing Johansson's use of the floor vhich led Graham to see the technical potential for vroricing in the "Indian position" and other floor positions. Graham's realization that mastery of the torso in sitting position would enhance balance and strength vdien standing

WDuld establish the pelvis and back as the source of strength of the

Graham technique.

Certainly the Graham repertoire offers many different aspects.

As the emotional, dramatic content of Graham's choreography changed through the years, so the content called for varying technical innovations. Ihis fact was apparent to John Martin in 1933, only seven years after Graham's career as an independent choreographer had begun. "Tb miss a single performance is to risk the emission of an essential link between those changes of style and approach which follow one another in rapid succession" (Armitage, 1966:13). It can be established that at least by 1931, two years before Martin's observation, Graham had arrived at the movement dynamic of contraction- release, for there is record of her discussing it at a session of a course John Martin was teaching at the New School for Social Research

(Fokine, 1951:253). Martin, ever there to record the early evolution of the technique, wrote of "Primitive tysteries" in 1931:

She has built her physical system upon the basis of percussive movement - a stroke of muscular effort and its consequent vibrations of recovery. In her earlier and more defensive ccxiposition it was a stroke that assumed the chief irtportance, vbile the aftertones were allowed to take care of themselves. Now, without having violated in the least the canons of the method, she has found the secret of striking without clangor, like the stroke of those mellow gongs of the Orient vhich begin their vibration as if without an initial percussion (Armitage, 1966:12). 142 A further mellcwinc of the percussiveness of the technique was to cane with such pieces as "Diversion of Angels" (1948) \Aere an absence of narrative donands permit the lyrical aspects of the technique to cone through. "Adoration" (1975), essentially a choreographed setting of variations of the technique exercises, is an exarrple of the sustained energy flew of the Graham technique, of that "secret of striking without clangor" first observed by Martin in 1931.

Along with Graham's background and ongoing interest in Eastern movetient styles, the influence of Wigman and Johansson, and the expressive datiands arising from the psychological content of her choreogr^hy, another crucial determinant of the Graham technique was the very nature of Martha Graham's body. It is only natural that a technique vbose. most readily distinguishable characteristdc is the al-temating hollowing and extension of the spine would be devised by an individual possessing an elongated torso characteristic of the

Oriental. It is not purely coincidental that dozens of Japanese dancers have studied at the Graham School in New York, that several have becane nenbers of the Graham Ooitpany, and that many of Graham's solo roles were bequeathed to the Japanese dancer Yuriko. Graham- trained Anna Sokolcw and Bertram Boss have contributed to the Japanese

with the Graham technique, through teaching residencies at

the American Cultural Center in Tokyo. The relationship of torso

length to hip joint flexibility so crucial in Graham's floor-work was

observed during a Sokolcw class at the Center in 1967. "And

there is no doubt that the Japanese dancer's body has a built-in 143 adaptability for the intricacies of modem dance itovsnent, especially of the Graham School" (Stodelle, 1967:78). Graham's "very elongated torso, thinned at the waist and flat in tlie chest" (Horan,

1947:18) was seemingly designed for movement resembling vhat Kirstein after Levinson terned the "centrifugal" dance of the Orient (Kirstein,

1969:266).

Her body . . . is built like a series of diamonds joined at their points, with the vhole tension that releases novanent knotted at the center, at the pelvis and at the base of the spine. This source of energy that radiates outward, vdrLch we also see in primitive dancers, the Oriental and the Spanish to much greater degree than the Occidental, destroys terminal grace that flowers at the wrist and the ankle and in the tilt of the head, and replaces this loose ornamentation with gesture more deeply controlled and personally ejçsressive (Horan, 1947:18).

Looking back, over the various periods in the development of the Graham technique one discerns the essential characteristics of this "deeply controlled and personally expressive" mode of dance: the oontracticn-release dynamic based in breathing; angularity or jointedness; use of the floor; use of a spiraling torso; and attention to wei^t through use of off-balancing. Surely these characteristics are interrelated, and each is encountered in an observation of Oriental elements in the Graham technique.

Graham Technique; Surface Appropriation

A cxstparison of selected body positions within the Graham technique exercises and repertory with those of various styles of Hindu dance and sculpture reveal Garaham's "surface ^propriation" of the Orient.

A drawing of the piadmakosa hand of classical Hindu dance appeared in 144

Goatnaraswany's translation of the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikesvara,

The Minor of Gesture to vÆiich Graham refers in The Notebooks (Plate I).

The padmakosa hand is ranarkably similar to the hand stylization, frequently accoxpanying the Graham contraction, vdiich has oome to be termed "the Graham hand" and spearing as early as 1931 in "Dark

^steries" (Plate II). Another plate within Hre Mirror of Gesture depicting a dancer in an eighth century A.D. Buddhist frieze from Java exhibits the gaga or danda pose of the arms (Plate III). Similar positions of the arms, with forearms crossed, elbows close to the face, and at least one wrist flexed are associated with the Hindu god Shiva, are ccntnon in Indian and Javanese sculpture, and would seem to be the model for Graham's pose in the solo "Imperial Gesture" (1935) in

Plate IV.

The foot and leg position exhibited in Plate III is quite cormon in Bharata Natyam (Plate V). The pelvic displacement acocnpanying this foot and leg position in a pose fccm the Orissi style of Indian dance in Plate VI displays an uncanny resemblance to a scene frcm Graham's

"Embattled Garden" (1958) (Plate VII). The nature of a frequent foot and leg position of the dancer of the Balinese Legong, (Plate VIII), along with analysis of choreogr^hic notes within Graham's Notebooks and of video tapes of Graham repertory lead the author to believe that the "Balinese step" to \idiich Graham frequently refers in The Notebooks is that seen in (Plates VII and VIII). Several such closely related stances are variations of the characteristic stance of Shiva on one bent leg with the other bent and, if not in fact lifted, then appearing to bear no weight (Plates IX). Due to its association with Shiva the 145 stance pervades the dance and sculpture of the Hindu world (plates X and XI).

In The Notebooks Graham uses the terms "Bali attitude" and "Bali turn" in instances of both floorwork and standing work. The Bali attitude and the related Bali turn, when referring to floorwork, appear to be variations of the Graham fourth position (Plate XII), a position related to the flying position of Hindu dance and sculpture

(Plates XIII and XIV). The Bali turn in standing vrork seems to refer to the flexed-foot attitude turn in plié seen frequently in the Graham class and repertory and certainly roniniscent of the standing version of the flying position seen in Cambodian dance in Plate XV.

Among Graham's numerous references in The Notebooks to the

Balinese step is one in notes for "Ni^t Journey" on page 372 in vhich the choreographer describes the step performed in plie in which, the gesturing leg, flat on the floor and sliding, alternately tums-in becctning parallel with the support foot and tums-out into fourth position. This step is frequently acccirpanied by a contraction cm the tum-in and a release on the turn-out and is closely related to the famous Graham "knee vibrations." A similar "in-out" dynamic of

Graham standing work leads to that position having the support leg in plié and the gesturing leg fully extended a la seconde with a flexed foot, a position similar to that seen in the Javanese Wayang Wong in

Plate XVI. While from The Notebooks' numerous references to the

"Javanese st^" it is difficult to clearly discern the nature of the movement Graham was noting, the choreogr^her would seen to be 146 referring to the Javanese position rendered in Plate XVI. The Javanese vfeyang Wbng di^lays also a sitting posture (Plate XVII) like that of one ertployed in a Graham floor exercise for flexibility and center strength (XVIII) and observed in a pose fran the Mohini Atam technique of Kerala in India (Plate XIX).

"Ihe flexion of OTie arm or leg accotpanied by the extension of the other arm cr leg, known hy students of anatoty and motor development as the "tcnic-reflex" position, is present frequently in Hindu dance and sculpture and in Graham's work. In the lunge position into which the dancer falls after the standing turns around the back (Plate XX) and in the extension of one leg in the Graham "^iral opening" on the floor

(Plate XXI), Graham places the legs in the tonic reflex position ob­ served in Bharata Natyam in Plates X X H and XXIH. The tonic reflex, archer position of the arms in Plate XXIII and in the Nepalese figure in Plate XXIV is found in a pose from Graham's "Three Poans of the East"

(1926) (Plate XXV), in a moment fran Graham's "Ser^hic Dialogue" (1955)

(XXVI), and can be vaguely discerned in the dancers encircling Graham in

"Primitive %steries" (1931) (Plate II). Ruth St. Denis and Genevieve Stefcbins before her praised the alter­ nating curving arm and spiraling torso of Oriental dance (Plate XXVII) appropriated by Martha Graham (Plate XXVIII). Prototype of the spiraling torso and resulting arm movement is the undulation of the four arms of

Shiva in the Cosmic Dance (Plate IX). îfeny turns in Graham-derived modem dance movement (Plate XXIX) are initiated by the spiraling coor­ dination of torso and arms \diich, as exhibited in Plate XXX, holds great potential for the "zig-zag" angularity Graham began seeking early in her choreogr^hic career. -

D. Padmakpsa hand.

Plate I. Padmakosa hand (lotus bud); Plate II. "Graham hand" in Akrtha drawing in 1917 and 1936 editions of Graham's "Primitive %steries" (1931) Coonaraswamy's translation of the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikesvara 4:" Plate III. Danseuse in Buddhist frieze at Borobodur, Java, eighth century, A.D.; plate in 1917 and 1936 editions of Coomaraswany's translation of the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandiskevara 00 Plate IV. Martha Graham in her solo "Brperial Gesture" (1935)

K VO Plate V. M. K. Saroja in the Bharata Natyam Kirtanam "Kalai Ihooki," a sacred song addressed to Lord Shiva U1 o i

Plate VI. Indrani in a posture based on Plate VII. Scene from Martha Graham's the classical Karanas, a fundanental "Embattled Garden" (1958) movement in Orissi, danoe of India Plate VIII. Xenia Zarina in posture of Plate IX. Ihe Oosmic Dance of Shiva, the King of L a s m in the Legcaig, dance copper figure in Madras Museum, fifteenth of Bali century; plate in 1917 and 1936 editions of Ooanaraswany's translation of the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandiskevara K to ’SSiiSBÉ Plate XI. Balinese Baris Pendet

Plate X. M. K. Saroja in the Bharata Ifetyam Kirtanum "Kalai Ihooki/' a sacred song addressed to Lord Shiva; posture signifies; "O Lord! Who danceth with one leg raised" Plate XII. Sitting fourth position of Plate XIII. Flying figure in frieze Graham technique panel of Duladeo tainple in Khajuraho (India), eleventh century A.D.

A Plate XIV. Xenia Zarina as Asparas of Plate XV. Dancer in the troi%)e of Angkor Vat; in flying position Princess Say Sang Van (Phncm Penh, Cambodia) in flying attitude a Plate XVI. Princes rehearsing the tayoungan (ceranonial walk) of the Wayang Vîong of Java

tn a\ ±

Plate XVII. Princes rehearsing the Javanese Wayang Wbng Plate XVIII. Graham floor exercise for leg flexibility and center strength

Ü1 00 Plate XIX. Mrinalini Sarabhai in pose in Mahini Atam, technique based on the Kathakali node of Kerala (India)

en Plate XX. Œbnic-reflex lunge ending Graham standing turns around the back

a\ 4^ ' -'4 I

' . am

W«6

Plate XXVII. Xenia Zarina in posture of Plate XXVIII. Martha Graham in uniden­ the Queen mourning in the Legong, dance tified piece in the 1920's of Bali cn Plate XXIX. Graham technique-derived spiraling action of arms and torso initiating a turn

cr>o\ Plate XXX. Spiraled angularity in scene from Martha Graham's "Alcestis" (1960)

a\ Plate XXXI. "Simple Spiral" exercise of the Graham technique; spiraling of the torso initiated by a pulling back of the right hip

00 159

Graham Technique: Essential Appropriation

Numerous aspects of the Graham technique constitute an appro­

priation of the essence of the East. The standard Graham technique warm-up of the bo<^ begins with the pelvis on the floor. After "the

bounces" - a brief stretching and thi<ÿi-socket loosening exercise in

three positions - the warm-rç) begins with and ranains for the next

three exercise sequences, in the cross-legged sitting position of yoga and zazen. "The breathings," as are called the elementary

contraction-release exercises, reveal the organic dynamic of breathing

as the core inspiration of the entire Graham technique. Cna recalls

that Buddha, as quoted by Eliade, states that as a man practices

breathing he should think of himself "conscious of ny whole body

vhile I inhale" (Eliade, 1969:167). Graham betrays her association with yoga in the breathings and particularly in the release, correcting

students with the observation, "There's no kundalini" (McDonagh, 1973,

196).

The interplay between the ccnplenentary extremes of inhalation

and exhalation, introduced in the siAple breathings as the release

and the contraction, infuse the sustained muscle action of the entire

Graham movement dynamic. In the various elaborations of the

oontraction-release, the body of the Graham dancer is fully involved

in the stylized exhalation of the contraction and the stylized

inhalation of the release. In the contraction series performed with

the dancer sitting in second or stride position, the contraction-

release of the pelvic muscles is extended into the furthest extrmity 170 of the limbs. A "hard" plantar flexion of the feet and like flexion at the wrist and phalanges joints, the "Graham hand" observed above, accatpanies the contraction, with a pointed foot or dorsal flexion of the foot and lengthening of the hand accatpanying the release.

This principle of leg-^foot and/or arm-hand coordination with the pelvic contraction and release extends into the sitting spiral turns around the back and into the standing contractions.

Just as the dialectic of the yin and the yang totality ccmnunicates a conc^tion of an organic progression of phenomena

(Chapter One), there is built into the Graham technique physical representation of inevitable movement between polarities. The two principle movarent dynamics within the technique - the contraction- release and the spirals - are the source of this organic quality.

The contraction-release infuses the technique with the inevitable play of breathing which serves as the basis of yoga, t'ai chi ch'uan and Zen meditation. The spiraling action of the torso, taught in the Graham floor exercises and used throughout the class and repertory, results in trace patterns of the limbs similar to those of the Hindu god Shiva and to the "circles, curves, arcs, and spirals that move in exposition or concurrently" in t'ai chi (Weng, 1979). When de Mille observes Graham's stress on "continuous unfolding movement from a central core" and the importance of "resistance" within the technique

(de Mille, 1963:157) she observes the organic potential inherent

in Graham's combining the contraction-release with the spiral.

St. Denis and Stebbins before her had revelled in the spiral. By 1893 Stebbins had observed spiral movsnent pervading nature and 171 noted in the movanent of the Oriental dancer "the spiral line from every point of view" (Stebbins^ 1893, 40). Shelton suggests the possibility of St. Denis having derived the famous arm ripples of

"Incense" (1906) and the basic posture of that piece frcsn such

Stebbins drills as the "Serpentine Arm Series" and the "Spiral Sway"

(Shelton, 1978:40). These modem dance artists, with Hindu dancers throughout the centuries, find in sculptural representations of

Shiva the divine prototype of spiral movement (Plate IX).

For the ^iral, as Shelton points out is "a three-dimensional gesture which contains the seed of its cwn evolution" (Shelton, 1978:39).

The balanced and yet c^mamic gestures of the four arms of Shiva express the unity of the universe despite the constant flux within it. Cocmaraswaity finds Shiva's dance "the clearest image of the activily of God which an art or religion can boast of" (Coanaraswaity,

1969:67).

The rçper right hand of the god holds a drum to symbolize the primal sound of creation, the upper left bears a tongue of flame, the elanent of destruction. The balance of the two hands represents the dynamic balance of creation and destruction in the world, accentuated further by the dancer's calm and detached face in the center of the two hands, in viiich the polarity of creation and destruction is dissolved and transcended. The seccnd ri^t hand is raised in the sign of "do not fear", symbolizing maintenance, protection and peace, vAiile the remaining left hand points dcwn to the uplifted foot vdiich symbolizes release from the spell of maya (C^ra, 1975:244).

"Ballet has striven to conceal effort; she (Graham) on the contrary thought that effort was important since, in fact, effort was life" (de Mille, 1980:95), The "effort" or sustained opposition in the Graham technique is similar to that in t'ai chi ch'uan in 172

which every action is followed by a counter action in an 'attack-

retreat' fashion" (tfeng, 1979). As the totality of the t'ai chi t'u

firds the circle of y ± n within the swirling yang and the seed of yang within the yin^ likewise in the Graham technique there is in every

torso-initiated movement to cne direction the seed of movement to an

opposing direction. This hireling is first introduced in the cross-

legged "spiral breathings" or "siitple spirals" vdiich are built upon the "siitple breathings in four and in eiÿtt," the most elenentary of

contraction-release exercises. Uo the siitple breathings' vertical, elongating dynamic of oontraction-^release, the spiral breathing adds

the sagittal phencmenon of the thi<^-socket-initiated spiral. Like the siitple breathings, the siitple spiral breathings involve no rtDvsnoit of the liitibs acway frcm the cross-legged position with arms in low

second position (Plate XXXI). Just as the siitple spiral is derived from the contraction-release of the breathings, the siitple spiral leads to the "spiral cpenings" in vàiich. the spiral action of the torso initiates an opening of the legs to the tonic reflex pose noted above (Plate XXI).

The yin/yang opposition of the Graham floorvrork is most notable in these spiral openings and in the spiral turns around the back in the seated fourth positicai (Plate XII)

At least one prominent teacher of the Graham technique facilitates teaching of the spiral turns around the back with an explanation of them as an expression of the sensual Graham reaching for something while her puritan upbringing pulls her away, and the converse reaching of her puritan ideals as the sensual inpulse pulls back. Ahuva Anbary, former member of the Graham-derived Pearl Lang Dance Corpany and the Batsheva Dance Gcstpany of Israel, used this image in technique classes in the D^>artment of Dance, The Ohio State University, 1979-8Q. 173

Understanding of Graham's spiraling torso, and particularly its

use in standing flcorwork, turns, and loccmotor work, can be furthered

by a ccnparison with epaulement in classical ballet. Epaulement or

"shouldering" is the subtle compositional twist of the upper torso

errplcyed I'/ith various port de bras and positions of -the feet andlegs. The ballet s-tudio exercise secjuence best ejdühits epaulement

is the "positions of the body" in ei-ther the Cechetti or Russian

schools of ballet. While the subtle twisting of the upper torso, and mainly the shoulder area, in such a position as croise devant enhances

t±ie lyrical three-dunensionali-ty of the position, -this three-dimen­

sionality is directed by the limbs, by the arms and the legs. The

three-dimaisionality of tlie Graham technique, however, is cantrally

initiated, frcm the Icwer back and pelvis. It is crucial to recognize

that vAiile the limbs play a prcminent role in the highly form-oriented

Graham technique, they are extensions of and determined by the torso's

irtpulse. In floor, standing, and locxmotor work "many exercises

involve the legs but the impulse for the movement cames frcm the back,

frcm the œntracrtion or spiral" (Dudley, 1977:160). Graham's use of the floor constitutes a major break with Western

dance. In this rather analytical, at times philosophical observation

of Oriental overtones in the breath-derived dynamic of Graham's

cxxitrachicsi-release and in the spiral dynamic grounded in a pull of

opposing forças, it would be possible to overlook the significanœ of

her treatment of gravity. "She made the floor a part of gesture"

(de Mille, 1963:157). In cantrast to ballet's defiance or denial of

gravity, Graham's use of gravity and of its province, the flcar, would

seen to be in line with Duncan's quest for nature. The falls and 174 recoveries vdiich. Graham invented to permit the dancer interplay between standing work and floor work eq)lore the nature of physics and are as innovative as the floor work itself. Again, the contraction- release and the spiral initiate and sustain the falls and the recoveries frcm them. And in general in the Graham technique "all movement into space is the result of the subtle off-balancing of the dancer's vœiÿat" ÇDudl^, 1977:159). Biis characteristic of the

Graham movement dynamic, particularly in light of instances of that off-balancing taking the dancer to the floor and up again, allies

Graham's work with, the sophisticated studies of weight and manentum vtfiich prcpel the practitioner of judo and karate. During the time of the early evolution of the Graham technique, judo and karate were not practiced in the lûûted States to a sufficient degree for one to 15 propose influence of these forms vçxon Graham. But the presence of this aspect of the Graham technique, to the extent that it has permeated modem dance technique in general, has opened modem dance to influence iy the weight cxnscious Asian martial arts. "She has herself alone given us a new system of leverage, balance and dynamics. It has gone into the idicm" (de Mille, 1980:95).

Cbservaticns of the work of oontençxorary choreographers, notably

Twyla Tharp and Senta Driver, reveal that concerns with weight has gone further into the idicm.

The first judo dojo in the ISiited States opened in Seattle in 1903, and Oriental martial arts (institutions) in American colleges and universities began at the Universiiy of California, Berkeley in 1935 (liinderbaum, 1977). It would not be until the nineteen sixties, however, that Americans' acquaintance with these arts became wide­ spread. 175 Graham’s Phllosc^hy of Dance Itechnique

Martha Graham is universally recognized as the H i ^ Priestess of m o d e m dance. The Graham irystique derives not only from her monumental creation of a technique of modem dance, vast repertory of dance theatre works, and sheer longevity as a dancer and choreographer. In the nineteen forties the perscnna of Graham came to represent the great discipline and progressive worldview of the modem dancer. The association persists to the present.

Realizing her position of leadership and drawing from a considerable awareness of history and of her era, Graham has articulated eloquently the dedication and commitment to individuality of e^ressicxi vhich she came to represent. In such writings as "A Modem Dancer’s Primer for

Aotion" (Graham, 1941), in remarks made in classes and lecture demon­ strations, and in the script cf her film A Dancer’s World (1960) Graham has attempted to restore to dancers the hallowed ground on vdiich they have stood in other cultures. For Graham, it is the practice of dis­ cipline vdiich accords the dancer this stature, and she imbued the discipline of dance technique with the near religious significance of practice in yoga or Buddhist zazen. Graham has been known to "use the Zen example of the onion in explaining to students that, vdiile she was asking them to strip away layers of behavior, she was getting them to do so in order to more fully realize their true inner selves"

(McDonagh, 1973:224). And her awareness of the potential of the dancer’s body for microoosmic/macrocosmic identification is reflected in her characterization of the most fundamental law of posture as

"the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth" (Graham, 1941:182). 176 In the "Primer for Action" Graham identified the three-fold purpose of technique; strength of body, freedom of body and spirit, and spontaneity of action (Graham, 1941:185). She has proclaimed that

"freedom may only be achieved through discipline" (1960:1), that

"spontaneity is essentially dependent upon energy, upon the strength necessary to perfect timing . . . the result of perfect timing to the New" (1941:179). The discipline vhich Graham glorifies extends deeper than mere piysical -tuning, for "your years of training and discipline in your craft and in the cul-ti-vation of yourself as a human being have made it possible for you -to be free" (1960:1-2).

"And when a dancer is at the peak of his power he has two lovely, fragile, perishabl'' -things - one is spontaneity. . . . The other is simplicity" (Graham, 1960:2).

Spon-taneity in behavior, in life, is due largely to conplete health; on t h e s-tage to a technical use - often so ingrained by proper training so as to seem instincti-ve - of nervous energy. Perhaps vhat we have always called intui-tion is merely a nervous sys-tati organized by -training to percei-ve (Graham, 1941:180).

Martha Graham is a student of Oriental philosophy, she was greatly influenced iy the writings of C.G. Jung vho early in the century ini-tiated the ongoing dialogue between Buddhism and psycho­ analysis, and she underwent Jungian psychoanalysis herself during crucial years in her career. It is not surprising, therefore, to find her employing terms shared by Zen and psychology in statenents defining her philosophy of dance -technique. In her ci-ting spontanei-ty, freedom, and sirtplicity as desired quali-ties of the dancer and in iden-ti:fying discipline as the only way to achieve them, Graham echoes 177 D.T. Suzuki, in this instance addressing the 1957 Conference of Zen

Buddhism and Psychoanalysis in Cuernavaca, ^fexico.

Psychologists talk a great deal about spontaneity, but what they are talking about is a child-like spontaneity, ^Aich. is fay no means the spontaneity and freedom of an adult human being. As long as he is unable to give up his childish freedom, he will need the help of a psychologist, but he can never eigect to be free and spontaneous if he does not go through years, perh^s many decades of self- discipline [Suzuki, 1962:20-21).

Technique Sunmary

Summarizing this discussion of Eastzem elements in the Graham technique, the importance of that technique to this study lies in the direct influence aspects of the Orient had upon i-ts creation and in the dynamics within Graham’ s technique which have rendered the modem dancer susceptible to influence by aspects of the Eastern world subsequentfLy "in the air." The Graham technique, including the philosophy of technique just discussed, has been recognized as a pivot point in the surface to essence -trend in Oriental influence upon modem dance. Graham’s exhaustive exploration of Asian culture, initiated ty her tine with Denishawn, enhanced still early in her cereer by friendship and professional association with Gotham Book

Mart proprietor Frances Steloff and with sculptor-designer Isamu

Noguchi, and furthered still through prolific reading e-videnced in

The Notebooks, created in her a profound sensiti-vity to a non-Westem worldview. CXving to this sensitivity the Graham dance thea-tre aesthetic, particularly that of the nineteen forties when Graham dealt heavily with ityth, stands in a similarly pivo-tal position. 178

Martha Graham: Theatre Aesthetic

Œsserving her dance theatre in isolation frati the Graham technique, one notes that Martha Graham did not choose Oriental thanes for her choreographic pieces. Due to the public's almost corrplete association of St. Denis with her penchant for the East, it would not have been possible for Graham to have asserted her independence from the Denishawn aesthetic, at the same time presenting pieces with

Eastern thanes. Ccnponents of the Graham theatre aesthetic, particularly in the pieces treating nçth, which exhibit influence from the Orient are her treatment of time, scenic design, use of stage properties, and costuming.

‘Breatment of Time

There are among cultures and historical periods differences in taiporal awareness and oonc^tion. These differences are "irrplicit assutrptions of the aitire world viaf and consciousness of a particular culture or period, pervading many aspects of thought and action”

(Gorman and Wessman, 1977; 47). WhaJ.e most early cultures have had predominately cyclical viavs of time, both religion and dramatic aesthetic theory have ocmtribated to bringing about in the West a markedly linear conc^tion of time. Western conceptions of linear time gradually took form through the eschatological visions of monotheistic Judaism and Christianity that saw human history as a cosmic drama of sin and salvation. Christian thought transformed the mythic thanes of eternal r^5etitioi and invested both history and personal life with a sense of imrediate significance and ultimate destiny (Gorman and Wessman, 1977:46). 179

In terms of theatre in the West, European culture's rediscovery

of Greek antiquity in -the Eenaissance resul-ted in a profound reinforce­ ment of linear development in stage art. The Poetics of Aristo-tle

(384-322 B.C.), "by far tdie most influential Greek work on the -theatre"

(Brockett, 1968:44), was published in a Latin translation in 1498, was

studied in a ccmnnentary published in Italy in 1548, and appeared in

Italian -translation in 1549. In 1581, a little over thirty years af-ter

-the Poetics recarmanced i-ts pervasive influence upon Western stage art,

Catherine de I4edici produced at the court of France the Ballet ccmique

de la Boyne, generally agreed upon as beginning the history of ballet.

Aristotle makes the classic statonent of the linear conception of stage

time in his definition of -tragedy as "an imitation of an action"

(Hutton, 1982:50). Aftar over two hundrei years of European dramatic

and choreogr^hic activity influenced by the Poetics, Jean-Georges

Noverre wrote in his monumaital Letters on Dancing and (1760) :

"Ballet must have a beginning, climax and end." At the beginning

of the twsitleth century one could look back and see Aristotle's

dictum via Noverre having detarmined the narrative sturucture of both

the Rmantlc and Imperial Ballets.

The -trea-tment of -time in the dance theatre o' Graham suggests

her perception of an Qrien-tal worldview to be deep-seatad indeed.

While the majority of works within the Graham repertoire are dramatic

and narrative, and in fact exhibiting development to a climax, the

p^chological drama of Graham offers mcmenta vhich seem -to be extended

in -time. 180 Miss Qraham did not œ p y her theatrical conventions froti the Japanese theatre, although the Noh probably strengthened and affirmed many of her own visions. The truth is that in the Graham world the sense of time is not linear or Western but cyclic and "Oriental" (Boss, 1973:XII).

CcKinentators have referred to "the unhearlded jumps back and forth in time" (Siegel, 1977:158) and have noted that, like Asian theatre artists, "Martha Graham has it - the ccitmand of condensation - of having a single movanait, a single stance, a single flexion, convey a total image" (Bering, 1962:59). For example, in "Deaths and Entrances," Graham’s 1943 piece exploring the lives of the three

Bronte sisters, the unity of time vdiich Aristotle demands is distorted b y the use of flashbacks and free associative events. Graham's time- sense gives her the ability to "require that her audience accept as a unity an inescapable, inextricable catmingling of past, present, future caught together in the illusory net of Now" (Ross, 1973:XII).

A similar suspension of time imbues such pieces as "Dark Ifeadow" (1946) and "Cave of the Heart" (1947) with a ritual-like newness in which linear development is ininirnal. Certainly such a "ccmmingling" of past, present, and future is the goal of psychoanalysis, and it was during her undergoing Jungian analysis with Dr. Frances Wickes

that "Dark Meadow" and "Cave of the Heart" commenced Graham's

exploration of Greek, Hebraic, and other less defined myths frcm what Jung termed the "collective un-conscious." 181 Scenic Design, State Properties, Gostunnes

Graham's scenic design, props, and costumes all stem frcm the same irtpulse to create in dance theatre a timeless syrribolism. Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese sculptor and scenic designer vho has known

Graham since 1925, vho designed her first set ("Frontier" in 1935), and vho has designed twenty-two of her pieces including almost all of the rtyth pieces, defines theatre as "the drama of space in relation to movement" (Flatt, 1967:44). Noguchi refers to Western theatre vhen he observes a change in the twentieth century in the notion of vhat makes a good setting in the theatre, " There is an appreciation of the counterpoint between space and objects (whether fixed or carried). C&jects have spatial and symbolic meaning"(Fatt, 1967:44).

Creating an illusion of an expansion of space rather than a constriction of space has been a considerable part of Noguchi's mission in his work with Gfcraham. "Graham's use of space as part of the emotional content of dance is not far retoved fran Wigman's use of her space as a symbol of the forces of the universe which exert themselves upon individuals" (Mazo, 1977:166). Noguchi's work for

Graham, in which he attatpts "to give space, not to subtract it"

(Fatt, 1967:44), is in no small way responsible for the sense of eternal, cosmic landscape in such works as "Dark Meadow" (1946),

"Cave of the Heart" (1946), and "Alcestis" (1960). Noguchi acknowledges precedent for his theory of space and object in the classical theatres of J^)an, Noh and Kabuki.

The stage setting of both Noh and Kabuki treats space in a manner differing frcm Western theatre from the Renaissance through the early 182 twentieth, century viien, to scne extent due to Noguchi's work for

Graham and for others, space began to take on meaning in Western scenic design.

In the typical Western drama the actor is circumscribed fcy the three walls of a single roan of a single house. The audience sees the actor/character from a single perspective and within a small physical area. , . . The typical Kabuki setting places the actor in a large and varied environment. Exterior scenes are catmon. And even in a zashiki scene, vhere the main action takes place in an interior room of a hate or palace, the actor/character will be seen moving throu^ adjacent environments to reach or exit frcm the interior roati: from hanamichi to outer gate, to vestibule, to rock path, through the gardai, to veranda, and thence up steps into the room, or away throu^ sliding door or half-concealing curtains into roans or gardens that extend outward from the room. Surrounding buildings will be shewn and fields or distant views, . . . It hardly needs to be said that the Kabuki arrangement of placing the actor within a larger environnent is in keeping with the general Japanese worldview, in vhich man does not exist in and of himself, but as a part of the larger, natural world (Brandon, 1980:165-166).

The sense of space in Kabuki is also achieved through highly expressive moments of extended time in vhich, for example, aKabuki actor will take eight to ten minutes to move fran point A to point B.

The slowness of Noh and Kabuki contribute to the newness of these theatre forms, undermining linearity i.i spite of the existence of plot. The timeless and spatially limitless qualities of these forms, therefore, stem frcm the same theatrical conventions. Such a theatre aesthetic imbues the most minimal gesture and handling of objects and costumes with great symbolic significance. "Chce the spectator becomes geared to No's rhythms, each lift of the hand, each movonent of the tightly stockinged foot, the opening and closing of a fan. 183 the twirling of a long, rustling sleeve, assume immense meanings"

(Bcwers, 1956:330). Among the methods of Oriental theatre Graham

learned during her titre with Denishawn was this organic use of properties. A conmentary on Noguchi suggests the integrated

relationship between the use of stage properties and scenic design

in Graham's stage world.

Graham does not dance within a set but on a stage which she can use, that has sate nearer function than that of the eye. She prefers to clinib over set pieces, move, carry, refocus the objects of her stage as an animal moves in his scenery, a kind of traffic with, nature in which everything is, at seme point, alive and capable of change (aoran, 1947:15).

Also contributing to the overall design of the Graham stage, to

the interplay of visual symbols enriching the meaning of her dance

pieces, is costuming. Frcm the shift-like kimono in vMch Graham

dressed herself and her dancers in her first independent concert in

1926 to the ccmbLnation of culotte/fIcwing skirt in "Diversion of

Angels" (1948) she has only subtly appropriated the Orient. The

non-Oriental subject matter of her pieces and an ingenious sense of

function in costume ruled out any vholesale imitation of Eastern

attire like that adorning Graham in Denishawn and the Greenwich

Village Follies. "Her entire approach to costume was to strip

everything down to the essentials so that the body movement could

be seen. And to certain symbolic embellishments that she used

most tastefully and meaningfully, the way Orientals do "(de Mille

in Mazo, 1977:194). 184 Progressive Education and Dance Education

In the span of years during vAiich Martha Graham was beginning her career as a dancer, creating a technique of modem dance training, establishing herself as a genius of theatrical conc^Jtion and choreographic design, all this time eagloring the Orient, the field of dance education was b o m and developing. Hie growth in awareness of the East %hich permitted Graham's "surface to essence" appro­ priation of the Orient was felt in education circles as wll, most notably at Teachers College, Columbia IMiversity vdiere dance education had its origin, There, developing ideas influenced by Oriental thought were being disseidnated to a generation of artists, psychol­ ogists, and educators. And many of the women physical educators who brought dance to America's colleges and universities in the late nineteen twenties, thirties, and forties received graduate degrees from Teachers College.

Among the factors coalescing to make the Teachers College eugierience of this era ripe with affinities to the East was the tenure of Emest FenoUosa's protege Arthur Wesley Dow as Director of the Fine Arts D^artmsnt at Teachers College, beginning in 1903.

"It was a position of inmense power, directly in the mainstream, and the teachers and administrators vho studied at Columbia carried

FenoUosa's ideas into classrooms across the nation" (Fields, 1981:

156-157). The Fenollosa-Dow philosophy of art education, initially

in^ired, again, by FenoUosa's devotion to J^anese art and culture, had been developed at the end of the nineteenth century (Chapter Three) • 185 lî^ere were -tsro basic approaches to art education, as Dow saw it; the Analytic, in vdxLch "the pupil learns to draw, but defers expression until he has attained proficiency in representation, " and the Structural, in which "Self expression begins at once, involving all forms of drawing and leads to appreciation." In practical terms, Dow drew a sharp distinction between studying objects to make an accurate representation, and ccnposition, the "expression of an idea . . . with all the parts . • . so relatxed as to form a harmonious whole." The former, vhile a necessary discipline, was imitative, while the latter called forth "the need of a new faculty vhich is but inperfectly developed, in short, the ability to compose, the creative faculty" (Fields, 1981;156).

Ihe distinctions Dow drew at the beginning of the twentheth century, grounded as they were in FenoUosa’s observation of Chinese and Japanese art, led naturally to Northrop's mid-century distinction between art of the first function and art of the second function

(Chuter One). It is no coincidence that the contenporary American painter vhose work Northrop chooses to represent art of the first

function is Georgia O'ifeefe, former student of Dew at Teachers College.

Certainly Lin Yutang's observation, also cited in Chapter One, that

to an Oriental "a Western painter always seems to have painted the object from the outside, whereas the Oriental painto it with feeling

and with identification of the artist with it fron within" (1939;83) relates both to Dow's distinction between Analytic and Structural

approaches to art education and to that between accura-te representation

and expression of an idea. Such tenets of Dew's program, certainly

in sympathy with the ideas that Dewey was developing at about the

same time, literally were to becate embodied in dance education. 186

The physical educators doing graduate woric at Columbia received

a full dose of progressive education: directly or indirectly in the

hi^ily influential theories of Dew and directly in the "education-

throu<ÿi-~the^hysical" theories expounded there by physical educators

Thomas Wood and Jesse V, Williams. At the same time, many of these

developing dance educators had opportunity to work with modem dancers

Graham, Doris Hurtphrey, Charles îfeidman, and during surrtters

at Bennington Ctollege in Vermont, beginning in 1934, or during a

college residency with one of these pioneers. Combining this practical modem dance experience with the theory acquired at Teachers College,

they forged a philosophy of dance education, and with it an entirely

new academic c^scipline. And so, in the field of dance education the

stylistiophilosophical appropriation of the Orient Denishawn

and Martha Graham had come together with concepts of progressive

education vhich, for their part, had been influenced by the East as well.

The seeds of the dance education tradition at Columbia were

established in 1913 with Gertrude Colby's "natural dance" vhich

incorporated ideas of the uniqueness of each child and on the merit of integrating various dimensions into the school curriculum, both

concerns of Dewey. Teaching at the Speyer Demonstration School at

Teachers College from 1913 to 1916, Colby then joined the regular

faculty at Teachers College where her students included Margaret

H'Doubler, , Mary O'Donnell, Martha Deane, and Ruth iSiirray,

all to becrane prominsit dance educators. Another student of Colby, Bird Larson began teaching at Barnard College on the Columbia canpus 187 in 1914. Larson, established the laws of anatcny, kinesiology, and physics as a scientific base to dance technique (Kraus and Ch^znan,

1981:117). Margaret H'Doubler was the first of many dance educators who would find at Colurrfcia Teachers College not only the pioneering exartple of

Colby and Larson, but also the theoretical quest after organic process which w a s o n e of the tenets of progressive education. H'Doubler was a physical education teacher at the University of Wisconsin when, she went to Teachers College to do Master^s work in 1916. "When she returned to the University of Wisconsin in 1918, she developed a dance program which was based on a scientific understanding of the nature of pln^cal movement as well as a sound philosophy of creative expression"

(Kraus and Chapman, 1981:118). E ’Doubler established the first dance degree program in the country at Wisconsin in 1926. Dance education as an acadsnic discipline received official recognition in 1930 vhen the National Section on Dance was established within the American

Alliance for Esalthy Physical Education, and Recreation (Dougherty,

1982:1). From its conception dance education's "philosophy of creative eaqpression" would be increasingly influenced ly the "individual as unique" and "organic" process" strains of progressive education.

An anti-dualistic stance, in sympathy with Oriental perspective, lies at the base of the progressive movement in education, most ccmmonly associated with Johin D e v ^ (1859-1952). 188

Tiie oonclusion is this: The p^chical is hcnogeneously related to the physiological. The brain is no more the organ of the mind than the spinal cord, the spinal cord no more than the peripheral endings of the nerve fibers. New this gives us but one alternative: Either there is absolutely no connection between the boc^ and soul at any point vhatever, or else the soul is, through the nerves, present to all the body. This means that the psychical is immanent in the physical (Dewey, 1969:96).

William Jamas, vhose Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) had offered perc^rtive analysis of Oriental religious and meditative practice,^® published Pragmatism in 1914, earploying the work of Dewey

to explain his theories. Throu^ its roots in the anti-materialist

pragmatism of D æ y and James, progressive education rebelled against

dualistic, positivistic trends similar to those modem dance had

cone to criticize in ballet. The themes of nature, organicism, and

process ringing through the aesthetic program of Isadora Duncan infuse

the progressive movement in education from D e w ^ to James to Dow to

Harold Rugg and his call for a "Tao of the West" (1963).

Ifcro works document the anti-dualistic, positivistic Zeitgeist

vhich developed in informed education circles throughout the first

half of the present century, vfith Columbia Itoiversity's Teachers

College recognized as prsniere purveyor of that opinion to teachers.

F.S.C. Nbrthrop's Jfeeting of East and tfest (1946) and Harold Rugg’s

posthumous Imagination (1963) propose that the West regain its lost

"attention to the differentiated aesthetic continuum of experience"

(Northrop), its lost "intuition" (Rugg) through a modeling after

It will be recalled from Chapter Three that James said of Buddhism during the Buddhist leader Dharmapala's 1902-1904 visit to the United States, "This is the psychology everybody vd.ll be studying brenty-five years from new" (Sangarakshita, 1964:78). 189 the East. Rugg, vAo began work, on Iroaginaticn in 1952 v ç m retirement

frcm thirty years at Teachers College, tented a free, intuitive

reo^Jtivity to creative energy the "Tao," finding evidence of this

"one pervasive way of release" throughout the East (Rugg, 1963:160).

Ihus, the quest for "natural," "organic" forms as opposed to the mechanistic oonstructis of positivian was an important aspect of the

progressive education movement and would inevitably provide the

groundwork for oonteitporary "holism." This aspect of the progressive movsnent, as it was disseminated to the developing cadre of dance

educators via Wood and Williams, via Dow, and via general studies

in educational psychology, revived and nurtured an element of Isadora

Duncan’s program vdiicii had been stressed Ey neither Denishawn nor

Graham. Ihis element - discovery through kinesthetic intuition and

through improvisation - might have been lost without the theoretical

framework of "art for the mass," "uniqueness of the individual,"

"natural," and "organic" gleaned by art educators from Fenollosa-Dow

and progressivism, and legitimizing improvisation from H'Doubler on.l^

When I listened to music the rays and vibrations of the music streamed to this one fount of light within me — there they reflected thatiselves in ^iritual Vision not the brain’s mirror, but the soul's, and frcm this vision I could e2q>ress them in Dance (Duncan, 1927:75). Not pre-defined fcy a particular technical style, slave to no

movement vocabulary, Isadora Duncan was capable of being fully

Among tte most controversial individuals influencing the postMmodem aesthetic of egalitarian activity and "non-dance," and v*ose name is almost synonymous with the "Haooening" of the 1960’s is Ann Halprin. Halprin,vhose work is discussed in Chapter Five, learned improvisation with H'Doubler at Wisconsin in the early nineteen forties. 190 receptive to a movement stimulus - in her case music - re^mding in a "natural" way. In stating this theory of movement derivation.- and exposing it to an academic stringing together of vocabulary steps,

Duncan founded inprovisation as a tool of ccnposition. It is inter­ esting to note Rugg quoting Isadora's "All my life I've struggled to make one auüientic gesture" (Rugg, 1963:65) and citing her labeling of

"the gesture of the dance as 'organic form'" (Rugg, 1963:124). Sub­ sequent theorizing would extend improvisation's contribution to modem dance to include its worth as a vehicle developing awareness throuÿi mind-bo^ integration. As noted in Qi^rter IVro, Duncan's demand that

"the primary or fundamental movements of the new school of the dance must have within them the seeds frcm which will evolve all other move­ ments" (Duncan, 1928:56) in-troduced the concept of organically ccnposed dance movarent. What was nateral would have organic form. Tied cp with a quest for natjjral and organic creation are the concepts of truth, purity, and authenticity.

In conclusion, a core concept within contsnporary educational curriculun theory, having its basis in Devrey and cerfsinly influenced iy the FeioUosa-Dcw theory of art education, is that of "process. "

With regard to the basis for the glorification of process in its many applications, the pragmatists held strongly to the contention that mind be regarded as a process rather than as an entity separats and distinct frcm the bo(^. The oOTicept of process inspires and sus­ tains the anti-dualistic "organic," "nataxral," "holistic" approach in educaticn cited throughout this discussion. As the "process" thrust of progressive educaticn entered the dance educator's theoretical basis, improvisation became recognized as an end in itself. The 191 problem-solving process of dance inprovisation could qualify for Dewey's definition of educaticn as "that reconstruction of experience v M c h to meaning of experience, and viiich increases ability to direct the course of subsequence e:perience" (1938:89-90).

Dance inprovisation fuses creation with execution, the dancer simultaneously originates and performs movement without pre-planning. It is thus "creative movement of the moment." An intangible and nonacademic process, it is marked by distinct stages collectively found in the creative process (Chaplin, 1976:42).

Movement inprovisation could be characterized as the primary vehi­ cle for mind-body integration within the modem dance framework. A recent description of the inprovisation-based technique taught at the

Nikolais-Louis Dance Theatre Tab offers an accurate characterization of the contenporary conc^tiai of dance inprovisation;

Rather than emphasizing the teaching of a movement vocab­ ulary, per se, its (the technique's) aim is to develop those tools whereby movement invention and the choreo­ graphic craft can evolve naturally. The process for achieving this entails the development of the sentient dancer, one vho through technical mastery is sensitive to all the dimensions of the art form. As each human body is unique and thereby a medium for distinct art­ istry, this technique may be seen as a framework within which the individual student's aesthetic values and creative fluency may flourish (Nikolais-Louis Brochure, 1981).

As observed in Chapter One, "the 'tradition of the new'" vhich nurtures innovation in modem dance, "demands that every dancer be a potential choreographer" (Banes, 1979:5). To refer to Dow's distinc­ tion between different approaches in art education, "Structural" as­ pects of learning need not await mastery of "Analytic" aspects. The call for simultaneous development of Analytic, performance skills with that of Structural, ccnpositional skills is apparent in Banes' observa- tiai above. Whether it be in a chiildren's class in creative movenent 192 or in a professional setting like that described in the Nikolais-Louis

Dance Theatre Lab brochure cited above, the m o d e m dance traditicai of developing creative-chareographic-ccnpositional skills frcm the outset of training has answered Dow's call for Analytic and Structural balance in arts training. Together the legacy of Isadora Duncan and the pro­ gressive, East-influenced origins of dance education have insured such integration. CHAPTER FIVE

EJÇJloring The Essence

East tfeets West: 1947-1965

The Oriental aesthetic embodied in the repertory of choreographer

Erick Hasdcins - to be observed later in this chuter - received a great deal of ejçosure during the 1966-67 season vhai Havddns and his ooirpany

toured the Ohited States for twenty weeks preseiting around seventy pro­

grams. With college and university residencies making a large part

of the tour/ a typical canpus residency included master classes, a lec­

ture by Hav^dns to a group of hmenities students, a lecture hy ccnpany

ccnposer Lucia Dlugoszewski to music students, and a concert with

Bavddns offering explanatory remarks before or after the performance

(Hasrfdns, 1967). Students were rather receptive, for Erick HaWdns was

not the only agent transmitting the Qrioit to the American college or

university canpus in the late nineteen sixties. At that time Oriental

■thought, particularly the Zen so enbraced by Havddns, v a s a very real

presence in the nation's centers of higher education, reflecting as

they customarily have, the -timeliest currents in American life.

As the West's awareness of -the East had increased in breadth and

sophistication since Sir William Janes' established the Royal Asiatick

Society in 1784, the agents transmi-tting aspects of an Asian worldview

to the American college or uni-versity of the nineteen sixties were nu­

merous and varied. While the East's notable presence here by the late

193 194 nineteen sixties was the result of two centuries of philological/

scholarly and artistic activity/ the post-war period of the nineteen

fifties - a period frequently cited for its lack of intellectual and

social ferment - saw an elect few manbers of the avant garde and intelligentia readying for the American public the icons of the counter culture to foUcw.

Leading the charge with the quiet diligence of a truly inspired scholar was Diasatz T. Suzuki, premiere authority of Zen. Suzuki's first contribution to the West's acquaintance with the Orient, again, had been his translation of Sqyen Shaku's address to the World Parlia­ ment of Religions in Chicago in 1893. First arriving in the United

States in 1897 to assist Paul Cams with the translation of a series of Eastern Classics for Open Court Press, Suzuki published his own first book. Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism in 1907. The year 1927 marked the publication in English of his pervasively influential

Essays in Zen Buddhism which in its numerous subsequent editions established Suzrki as the world's foremost Zen scholar.

The great universalization of Zen, the fact of its being embraced so widely, and specifically of its being so influential in modem dance of the nineteen fifties and sixties, are the result of Suzuki's refusal to limit Zen to any time, place, or doctrine.

As I conceive it, Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy. That final psychic fact that takes place when religious con­ sciousness is hei^tened to extrsnity. Whether it comes to pass in Buddhists, in Christians, or in philosophers, it is in the last analysis incidental to Zen (Suzuki, 1956:xx).

Isolated instances of the potential pervasiveness of Zen's ^plication are to be found in R. M. Blyth's book Zen in English Literature and

Oriental Classics (1942), in the 1957 Cuernavaca conference "Zen 195

Buddhisti and Psychoanalysis" with Suzuki and C. G. Jung, and 1971's

"Drugs and Buddhism - a Synposium" with Suzuki, Alan Watts and others.

Suzuki had not been without help in his raising Anerica's aware­ ness of Zen to the level it had reached by mid-century. Alan Watts, the Englishman v*o in 1936 at age twenty-one had met Suzuki at the

World Council of Faiths in Lcndon, -was one of the most influential of the master's devotees. Watts moved to îfew York in 1938 and by 1941 was writing and offering seminars on subjects fusing psychology and

Eastern thought. His The Spirit of Zen was published in 1946. The year before,Aldous Huxley's "Notes on Zen" had been included in a

Harper and Brothers book entitled Vedanta for Modem Nan (1945) . But surely the acquaintance of the West with Zen found D. T. Suzuki as torch bearer. Through numerous editions of his Essays in Zen Buddhism published between 1927 and 1950 and through the work of other scholars like Huxley and Watts, the ground was fertile when in 1949 Suzuki left

Japan for the United States.

In 1950 Suzuki began his reknowned lectures on Zen at Columbia

University. Cornelius Crane, of Crane Bathroom Fixtures, subsidized

Suzuki's seminars at Columbia, stipulating that auditors be allovred to attœd. 5mong the psychoanalysts, therapists, and artists who attended the 1950-53 lectures were psychoanalyst Erich Frotm, cotposer John

Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. The lecture series has been recognized as a landmark in the west's understanding of the East, and

Suzuki remained affiliated with Columbia until 1957.

It is interesting to note that the 1950's found the visual splendor of the Orient once again gracing the catitiercial stage as it had in the first quarter of the century. The most successful writing team in 196

American itusical theatre history, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Haitnerstein

II, offered the nineteen fifties no less than three Broadway hits in vhich the Orient played a role. South Pacific (1949), The King and I

(1951), and Flower Drum Song (1958) all enjoyed long Broadway runs.

South Pacific, vhich ran from 1949 to early in 1953, was based upoi

James Michener's Pullitzer Prize winning Tales of the South Pacific.

Co-authored, co-produced, and directed by Joshua Logan, South Pacific offered a touch of the Orient in the scenes and characters of Hawaii arising frcm Michaier's stories of World War II. James Michener and

Joshua Logan, and their association with South Pacific have added sig­ nificance for this study. Betveen December, 1951 and December, 1952 - during the run of South Pacific - both Michener and Logan were quoted in The New York Times priasing the Kabuki theatre tradition of Japan, with Logan expressing his intention of bringing Japanese Kabuki to the

United States. In fact it was not until February and March of 1954 that the Azuraa Kabuki Dancers and Musicians first performed outside of Japan, brought to New York by the eminent irtpressario Saul Hurok.

Hurok produced a return New York engagement of the Kabuki troupe in

December and January 1955-56. This chapter's discussion of the develop­ ment of Erick Hawkins' theatre aesthetic will note the fervency with vhich Havhins and collaborators Dlugozewski and Dorazio attended the

Kabuki during these historic mid-fifties visits.

The year 1951 had brought The King and I which, set at the court of the king of Siam, demanded the Oriental pageantry of the most elab­ orate Denishawn production. Alluding to a pcpular entertainment tradi­ tion discussed in Chapter Three Hanmerstein characterized his task as having to prepare a text with "an Eastern sense of dignity and pageantry. 197 and none of this business of girls dressed in Oriental costim.es and dancing cut onto the stage and singing 'cliing-a-ling-a-ling' with their fingers in the air" (Ewen, 1970:271-272). Rodgers' irusic, vdiile not authentically Oriental, enplqyed effectively Oriental colorations in melot^, harmony, and instrumentation (Evren, 1970:274). In the scene

"The Staall House of Uncle Thomas" choreographer Jerome Robbins offered the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Siamese dance. Ewen ccranents upon

"the literalness and pictorial beauty" of these dance sequences by

Robbins (Even, 1970:274).

Critics spoke of the authenticity and good taste with which the Orient was re-created, "an East of frank and unashamed romance," as Richard Watts, Jr., wrote, "seen through the eyes of . . . theatrical artists of rare taste and creative pover" (Ewen, 1970:275).

Flower Drum Song (1958) depicted the life of Chinese-Mericans in

San Francisco's Chinatown. Like those for The King and I, stage sets for the show offered the Broadway audience the brightly colorful and sculptural visual style of the Orient vhich no doubt will always be found celebrated on the Jtosrican stage.

By the late nineteen fifties the thought of the Orient, not just

the style, had been transmitted to a wider spectrum of the American public than ever before; Zen had becccte a proverbial household word in

the United States. D. T. Suzuki was interviewed on television, and in

1957 he was the subject of a "Profile" in The New Yorker magazine

(Sargeant, 1957). Ey the end of the fifties Suzuki's books were in­

creasingly available in paperback. ïihile certainly Suzuki's career had

produced some works for the more esoteric reader, most vere "essays

addressed to the intelligent cosmopolitan in a style at once rambling,

humorous and direct .... It was a unique voice" (Fields, 1981:204). 198 Alcxig with the paperback editions of Suzuki's works a number of books published in the nineteen fifties joined instruction in Oriental martial arts and in modem danoe as purveyors of the Zen perspective to the American college or university undergraduate of the nineteen sixties.

3h 1952 the English translation of 's Si^hartha was published, providing, as had Arnold's The Light of Asia eighty years before, a vernacular narration of the story of the historic Buddha.

Egen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery (1953), with its gentle ren­ dering of the Zen principle of non-action, became a favorite of both

Merce Qmningham and Erick Havddns. Alan Watts' The Way of Liberation in Zen Buddhism appeared in 1955 and his "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and

Zen" first appeared in the "Zen Issue" of Chicago Review in the summer of 1958. The "beat generation," with all of its inspiration from the

Orient, was at hand, as chronicled in Jack 's Pharma Bums (1956),

Cn the Road (1959), and Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1959).

These books and others became standard fare for the undergraduate stu­ dent of the nineteen sixties. Also, the existentialist philosophy rising out of the work of such writers as Jean Paul Sartre and Martin

Heidigger entered the syllabi of college humanities courses of the period. Commentary upon the work of Sartre and Heidigger notes the

Buddhistic character of sane tenets of existentialism, particularly the existential vision of the cosmos and its caicept of human freedom

(Kaufinann, 1970) Moreover, more in-depth study of the East was in­ creasingly available in departments of Asian or Far Eastern Studies,

^ Smith notes that Heidigger's concept of man's freedan lying in "letting go" or "letting be" (Gelassenheit) parallels the "non- Aristotelian qualities of Zen" (Snith, 1975:179). 199 these programs attracting a growing number of graduate students.

Faculty members in these programs, many of them natives of the Orient

like the growing number of their colleagues in other academic disci­ plines, contributed to a canpus climate more and more harboring Orien­ tal perspectives.

Another aspect of Asian culture had secured the interest of a large segment of the college student body. By the late sixties various

Oriental martial arts w s r e becoming contoiplace in the nation's univer­ sities. As observed in the previous chapter judo had been the first

Asian martial art cn canpus, being taught at the University of

California, Berkeley in 1935 (Min, 1977:186). Karate and tae kvron do

(Korean karatze) entered university programs in 1960, and the breadth of styles, number of schools involved, and number of participants had increased steadily to the early nineteen seventies vAen nationwide surveys were conducted. 2 Martial arts forms on campus included judo

(J^>an), karatie (Japan - Okinawa), tae kwan do (Korea), kung fu (China) and subsequent to the la-te sixties, t'ai chi ch'uan (China) and aikido

(Japan). Instructiai in martial arts provides a unique index into the

Asian viewpoint.

Oriental philosophy and arts offer -the student this alterna­ tive. They stress self-knowledge and self-control instead of self-satisfaction and blustering attapts to control others as veil as nature. They etphasize peacefulness and serenity instead of violence. In the case of oriental philoscphy and literature, hovever, the student encounters barriers of linguistic and cultural differences which are extranely difficult to surmount. By contrast, the martial

2 Pertinent surveys conducted in 1972 are contained in the National Collegiate Handbook and the Collegiate Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu Handbook. 200

arts present no such barrier to the Western student, since they are taught by demcnstration and drill at first and actual practice thereafter. In this area, an American college student can acquire active first-hand esqjerience of an oriental way of life and develop a pi^sical and mental discipline vhich would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, for him to possess (Min, 1977:188).

As an increasing number of Americans were gaining first-hand experi­ ence in mind-bo(^ disciplines of the East through martial arts training, the potential for a large number of Westerners to experience the au- thenic practice of Zen meditation was enhanced by the work of Philip

K^leau. In 1965, after thirteen years in Japan, K^leau returned to his native United States Philip Kapleau-roshi, an ordained Zen priest.

Cn a vcrk assignment in J^)an Kapleau had met D. T. Suzuki in 1948, foUoved Suzuki's lectures at Columbia University, and in 1952 returned to J^an to study Zen. During Kapleau's thirteen years of training in

Japan he had been told by his master, Yasutani-roshi: "It is your destiny to carry Zen to the Wèst (Fields, 1981:240). While discussion above notes the alreat^ ccnsiderable presence of Zen in America in the nineteen fifties and sixties, Kapleau's The Three Pillars of Zen, pub­ lished in Japan and the United States in 1965, was "the first book written by a Westerner from within the Zen tradition" (Fields, 1981:

241). The work was unique in offering transcripts of the most private of encounters between roshi and student and of other personal intimacies of the Zen experience.

The Three Pillars of Zen made it clear that zazen was at the heart of Zen, and gave instructions on how to begin sitting. It made it possible for pecple v t o had never met a Zen teacher to begin practicing on their own (Fields, 1981:241).

The book had a profound affect upon Chester Carlson, founder of the

Xerox Corporation. Members of a Vedanta study group in Rochester, 201 New York, Carlson and his wife placed five thousand ccpies of The

Ttiree Pillars of Zen in public libraries around the country. The counter culture movement beginning to develop by 1965 (Chuter Six) would see both superficial dabbling in things Oriental and informed, authentic practice of Eastern traditions. Kapleau's The Three Pillars of Zen did much to facilitate the latter.

Merce Cunningham; Theatre Aesthetic

Discoveries in modem physics provided a corplementary backdrop to the investigation of the Orient v^iich an increasing number of Westerners vere conducting during the nineteen fifties and sixties. Over the first three decades of the twentieth centujy classical physics had to be aban­ doned. The two basic theories of modem physics - relativity theory and quantum theory or atomic physics - rendered obsolete the principle conc^ts of the Newtonian, mechanistic worldview. "The notion of abso­

lute space and time, the elementary solid particles, the strictly causal nature of physical phenomena, and the ideal of an objective description of nature" (Capra, 1977:61,62) were to be abandoied. The sum total of discoveries in nrdem physics constitute an observation of the inter­

connectedness of phenomena affirming the position of ancient traditional

Eastem thought. There is no question but what growing acquaintance with the findings of modem physics hias rendered more comprehensible

to the Westem mind the ancient religious and philosophical truths of

the East. The modem physicist, with the Eastem nystic, has acute

awareness that all phenomena in this world of change and transforma­

tion are dynamically interconnected. And so has choreographer îferce

Cunningham. 202

Cunningham's theatre aesthetic is not derived frcm the West. Since the forming of the îferce Cunningham Dance Cotpany thirty years ago,

Qmningham has produced controversial work and is, certainly, an estab­ lished iconoclast. "For îferce, the time between being the 'enfant terrible' of the avant-garde and 'acknwledged master' of the avant- garde was . . . nonexistent" (Brown, 1968:38). In Cunningham's work, in critical catiaentary upon his work, in the statements of those who have worked with him, and in available biographical information, one finds evidence of the Orient as significant contributor to the

Cunningham vision. He practices yoga daily, in interviews refers to dance technique as "a yoga," and heralds the raison d'etre of the daily workout as the integrated functioning of the mind, body, and spirit (Cunningham, 1982:2). And as teacher, Cunningham embodies the master of Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery according to Cunningham

Ccnpany manber Carolyn Brown (Brown, 1968:35).

Beyond such neatly citeable involvanent with the Orient as use of the I Ching as determinant of choreography lies an informed sensitivity to an Oriental view of reality. Eastem thought, existential and phe­ nomenological philosophy, and m o d e m physics all cczitribute to the non-

% s t e m aesthetic of the dance theatre created hy îferce Cunningham.

Through the eloquence of a new movanent vocabulary (ballet-derived, interestingly enough) and through a ccmpositicnal method permitting an arbitrary, disjointed play of space and time, Cunningham's dance theatre presents a profound view of man in the universe. It has been stated that all philoscphy derived frcm Indian phdloscphy is existen­ tial in nature (Eliade, 1969:xvi). Cunningham's understanding of

Oriental theories of cosmic interrelatiœship originating in India 203 and verified by modem phÿ’sics, his working relationship with the

Chinese celebration of change, and his syrtpathies with Zen imbue his work with an existential quality, enabling modem dance to further

^iproach the essence of the East.

Msrce Cunningham studied ballet as a youngster in Washington state.

Upon graduation from high school in 1937 he began studies at the Comish

School of the Arts in Seattle with the intention of becoming an actor.

It is significant that joined the faculty of the COmish

School in 1938, for certainly conçoser, philosopher Cage figures heavily in an c±iservation of Cunningham and the Orient. At the C o m i s h School

Cunningham studied the newly created Graham technique with Graham- trained Bonnie Bird. It was with the encouragement of Bird, Cage, and others that Cunningham went in the sumner of 1939 to the Mills College residency of the Bennington School of the Dance. And Martha Graham, on the faculty that summer, encouraged Cunningham to come to îfew York the following fall. îferce Cunningham joined the Martha Graham Dance Company that fall of 1939, his first role being -that of the acrobat in Every

Soul Is a Circus (1939). With the Graham cctrpany until 1945 he created many leading roles including the Christ Figure in El Penitente (1940) ,

March in Letter to the World (1940), and the Sevivalist in Appalachian

Spring (1944).

In his choreographic career Cunningham would come to shun the narra­ tive drama so predominant in Graham's oeuvre, but in Graham's treatment of time could be found the seed of Cunningham's "exacting ccancem with time" (Brown, 1968:32) vhich creates "entirely a theatre of the moment"

(Croce, 1977:25). 204

'Ehe close artistic association shared by Merce Cunningham and John

Cage, mutually stimulating and continuing to this day, began in 1942.

Cunningham had begun to choreogr^h independently vAiile still a member

of Graham's ccnpany, sharing a concert with Jean Erdman and Nina Ponaroff

at the Bennington School during the sunnier of 1942. That same program, with the addition of Cunningham's solo Totem Ancestor with music by

Cage, was presented in New York in the fall of 1942. Following their

first collaboratioi Cunningham and Cage began to present joint concerts of solo dances and piano music, many of these performances on college

caucuses around the country. This touring continued until the early

1950's. ^ Then, vMle in residence at Black Mountain College in North

Carolina during the sunmer of 1952, Cunningham collaborated with Cage, painter Robert Rauschenberg and others in the presentation of Cage's

Theatre Piece #1. This work is generally recognized as marking the beginning of the new theatre movement of the nineteen fifties and

sixties. Wishing to broaden his exploration of dance theatre aesthetic by continuing work with groups of dancers, Cunningham formed the Merce

Cunningham Dance Carpany in 1953. Cage was musical director and has remained in that positicn to the present day.

As stated above Cage and Cunningham met in 1938 vdien Cage was a faculty member and Cunningham a student at the Comish School in Seattle.

Cage states that his interest in Zen was first awakened fay a lecture on

3 In 1947 The Ballet Society (Balanchine-Kirstein) presented Cunningham's The Seasons with score by Cage and setting by Noguchi. Kirstein found that the work was "interesting and pretty, but it had little virtuosic interest and was not particularly interesting for ballet-trained dancers to do. . . . Without acrobatic virtuosity based on four centuries of logical exercises, a dancer cannot hope to attract a mass public" (Mazo, 1977:218). 205

Zen and given by Nancy Wilson Ross'^ at the Comish School that sane year. "It drew a parallel for me with its insistence cn experience and the irrational rather than on logic and understanding" (Kisselgoff,

1982:65). Cage's Eastern-inspired philoscphy and his proœss of de­ riving music through chance cperaticns, with the "insistence on experi­ ence and the irrational" inplicit in such a œncept, have been crucially influential in Merce Cunningham's choreographic career.

A study of the collaborative work of Cunningham and Cage reveals the general Buddhistic denial of fixed forms and logic, the Chinese celebration of ciiange, and the Zen principle of indeterminancy as the bases of Cunningham's work. Bnerging frcm all of the above is an exis­ tential view of man in the universe. The most immediately noteworthy aspect of their work and cne contributing to this existential aesthetic is the pracTtice of deriving juxtapositions of movement and sound through processes in ^diich chanœ determines the artistic outcome. Among the processes enployed by these artists has been the flipping of a œin, the "reading" of random imperfections on a piece of paper, and consult­ ing the I Ching, the Chinese Bcxok of Changes.

Cunningham notes that it was in his "Sixteen Dances for Soloist and

Cottpany of Three" (1951) that the use of chance first speared i_n his work (Cunningham, 1968:49). The piece was based upon the nine permanent onotions of the Indian classiczal theatre, with light (yang) and dark

(yin) emotions alternating with each other. Finding no particular

Nancy Wilson Ross, longtime cxnmentator on the Eastem assets of contemporary art, was general editor of the Randcm House publica­ tions of D. T. Suzuki in the 1950's and 60's and wrote the Introduction to The Notebroks of Martha Graham (1973) cited in Chapter Four. 206 reason a specific light emoticn should follow a specific dark emo­ tion, Cunningham let the toss of a coin determine the order: anger, the humorcus, sorrow, the heroic, the odious, the wondrous, fear, the erotic, and tranquility. Exc^rt; for the erotic, vdiich was a duet, and tranquil­ ity, a dance for four, each of the emotions was a solo, with postludes to a number of the solos. Following the solo for fear was a quartet with a limited range of movements, different for each dancer.

This VOS choreographed by chance means. That is, the indi­ vidual sequences, and the length of time, and the directions in space of each vere discovered by tossing coins. It was the first such e^gerience for me and felt like "chaos has cote again" viien I worked on it (Cunningham, 196P:51).

In the 1953 wnrk titled "Suite by Chance" a long piece in four move­ ments, a series of charts and the flipping of a coin served as deter­ minants of movement and space corposition. One chart listed body move­ ments, phrases, and positions, another listed lengths of time, and another Usted directions in space. While the items on these charts were not determined by chance, their justapositicn to each other in performance was.

A sequence of movanents for a single dancer was determined by means of chance from the numbered movanents in the chart; space, direction and lengths of time were found in the other charts. At important structural points in the music, the number of dancers œ stage, exits and entrances, unison or individual movements of dancers were all decided by tossing coins (Charlip, 1954:19).

Cunningham took indeterminancy a step further in "Field Dances" (1963).

In this piece each dancer had his own set of movements and movement phrases, and in performance did as many or as few as he chose and at any time he chose.

The artistic phenomenon, perennial in the West, of protege rebel­ ling against mentor should be given sane credit for Cunningham's mode 207 of chcreograFhing. Cunnir^ham rebelled both against the psychological nature of Graham's dance theatre and against her daninance of all phases of choreographic producticsi. In the constructivist spirit of the period he sought to create a form of dance vAiich would not be a projection of his cwn p^chological states. In so doing he was rebelling not only against Martha Graham, but also against the romantic notion - dominant in all nineteenth caitury Vfestem art including the Rmantic and htperial ballets - of the artist as possessor of supernatural gifts and deserving of the right to ùîçress his personality upon collaborators and audience

(Siegel, 1977:34). Cunningham found the objectivity he sought through the use of chance operations, sane of which were described above.

"Having structured movement in this way, rather than adhering to ki­ netic or theatrical phrasing, he seemed to have destroyed its ordinary connectedness, its logic" (Siegel, 1977:34). And in the spirit of the

East he sought to create the vision of a totality of ceaselesschange, an interplay of space and time.

Surely no choreographer has done more than Cunningham to celebrate the full ramifications of dance as a time-space art form. In his lec­ tures at Columbia in the early 1950's vhich Cunningham and Cage attend­ ed together in his publications which Cunningham was reading during the same period, the pre-eminent Zen scholar Daisetz T. Suzuki directs much attention to the relationship between space and time.

We look around and perceive that .... every object is related to every other object . . . not only s^tially, but temporally .... As a fact of pure experience, there is no space without time, no time without space; they are interpenetrating (Suzuki, 1959:33).

It is imperative to have an insight into the timelessness of time vhich involves the spacelessness of space (Suzuki quoted by Brown, 1968:32). 208

A knowledge of Cunningham's philosopl^^ of technique and an acquaintance with his dance theatre suggest that Cunningham took seriously Suzuki's

call to "embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in every palpi­

tation" (Suzuki quoted by Brown, 1968:32).

The most significant and readily evident tstporal characteristic of

Cunningham's dance theatre is his cxxtpleted disregard for the narrative,

linear-oriented direction of Aristotelian theatre. Cunningham's non-

Westem treatment of stage time could be said to have had its roots in

Graham's psychological soliloquy. But vhile Graham - in the use of

flashbacks and extensions of time for psychological portrayal - took

liberties with Aristotle's unities of time and place, she did hold to the Aristotelian prescription of drama as fulfillment of an action.

Wherf IS Graham, freely ^:propriating NOh and Kabuki, opened to Westem

star ' dance the possibility of portraying a psychological "now, "

Cunningham's "theatre of the moment" (Croce, 1977:25)- would present a cosmic now of ceaseless change.

The chance work of Cunningham, by virtue of its resul-ting spatial and tarporal fragmentation, this tatçoral fragmentation furthered by the absence of pre-ordained synchrony of sound and movanent, did away wi-th vAiat Behnke coins a "hierarchy of moments, " permitting a series of "now points" with no "telic" structure (Behnke, 1981). Behnke applies the

term "'telic' to those works ; ^ c h do operate like a -temporal arrow moving toward a target vhich has governed every detail of the archer's

aim" (Behnke, 1981:15). This target is the climax of Wes-tem theatre.

Graham's creation of a Freudian, Jungian landscape, her psychological

soliloquizing through time and through Noguchi's space, began changing 209

the tsrporal paradigm of dance theatre in the West. But her presenta-

ticn of a p^chological landscape functioned in a linear, telic develop­ ment to climax. Merce Cunningham's chance work, replacing telic devel-

opnent with aleatory organization, offered a true "theatre of the mo­ ment;" in the absence of linear develcpnent, the vertical monent of

"here and now" could exist as an end in itself.

The absence of a tenporal focus in Cunningham's non-telic theatre

gains significance vhen coupled with the absence of spatial focus. Any movanent could follow any movement, movement of one body part could be

juxtaposed to that of another with no regard to nature or convention.

Every dancer held equal importance, as did every part of the stags.

The absence of synchronous or even predetermined relationship of move­ ment to music offers no clues as to design-oriented foreground/back­ ground hierarchies.

Cunningham's dance is multi-focused. He does not rely on the conventional stage hierarchies and areas of action to draw the audience's attention. Entrances and exits are not always announced. Several people may be doing several différait things simultaneously, with no indication as to ^diich one is going to influence the rest of the dance and vhich one will have a minor role or disappear (Siegel, 1977:4).

Time and space scarcely restrict an Asian playwright .... As a result these dramas often have an air of formless, un- restrictive roving about them. Scenes follow uninhibitedly in arbitrary succession (Bowers, 1956:20).

Oriental theatre is a cultural construct stemming from a worldview dif­

fering from that of the traditional West. The reaction of the Westerner

experiencing sane form of Asian theatre without seme previous recogni­

tion of that fact is similar to the reaction of many to a performance

hy the Cunningham Company. 210

Cunningham's chcreografiiy has no external subject, and as an object it removes itself irrevocably and more swiftly than dancing that is set to music - music is a powerful fixative and memory aid. Although its basic vocabulary comes from classical ballet and its style is more precise than that of most ballet choreograpty, the dancing is by classical standards nansequaitial. It faces all direc- ticns. It does not draw toward and away from climaxes. At first, it seems to have no markers that pass the eye smoothly along ..... Performers like this, and chore- ogra#y that attempts to rid dancing of familiarity, dull­ ness, and inertia, antagonize sane pecçle. At Town Hall, as we watched the ccnpany going through seme new virtuo- sic combinations, an irritated voice called out, came here to see dancing. When are you gonna dance?" (Croce, 1977:51)

Brown also writes of the effect on the viewer of such random and fragmented programming, observing corplaints that it is iirpossible to see everything and everyone simultaneously. Noting that Cunningham's refusal to direct the viewer's attention to a specific action is a crucial aspect of his aesthetic. Brown offers that one's attention can be concentrated in such a way as to take in more than the dance or drama audience member is customarily asked to take in. The Cunningham concert, then, is a lesson in "a new way of looking, a new way of per­ ceiving" (Brown, 1968:34).

With Einstein's relativity theory abolishing the conoepts of ab­ solute time and spaoe, "the whole structure of space-time depends on the distribution of matter in the universe, and the concept of empty

^ace loses its meaning" (Capra, 1975:64). Hindu Brahman, Buddhist

Dharnwkaya, and Chinese Tao: each is a void that is not a void.

Shunning the theatrical maya of concerted hierarchic relationships, temporal and spatial, Cunningham presents within the time-spaoe canvass of dance theatre a universe of temporal and spatial possibilities.

That vdiich is to be perceived through this new way of looking cited by 211

Brcwn above is Cunningham's vision of that reality coimmicated by ancient Eastern sages and modem piysicists.

Suttinary

Cunningham's chance method of choreography creates little for the uninformed viewer "to grab hold of." Ihe absence of a spatial focal point gives importance to any point in the stage space, and the absence of a temporal focus offers no premise of "telic" develcpmait towards a climax, be it dramatic or a design-derived tying up of loose ends.

While absence of preordained relationships between dancers and between movement and sound could be construed as antithetical to the cosmic interrelatedness constituting Bralman, Pharmakaya, and Tao, Cunningham is, in fact, breaking down the veil of maya to show an existential land­ scape of time and space inteixelated. The dance theatre of Merce

Cunningham presents a universe of phenomena, a microcosm of the reality one can become enlightened to vdien the maya of synchronized appearances is lifted and the void, full of outwardly non-related, yet inwardly completely interrelated phenomena, is revealed.

The perceptual iirplications of Cunningham's chance work can support the contention that his non-telic dance theatre is the result of seme form of ajçrcpriation of the Orient. This apprc^riation certainly does not consist of a quotation, imitation, or other rendering of the surface element of movement style, nor of an adaptation of Eastern theatre prac­ tice. To the contrary, Cunningham's essential appropriation of the Orient consists of a sensitive identification with a non-Vfestem worldview arrived at initially through study of Oriental philosophy and body

^sterns and reinforced subsequently ty an awareness of developments 212

in modem science corroborating the Eastern worldview - and in the translation of that old/new worldview into a modem form of theatre art.

A yoang Indian physicist fran Bombay attended recent per­ formances of RainForest and Walkaround Time and other works in the current repertory. Ife'd been teaching his classes about the theory of relativity, discussing tire and ^ace for about a month prior to seeing us. After seeing us, he returned to his classes and said, "Go see the Cunningham Company and you'll see vdiat I've been talk­ ing about for the past month." He saw in Merce's work - in the movement and ncn-movanent, in the sound punctuating the space-time, in the light radiating and reflecting from the silver pillows in RairiForest and the clear plastic rectangles in the space - the beautiful language of physics translated into a physical-experiential reality (Brown, 1968:38).

This anecdote and explanation by Iterce Cunningham Dance Company veteran Carolyn Brown observes Iferce Cunningham as dance guru exploring tlie time/sace canvass where modem piysics and the East meet.

The result of Cunningham's giving equal inportant to any dancer, to the movement of any body part, to any movement or absence of move­ ment, and to any part of the stage was a further opening up of the theatre event to unconventional performance spaces and to non-trained dancers. The late nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties found two out­ growths of the Cage/Cunningham conposition process: so called "Happen­ ings" and the "new dance" or "post-modem dance" making up the Judson aesthetic. Before Oriental overtones in the dance of the Judson Church era are observed, a Vfest Coast phenomenon nourishing both Happenings and post-modem dance should be noted. 213 Ann Halprin; Inprovlsation

About the same time the freeing spirit of Zen was contributing to an artistic freedan approaching anarchy in the work of Cage, and through him influencing the cotpositioi process of Cunningham, the nineteen fifties in San Francisco found, another dancer leaving the conventions of Vfestem dance piractice.

Although New York has always been the centre for the perform­ ing of esgerimental dance, California and, extension, the Far East provided a quite different but important source of inspiration. In San Francisco Halprin was working towards an inprovisaticnal theatre with her Dancers' Workshop (Siegel, 1977:35).

Ann Halprin earned a bachelors degree in dance frctn the Universii^ of Wisconsin, studying with Margaret H'Doubler (Chapter Four) 1940-44.

As it was fran H'Doubler that she learned improvisation and kinesiology, the major sources of integraticn in her work, Halprin regards H'Doubler as having the most influence upcn her work (îfeletic: 1968:17). Follow- ing a year performing in New York, including some work with Doris

Hunphrey and Charles Weidman, in 1945 Halprin moved to San Francisco with her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Beginning in

1948 Halprin taught modem dance in a studio she shared with Welland

Lathrop, but in 1955 disassociated herself from conventional modem dance practice and established her improvisatory Dancers' Workshop.

The Dancer's Workshop had a studio in downtown San Francisco, and

Halprin also taught and experimented at the five acre conpound viiich she and her husband designed in suburban Kentfield, California. There ste taught on a large "dance-deck" in a wooded area at the foot of

Mount Tamalpais. Replacing codes of stylized movanent with kinesio- logically related improvisation, H'Doubler's protegee aimed at acute 214 physical awareness in self-expression. Ekphasis breathing and frequent use of extremely slow and repetitive mcvement, along with the natural setting in viiich Halprin's work took place, facilitated in par­ ticipants an ahnost mystical identification with cosmic forces.

How can you live in this kind of landscape, with the ocean, with the cliffs, with the vital forces of nature at your feet all the time, and not be affected by the so-called nature oriented point of view? You beccme vitally concern­ ed with the materials, the sensual materials of our lives, and with the almost primitive naiveness of being an exten­ sion of your environment. This begins to free you to ^preciate the very characteristics of what a human being is, and from there you start coming out again. And viien you start coming out and relaxing, you are working in a sort of nCTiintellectual way .... I have tremendous faith in the process of a human mechanism, and in cre­ ativity as an essential attribute of all human beings. This creativity is stimulated only when the sense organs are brought to life (Halprin in Maletic, 1968:18).

Ihe quest for heightened awareness extended to audience members, or as one should say in the case of Halprin, participants.

We don't even accept the theatre as a conventional place where the audience is here and you're there, but it is a place, and whatever you do in that place is valid because it's the place. You don't have to be on the stage sepa­ rating here from there. This desire to merge a very life­ like situation into the concept of the dance is very true also in my training. Everything we do in dance somehow or other usually relates to who you are as a person, and this affects how you see things and feel things and re­ late to pecple. Again, it's this nonseparation of life and art, so that somehow or other it becomes a heighten­ ing process (Halprin in Maletic, 1968:13).

The influence of the Orient upon Halprin's work can be accepted as a given. No matiber of the arts community of San Francisco during both the beat generation, the so-called "San Francisco Rennaissance" of the nineteen fifties, and the hip generation of the sixties (Chapter Six), could escape contact wrLth Zen philoscphy, meditation practice, Chinese conoepts of energy flow, and the general questing after altered states 215 of consciousness v M c h sanetimes mixed drugs with the contemplative tradition of the East. In interviews Halprin refers to what the

Chinese called the "red spot," the centralized source of energy flow and she evokes a Sanscrit term to express her concept of dance experi­ ence; Halprin proteges, dancer Simone Forti (Banes, 1977:23) and composer La Monte Young (Young, 1965:74) describe aspects of their work with Halprin in terms of Zen; the tenth and final ritual in her communal "î^^ths" (1967) Halprin entitles "ŒîM," (Halprin, 1968:172) and in lauding the San Francisco ambience which indices and permits her work, Halprin refers to the microphoned voice of Buddha prompting

20,000 people in Golden Gate Park to turn towards the sunset

(Kbstelanetz, 1968:73-74). The combination of her acquaintance with

Eastern sensibility, her identification with the natural environment, and her in^ired training with H'Doubler in improvisation and kinesi­ ology create in Halprin's work a truly unique direction.

One might consider omitting Halprin from a study such as this, for in recent years her vrork has left the domain of theatre and dance and moved into the realm of comiunity workshops in vdiich life rituals heighten individual and group awareness. Her attempts to bring the range of expression in theatre and dance more closely in line with expression in ordinary human experience are evidenced in her stating in a 1965 interview: "I don't even identify with dance" (Rainer,

1965:166) . Of course, it is the conventional teaching of individual styles of movement and the presentation of such movanent within tradi­ tional performing spaces with vrfiich Halprin feels no identification.

Ifer importance to the Happening movement of the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixcties and her influence upon post-modern dance. 216 specifically through her student Simone Forti, dictate Halprin's in­ clusion here. More irrportantly, despite her disclaimer above, a study surveying increased sophistication in modem dance's apprcçriation of the Orient must cite Ann Halprin as "a dancer” purveying an Eastern- inspired Zeitgeist in vAich experience is conceived in organic, sensual, and intuitive terms. As revealed in this chapter's discussion of Erick

Hasdcins and throughout Chapter Six, it is in that experiential realm of dance activity that the appropriation of the essence of the East takes place.

Post-Modern Dance

Iferce Cunningham's inportance to this study of East meetirg American dance goes beyond his own personal contacts with Oriental culture and be­ yond the non-Westem world-^iew exhibited in his dance theatre. Hirough the breaking doim of previously reigning conventions regarding stage space and time in his work with Cage, and through his studio's harboring of dance coirposition workshops in the early nineteen sixties, Cunningham engendered the arts movanent which has been termed "post-modern dance."

In so doing Cunningham was instrumental in creating an environment of experimentation in vdiich an essential apprc^riation of the philosophy of the East could continue and develop.

The obvious ramifications of a theatre aesthetic viiich affords equal importance to any area of the stage is a looser definition of performance space; the natural result of a dance theatre viiich permits chance to determine sequence and duration of events, i.e., which makes a presentation of "lived" time, is a blurring of the distinction be­ tween stage art and everyday "reality;" the natural result of a dance 217

theatre in vdiich virtually any sequence of movement can be considered

daiice is an aesthetic vÆiioh includes everyday movanent and thus wel­

comes the participation of the untrained "dancer;" and the natural re­

sult of a dance theatre in which dance, music, decor, and lights are

conceived and created independently is a further "opening up of the

theatre event to many unrelated activities" (Siegel, 1977:34). All

of these developments, progressing logically from the precedent of

Cunningham and Cage, were manifested in the Happenings of the late

nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties and in the post-^tiodem

dance associated with composition classes at Cunningham's studio.

Beginning in 1959 and continuing until around 1967 artists from

a variety of media presented works which critics have identified as

Happenings (Hindman, 1971). While the term became a household word, definition of a Happening remains rather difficult due to vast variety both in the concept and in the execution of Happenings.

For exanple, some works were exhaustively rehearsed and controlled to the smallest detail, vdrLle others were sketched out oily generally in advance and then irtpro- vised in performance. Some works took place in a limited space with a conventionally placed audience, vhile others utilized the audience itself as performers in the c^seri spaces of a city square, a beach, or even a forest (Hindman, 1971 :iv).

While many dancers, most notably Halprin and Forti, composed and participated in Happenings, and while Happenings stem from a similar desire cti the part of some contemporaneous dancers to fuse art and reality, to celebrate the everyday, and to explore the "immediate visual, tactile, and auditory values of the environment" (Hindman,

1971:45), "Happenings never became a major outlet for the creative ideas of dancers" (Siegel, 1977:34). 218 In 1960 Cunningham engaged Robert Dunn to teach a workshop in

cotrposition at the Cunningham studio in the Living Theatre building

in Greenwich Village. Dunn, whose wife Judith Dunn was a member of

Cunningham's cotpany, had studied music oatposition with John Cage at the New School for Social Research. In classes at the Cunningham

studio IXinn introduced Cage's chance procedures and Erick Satie's repetitive time structures, urging that these concepts be employed

in the coiposition of dance. The student's work was to be analyzed, but not evaluated, as Cage had introduced Dunn to the Zen philosopher

Huang-po's doctrine of nonevaluaticn which had so inspired his work. among the eight students working with Dunn during the 1960-61 workshop vere Judith Dunn, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer. Among those joining the second workshop in 1961 were Trisha Brown, David

Gordon, Alex and Deborah Hay. At the close of the second workshop

Dunn and his students presented their first concert. On July 6, 1962 a three hour concert at Greenwich Village's Judson Manorial Church inaugurated what came to be termed "the Judson aesthetic," recognized in retrospect here as the "first wave" of post-modern dance. ^ Yvonne

Rainer recalls the first concert:

The first concert of dance turned out to be a three-hour marathon for a edacity audience of about 300 sitting from beginning to end in the un-airconditicxied 90° heat. The selection of the program had been hatttnered out at numerous gab sessions, with Bob Dunn as the cool-headed

5 Taking its cue from the designation "New Wave" assigned recent developments in music and in film, the Brooklyn Acadeny of Music in the fall of 1983 offered the first Next Whve festival of music, theatre, and dance. Judson alumni Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, and David Gordon were among dance artists presenting their work at the 1983 festival (Laine, 1983). 219

prcw of a sanetimes over-heated ship .... I remember Fred Herko c n roller skates; I rematiber John Herbert MtDonell with a red sock and mirror; I remember Deborah Hay hobbling around with sanething around her knees; I remember doing my own Ordinary Dance; I remember being in Steve Paxtcn's Proxy with (lighting designer) Jennifer Tipton (Rainer, 1974:8).

In some cases the artists and dancers v b o worked together in

Happenings collaborated on pieoes for the Judson concerts, and cer­ tainly the caning together of ideas and methods from different artis­ tic perspectives created new realizations of viiat dance could be.

COtposers, artists, and writers became involved not only as dancers but also as choreographers. "The informality and flexibility of the workshop permit±ed the use of ncndancers in dance pieces, as well as the presunption by nondancers that they could not only dance but even choreograph" (Banes, 1974:12). It was inevitable, then, that virtu­ osity not be a concern of the Judson aesthetic, but it was not mere circumstance alone which permitted nondanoe to be accepted as part of the Judson aesthetic.

Judson, like the Happenings, was part of a larger movement in art of the nineteen sixties, in vhich a rather obvious anti-authoritarian stance was employed in the service of artistic exploration. The work of D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Keroaac had created a Zen consciousness in the youthful intelligentia of the nine­ teen fifties, those relatively elite forerunners of the next decade's far more pervasive counter culture, and John Cage's fusion of Zen and

Dada in musical ccnposition, writing, and lectures had reinforced that consciousness in the artists among that intelligentsia. Implicit in the avant garde art of the period were aesthetic principles descended from this Zen consciousness. Mistrust of reason, as exatplified in 220 ths koan; reveling in the mundane and everyday; an aesthetic of no-

acticn, related to the Buddhist principle of no-mind; and a quest for enlightened insight through juxtaposition of rational Ty non-related events or objects as, again, in the case of the koan, are elements of

Zen cited in Chapter One and contributing to the experimental art move­ ment of vAiich Judson was part.

The general concerns of the Judson choreogr^hers, as described

in Terpsichore in Sneakers (1980), Sally Banes' definitive study of post-modern dance, justify the above identification of these chore- ogr^hers with the larger Zen-influenced avante garde of the period.

These general concerns have to do with treatment of time, with every­ day action and objects, and - leading from those two concerns - an overriding interest in the objectifying of movement. Walt Whitman,

Transcendentalist student of the East, concludes his Specimen Days

(1888) with a pronouncement vhich sets the tone for a generalanalysis

of the Judson aesthetic and Banes' analysis of Yvonne Rainer's revolu­

tionary Trio A to follow.

Perhaps indeed the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times to come, essentially the same - to bring people back from their persistent stray- ings and siclcly abstractions, to the costless average, divine, original concrete (Whitman, 1973:640).

The overriding concern of the Judson choreographers, a concern

shared with the abstract expressionist movement in painting and the

"new novel" of Rohbe-Grillet, was an attenpt to objectify dance, to

give to the audience an immediate experience of dance as a concrete

art object. Such a quest demanded treatments of stage time differing

from those of traditional Western theatre. As touched upon in 221 discussions of the theatre aesthetics of Graham and Cunningham, general cultural differences between Oriental and Western concepts of time are due both to the sense of iitmediate time characteristic of enlightened states of consciousness and to the linear organization of time in

Christian doctrine and in the church calendar. Reflecting this cul­ tural distinction, the theatres of East and West differ in their treat­ ment of stage time, artificial conventicns of musical meter or dramatic develc^ment more stringently dictating stage time in the traditional theatre of the Vfest.

The according of aesthetic significance to siitple, everyday activ­ ity performed in "actual time" was generally characteristic of the

Judson era. This practice was most characteristic of the work of

Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer, vho, of all the Judson choreographers, will receive most attention in this discussion and in

Chapter Six. While Cunningham had used such actions as brushing teeth and riding a bicycle in his pieces, such actions lost sottie of their pedestrian quality due to their being "deeply embedded in a rhythmic, abstract movement design" (Banes, 1979:61). With Judson, on the other hand, in the absence of such design and of metric or dramatic parameters, everyday walking and tasks executed in "actual time" retained their objective, pedestrian quality. Paxton, particularly in "Proxy" (1961) and "Satisfyin Lover" (1967), in #iich thirty to eighty-four people walk from stage right to stage left with some interruptions, made the pedestrian walking of "any old bodies" a major movement motif of the era (Johnston, 1968). Similarly, in the case of Simone Forti's "zoo 222 mantras,"® patterns of animal movement in their siitplest form, free of stylistic affectation, had a temporal existoice devoid of relationship to meter or design.

Experimentation with a non-5festem concept of time also included the use of repetition to emphasize the passing of time. In Rainer's

"We Shall Run" (1963) twelve dancers and ncn-dancers ran about the stage in various floor patterns for seven minutes. From their work with Halprin, Forti and composer La Monte Young brought to Judson the repetition of Qrioital music. "Ihe forced dynamics and cerebral devel­ opments of Western music ani dance were exchanged for an Eastern aes­ thetic, \di5ere through repetition and sustained energy the dancer made contact with coanic, enduring forces" (Siegel, 1977:35). Perception of time was affected also by experimentation with the phrasing of move­ ment. Rainer made an analytical effort to produce vdiat could best be described as a "monotone" with regard to the differentations in effort

^Aich create phrasing in dance. This "uninflecrted phrasing . . . had the effect of flattening the time structure so that dynamics no longer parti<^ipated in the design of the piece over time" (Banes, 1979:16).

And finally with regard to time, Douglas Dunn's "101" (1974) presented for the entire length of a piece the motionlessness which Cunningham had valued equally with motion.

The treatments of time noted above, particularly in light of the pedestrian nature of much of the Judson movement, gave to the concerts a "new sense of casual activity rooted in concrete experience" (Banes,

® In Hinduism and Buddhism the mantra is a mystical formula of invocation or incantation. 223

1979:17 ). The use of objects, everyday and outrageous, heightened the effect of concrete experience. The use of such artifacts of the itiundane world as mattresses, buckets full of water, and a rubber hose in Judson pieces is akin to the "kitchen-sink mysticisn" of poet Allen Ginsberg vhich Roszak attributes to Zen's "illuminated catincrplace" (Roszak,

1969:131). In Deborah Hay's "No. 3" (1966) three assistants knocked over and otherwise moved three stacks of bricks vMle Hay ran about the stage in circles. In his early works Paxton made frequent use of cotmcnplace objects and later "used prosaic objects made gigantic or altered in material to emphasize the inportance of the ordinary"

(Banes, 1979:57 ). In "Poem Service" (1964) Rainer carried a mattress in and out of the theatre and groups of people were involved with moving furniture about the stage.

The game structure, task-oriented movanents, and manipu­ lation of objects converged to strip the movanents of their expressive qualities. The use of objects altered both the types of movement used and the manner of per­ formance. Both became functional, direct, natural in the sense that they were not stylized. The objects moved the drama from the dance performance, substituting a purposive, directed concentration (Banes, 1979:42-43) -

The era's concern with the object, the concrete, the objective was approached "head-on" by Yvonne Rainer. This leader of post-modern dance v^ose background included training with Graham, Cunningham, Halprin, and, of course, Dunn's composition workshops, attanpted to create dance which, vàiile not using objects, had the same objective effect as has the execu­ tion of a siitple task. Rainer made "Trio A" (1966), "intending to re­ move objects from dance but hoping to retain the workmanlike attitude of task performance" (Banes, 1979:44). To create "Trio A," viiich Banes 224 terms "the signal vrork . . . of the entire post-modern dance," Rainer set out to methodically reduce dance to its base essentials.

Ihe entire fcur-and-one-half minute series of changes in motion is performed as a single phrase with an uninflected distributicn of energy, giving the appearance of a smooth, effortless surface. . . . It is a style that diverges noticeably fran classic dance. Overall, the stance is rather narrow, a quotidian stance. . . . Despite this constant up and down activity, the over­ all look is that of action taking place at a medium level. . . . Generally, vmat anerges is a veight effort that locks "actual," that seems to correspond to the kind of effort cne esqsends unconscicusly cn everyday actions. In sum, the movement style is factual (matter-of-fact, di­ rect, ncnillusicnistic), unexaggerated, unenphatic. Neither weight, nor time, nor space factors are noticeably stylized or emphasized. . . . Ihe dance is a kind of catalogue of movement possibili-ties and combinatiois for the human body. . . . The cataloging looks ^stematic . . . because so many movement possibilities are analytically tested. The sense of systematic invention cones, too, froti the imperscnal performance presence, and from the conscious criticism of Western dance embedded in the actions, a generative denial of the aesthetics of elegance, brillance, ballon*, and virtuosity. . . . And Rainer's awkward or weighty movements . . . are neither emphasized nor ab­ stracted, but resemble "found" movements, autonomous, seeming to take their own time rather than fitting into the structured slots of a dance's design, seatiing to appropriate their own effort and proportion of the body's weight. There is no effect or design they are meant to contribute toward.

*A ballet term for a light, elastic quality during jurtps (Banes, 1979:45-48).

The overall effect of such dance art is immediacy, "newness," economy, an existential "ongoingness. " "At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary? it is extraordinary, uncanny" (Heidegger, 1975:54 quoted in Banes, 1979:50). Banes' drawing from existentialist philosopher

Martin Heidegger for her analysis of "Trio A" brings to this writer's attention the ccnpatibility of the existentialist, phenomenological, absurdist, and traditional Eastern points of view. Stripped of narra­ tive, subjective, rhythmic, or design-derived significance, such 225 movement has only this objective existence. The idea of such "existen­

tial" movement being dance is — in the West — quite something.

Rainer's "Trio A," then, was the end of the line for the objective- oriented thrust in dar~e which had begun in 1951 with "Sixteen Dances

for Soloist and Oarpary of Hiree," Merce Cunningham's first chance piece. Rainer continued to perform the piece and to have it performed by others for several years. As a successful realization of her goal of objectifying dance art, of giving a minimalist, pedestrian, im­ mediate task-like look to movement which, in fact, existed for its own sake only, "Trio A" was the major thrust of Rainer's career as a dancer and movement analyst. A reading of "A Quasi Survey of Sane

'Minimalist' Tendencies in the Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activity

Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A" in her Work 1961-73

(1974) reveals the degree to which Rainer's work was the result of meticulous analysis. Perhaps it is no surprise that by 1970 Yvonne

Rainer had "thought of giving up art." Realizing that the direction

her W3rk had taken - fran the early sixties through the extended life

of "Trio A" - could offer no further aesthetic gain, Rainer traveled

to India to get her "batteries recharged" (Rainer, 1971:139).

I'm at the point new of reevaluating and suffering and trying to figure out vhat I'm going to do next and how I'm going to do it. I mean I've even thought of giving up art. That's how bad it's gotten. But that's vhat I know how to do best. So I'm going to go on. I have some kind of faith that vhat I saw in India will affect me and it will produce, maybe in ways I can't predict now, a dif­ ferent way for me to work (Rainer, 1971:142).

While the above discussion of the Judson aesthetic reveals Judson

choreographers to have appropriated the Orient only by osmosis, the

survey at the beginning of the chapter observes that the air in vhich 226

that osmosis took place held a high concentration of things Eastern.

It vas in the Zen-inspired iconoclasm of John Cage that Judson's

objectification of dance - its scmetimes outlandish "op art" use of

concrete objects and its acutely analytical treatment of movanent as

object - had originated. As this objective side of the appropriation

of the Orient by modem dance vas succeeding and thereby playing it­

self cut, an experiential side vas develcping in the work of Erick

Havddns. As Chapter Six vnJLl observe, in the early seventies seme

Judson alumni, notably Steve Paxton and Deborah Hay, vere exploring the egalitarian, avareness-based aspects of postMnodem dance vhich, vhile present in the Judson aesthetic, had been subverted to the ideals of ZenHDada presentationalian and analytical . While the general climate of the next decade's counter culture, human potential and holistic health movements would encourage avareness-based direc­ tions in dance activity, the experiential enphasis of dance in the seventies vas further inspired by the profound appropriation of the

East vhich Hawkins vas sharing with audiences and dancers during the same fervent decade of the Judson concerts.

Erick Hawkins; Technique

Erick Havhins vas b o m in Trinidad, Colorado in 1909. Reminiscent of the fact that a performance by Ruth St. Denis marked Martha Graham's first trip to the theatre, Hawkins' first contact with stage art vas a production entitled "Isis"^ at the Lyric Theatre in Trinidad. Havhins

^ It was a picture of Isis, tragic sister of the Egyptian god Osiris, on a poster advertising Egyptian Goddess cigarettes vhich in­ spired Ruth St. Denis to begin work on vhat vas to have been her first piece, "Egypta." 227 vas eight years old. As a child Havdcins explored the art and ritual of the various Indian cultures of his native Colorado, his sense of design first awakened ly them. "From the Indians he learned that spirituality can be associated with the body, music, dancing, and worship" (Keefer,

1979:11 ). Hie HavddLns family had moved to St. Louis by the time Erick entered high school. There he performed in stage productions at school and became an avid theatre goer. Among the touring productions vhich young Hawkins attended was one of 's Madame Butterfly, the tragic tale of East/Vfest romance occasioned by Admiral Perry's mission to Japan in 1854.

When Havdcins was seventeen the Harvard Club of St. Louis awarded him a scholarship to the university. While he had little contact with dance at Harvard, his enphasis there in Greek, Latin, classical methology, and other literature certainly contributed richly to his later career as a choreographer. Erick Hawkins would come to earn a degree in Greek from Harvard in 1932, but in 1929 he took a year's leave from school, spending the year in New York working as a tutor for boys. During the year Hasddns attended almost every theatre and dance event available in the city. It was also during that 1929-30 year that Havdcins first be­ came acquainted with the career and philosophy of Isadora Duncan. Hear­ ing a lecture in the city by Duncan's brother Baymond, Havdcins purchased a copy of The Art of the Dance (1928). Owing to his background in

Greek and in classical antiquity, the writing, pictures, and drawings presented ty Isadora struck Havdcins forcibly. Also, there is no ques­ tion but what Havdcins' early contact with the Indian cultures of the

American southvest hiad a bearing on hiis enthusiastic reception to 228

Dancan's approach to art. Her call for a return of dance art to nature was a cause he would cone to chartpion.

Daring that influential year in New York Hasdcins saw a concert by the German HaraM Ksutzberg and his partner Yvonne Giorgi vàiich con­ vinced him that he wanted to dance cn stage. A student of Mary Wigman,

Ksutzberg was known for his expressive use of the hands and for his overall econanical use of gesture for dramatic effect. Havkins' aes­ thetic leaning toward such eccnoty of expression would later find solace in the philosophy and art of the East and would cone to charac­ terize every cotpcnent of his fully integrated dance theatre. Hasrfcins was so taten by Kreutzberg's work that in the summer of 1932 he traveled to Salzburg, Austria to study with him for two months. As Keutzberg's touring schedule made it impossible for him to offer the young Hawkins the kind of instruction he sought, he advised Hasddns to "study ballet for six months and then forget it" (Keefer, 1979:18).

The School of American Ballet was opened in New York on January 2,

1935 by Lincoln Kir stein and .^ Hawkins enrolled and studied with Balanchine for four years, watching Balanchine's rehearsals long before being asked to join the ccttpany in small roles. While never becoming a principal with the American Ballet, he taught at the school and later in the thirties choreogr^hed in the ballet idicm for the newly organized Ballet Caravan. Fran Balanchine, vhose scmetimes stark Neo-classical style has became the trademark of the eminent New

8 ihe Rassian Balanchine, Artistic Director of the New York City Ballet untd.1 his death in 1983, is universally recognized as one of the most influential, if not the greatest ballet choreogr^hers of the tsÆntd.eth century. 229

York City Ballet, Hawkins learned both rausicality and a stripping away of purely decorative asp>ects of technique. Originally awakaied by

American Indian art in his childhood and developed by his contact with

Balanchine, Hawkins' love of precise eccnoty of design would find in­

spiration in the art of China and Jap«n.

By the middle of 1938 Havkins thought it time to leave ballet.

Both technically and choreographically he had begun to form ideas opposing ballet vhich he would articulate in later years and which

VKXild contribute considerably to the modem dance/ballet dichototy

initiated by Duncan. During his 1929-30 year off from Harvard Hawkins

had seen performances by Martha Graham, Doris Huitphrey, Charles Weidman,

and Hanya Holm and had found them "extraordinary, marvelous, creative

energies" (Keefer, 1979:16), but had not at that time seen himself in­ volved with modem dance. In 1938, however, Erick Havkins borrowed money froa Lincoln Kirstein to enroll in Martha Graham's June course.

Hawkins was the first male to experience the relative difficulty

for men of the Graham technique doe to the narrower pelvis and tighter

thigh sockets of the male. Despite early difficulty - "He was stiff,

he ex-centered, instead of controlling his movements by integrating in

the pelvis" (Keefer, 1979:33) - Havkins mastered Graham's technique.

Studying with her only a few weeks, Hawkins became the first male

dancer in the Graham corpany. He would spend tvelve years with Graham

creating many leading roles including the Ringmaster in "Every Soul

Is a Circus" (1939), the Penitent in "El Penitente" (1940), the lover

in "Letter to the WOrld" (1940), the Husbandman in "Appalachian Spring"

(1944), He Who Surnnons in "Dark Meadow" (1946), Jason in "Cave of the

Heart" (1946) and Oedipus in "Night Joumey" (1947). 230

While a member of the Graham corpany Havd<±ns ccntinued the choreo- gr^hic develcptient begun ^diile a ballet student. He choreographed an evening of solos at Bennington in the summer of 1940, and among them

"Yankee Blue Britches" was included in a Graham Cotipany tour. "John

Brcwn: A Passion Play" (1945) marked HasdcLns' first collaboration with

Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese sculptor-designer who had designed for

Graham since 1935's "Frontier." Havdcins and Noguchi collaborated again in 1947 on "Stephen Acrobat."

Erick Hawkins left the Graham Company in 1950 for both personal and artistic reasons. On a personal level, their marriage of two years had finally collapsed completely. Havdcins' artistic break vdth Graham related both to technique and to theatre aesthetic. By 1950 injuries and body tension sustained during his career as a ballet dancer and a

Graham dancer had demanded regular ^pointments with an osteopath, and

Havdcins came to seriously question the Graham technique's basis in tension. And with regard to dance theatre aesthetic, at the time of his leaving the Graham Corpany, Havdcins vms beginning to explore alterna­ tives to any dance theatre portraying "anxiety and neurosis," to a dance theatre of "melodrama" (Havdcins, 1966:44) based in "private anotional storms" (Havdcins, 1966:51). In his formulation of a technical alternative to the ballet and

Graham techniques of his background, Hawkins was initally aided by his contact vfith Mabel Ellsvrorth Todd's The Thinking Body (1949) and the related image-based work of kinesiologist Lulu Sweigard, both vdxm he was studying at the time he left the Graham Corpany. At the time

Havdcins was also reading R. H. Blyth's recent translations of Japanese haiku poetry (1950) and Suzuki's Essays on Zen Buddhism. The concepts 231 of will-less-ness and iirmediacy conveyed in these works enhanced

Havdcins' comprehension of Todd and Sweigard. ihis initial integration of Eastern notion with scientific discovery would characterize Hawkins' development of vhat he would term a "nonrative" or "generic" technique of dance. Havdcins' background in philosophy would draw him more and more to the East, and Blyth and Suziaki were the first of many contacts with the East which would contribute to Havdcins' creation of a theatre aesthetic loaded with Oriental overtones.

Ratiiniscent of the long-standing influence of John Cage upon îferce

Cunningham, the most significant personal influence vpcn Hawkins' aes­ thetic has corns from composer Lucia Dlugoszewski. Instrumental in her career was her study vfith Edgar Varese vbo had urged her toward "direct exploration of pure sound" (Keefer, 1979:56). Her musique concrète appropriating the Orient makes substantial contribution to the overall sense of imtiediacy ocnmunicated by a Havdcins piece. It was she vdio introduced Hawkins to Ralph Dorazio, a sculptor designer vdio had fol- loved Dlugoszewski ' s career fran Detroit to New York. "Openings of the Eye (1953) marked the first of three decades of collaboration of

Havdcins, Dlugoszewski, and Dorazio.

Tte fifties was a period of great creativity, exploration and hard work for the three artists. It was also a period of incubation. All three shared a love of the East - Zen philosophy, haiku poetry, and Japanese theatre. When the Kabuki Theatre cams to town, they would go every night (Keefer, 1979:60). Eiran her 1950 composition of a three minute piece whicdi was to become

"Ritual of the Descent" from Hawkins' "Openings of the Eye" (1953) until the present Dlugoszewski has been Hawkins' cxirposer and artistic con­ fidante. 232

The first major fruit of this collective "incubation" period was

"Here and New with Vfetchers" (1957) a duet danced by Hav^dns and a female dancer. While the piece baffled most in the Hunter College audience, those vdîo brought to the perforaiance an interest in the

Orient vere enthusiastic. Anong them was F.S.C. Northrop, the Yale professor vdiose The ^teeting of East and West (1946) (Chapter One) had greatly influaiced Havddns and Dlugoszewski, and vdiom they had per­ sonally invited to the premiere.

By 1960 Hawkins was able to establish a cotrpany of eight dancers.

A number of pieces still in the Hawkins repertory and represaitative of the Oriental aesthetic of his dance theatre were created during the decade to follow. Pieces from this era to be observed in a later dis­ cussion of that aesthetic are "8 Clear Places" (1960), "Early Floating"

(1961), "Cantilever" (1963), "Geography of Noon" (1964) and "Lords of

Persia" (1965).

The influence of Eastern thought upcn Erick Havddns is prodigious.

Evidence of the extent of his reading brings Graham to mind. But while the latter artist's reading references are wide-ranging including much of the Orient, Havdcins' references - in his teaching, writing, lectures, and interviews - are almost exclusively to the Orient. Exceptions are the image-based theories of alignment and movement efficiency of Todd and Svreigard, and the writings of and about Isadora Duncan. A survey of Havdcins' aesthetic philosophy reveals him quoting Coomaraswamy on the function of art in non-Westem societies (Hawkins, 1966:51) ; Emerson on living the moment; Herrigel on Zen, non-ac±ian, and vdll-less-ness;

Suzuki on Zen and self-forgetfulness and original mind; Northrop on art with the capacity to "pinpoint the vrondrous living moment" (Hawkins 233

1965:47); and Blyth on being "one with the all." This irtitiersion in an

Asian wnrld-view resulted in Havdcins' appropriating the East in terms of dance technique and theatre aesthetic. And as discussions of these two aspects of Havdcins' Eastern appropriation vd.ll reveal, Havdcins' teaching, choreography, and vnritings have been instrumental in defining the m o d e m dance/ballet dichototy initiated by Isadora Duncan.

Havdcins' search for vdnat he terms a "normative" or "generic" tech­ nique of dance stems directly from his esgerience vd.th injury.^ In the period of time in vdiich he trained and perfonted vdth Balanchine and

Graham, Havdcins sustained serious injuries, first of the knee and later of the lov^ back. The dancer refused to believe that, vdth all of the knowledge of the human body amassed by science, there vas no way to train the body for dance vdthout high risk of serious injury.

He realized tbiat this is part of what Isadora meant vdien she spoke of natural dancing. The instincts for survival and self-protection in animals and humans are "natural." By studying anatomy and ptysiolcjgy, a dancer can learn not to violate the nature of his body and, therefore, to do "natural dancing" (Brown, 1971/72:9). Havdcins' recognition of the kinesiological need for a different, less vdllful method of training the body for dance was and remains inextricably intertvdned vdth his devoutly held ideas about what is beautiful in art. His reading of Ncrthrcp's The tfeeting of East and

West shortly after its publication in 1946 vas extranely critical in

^ An excellent index into the Havdcins technique exists in Beverly Brown's "Training to Dance with Erick Hawkins" (1971/72). His inte­ gration of theories of Zen with modem scientific knowledge of the human body is readily apparent in Brown's description of the Havdcins technique and of those aspects of Hawkins' bacdcground vdiich contribut­ ed to its development. 234

Havddns' develqpnent generally, for it provided him with a carparative

framework with which to observe all manner of cultural constructs, in­

cluding systems of dance technique and dance theatre art. With regard

to technique, Northrop’s distinctiai between the west’s tendency to-

wajsi conceptualization and the East’s attention to the aesthetic can-

pcnent of ejçerience (Chapter One) convinced Hawkins of the desirability

of a dance technique based upcn the kinesthetic awareness arising frcm

mind/body integration.

Early in his quest for a technique developing kinesthetic avare-

ness, a mode of training vdiich emphasizes the sensual experiencing of

the body in movement, Havkins was helped greatly by the theories and methods of kinesiologist îfebel Ellsworth Todd in her The Thinking Body

(1949). In light of his eventual reaction to the tension-based tech­

nique of Graham, one can imagine a younger Hawkins nodding in agreement

vdien first reading in Todd’s introduction "Relaxation is the crying

need of our age" (Todd, 1949:xiv). Todd suggested to Hawkins that

a canservaticn of nervous energy' was at the crux of injury prevention,

and that a scientific understanding of body alignment and bio-mechanics

was a prerequisite to stress-free movement.

With given conditions established, "it happens," eractly as "it snows, it rains" and for similar reasons, conditions are right. Movement is the result of conditions establish­ ed according to fundamental principles governing a dynamic living mechanism (Todd, 1949:7).

Hawkins was also influenced considerably by kinesiologist Lulu

Sweigard, the protegee of Todd wkose studies of dancers at the Julliard

School are documented in her Human Movanent Potential: Its Ideokinetic

Facilitation (1974). Leading directly from Todd’s stance articulated

above is Sweigard’s contention that involuntary execution of movement 235

or of postural positiczi by the central nervous system is more efficient

than voluntary execution, and that mental imaging of a desired bo<^

action will facilitate its realization, ihe combined theory of Todd's

"thinking body" and Sv^eigard's "ideokinetic" connection constituted

for Hasdcins a sciaitifically derived validation of Zen truth. Words

of the master in Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery might just as

veil be Sweigard's.

What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that viiat you do not do yourself will not h ^ p e n (iferrigel, 1953:51).

Hawkins found in Zen a very exciting possibility of learn­ ing to dance without forcing the movement to happen, but rather hy letting the movetient ha^^en, by letting "it" dance in the dancer's body (Brown, 1971/72:10).

Hawkins' quest for kinesthetic a-ereness is the result of a fusion of Todd-Sweigard theory with a Zen Buddhistic concern with the iitinediate experiencing of the suchness of existence (tatatha). The Havkins teacher emphasizes knowledge of the anatomical facts of the body and emphasizes, at the moment of moving, the focusing of attention "clearly in the bones and muscles where the action should occur" (Brown, 1971/72:

17). To help students gain kinesthetic awareness Hawkins created the term "think-feel," combining "intellectual knowing with sensuous experi­ encing" (Brown, 1971/72:11-12), In an effort to promote this awareness, and to prévoit injuries in dancers, Hawkins teachers intone students to

"listen" to the boc^, to be aware of its signals and, in the case of stretching, not to pull or push too far.

If a dancer really learns to "think-feel" in the body his joy in experiencing intensified body sensations will lead him to greater attention for the fullness and details of danoe movement, and the seemingly tedious daily task of "warming up" will become a reneved experience of pleasure each time (Brown, 1971/72: 14 ). 236

Kasdcins' ccncem with ecology of energy expenditure, first pre­

cipitated by his experience with danoe injury, and furthered by his

identification with the minimalist tendencies of Zen, led. him to recog­ nize and stress conscious ^plication of varying degrees of muscle con­ traction to various actions. His realization that excessive use of the contracted state contributes to the occurrence of injury and his gen­ eral quest for kinesthetic awareness resulted in his conc^Jtualizing a scale of muscle contractian/de-contraction ai vhich given movanents take place. While most movement - in and out of dance - takes plaœ near the center of the scale, for versatility and expressiveness the dancer seeks as much variety as possible along the scale. For the

Havddjis student, application of appropriate degrees of contraction/ de-contraction to given movements - with energy economy always desired - demands a unified concentration of mind and body, a refined kinesthetic awareness. As many students come to Hawkins training wdth movanent experience characterized by uneconomical use of muscle energy, early

Hawkins classes stress movements requiring states of de-contraction.

"Movements practicing de-contractions are given priority until students have sufficiently awakened their kinesthetic awareness and are properly prepared to execute strong or vigorous movsnents with appropriate eccnaty of energy" (Brown, 1971/72:14).

Attention to development of kinesthetic awareness and acquaintance with anatomy and kinesiology result in Hawkins' emphasis upon authentic movement from the pelvis, nhis stressing of movement initiated in the pelvis constitutes for Hawkins another fusion of concepts from Todd-

Sw/eigard wdth Oriental wisdom and practice. Hawkins inherited from

Graham an stphasis upon movement emanating from the low^ torso. But 237 vaille in the Graham technique the pelvis is recognized as the instigator of the specific movement dynamics of the contraction-release and of the spirals Hasddns ençhasizes pelvis initiation of all movement, incliaiing the sinplest walk. And vhereas in Graham technique the center is the source of power - with sustained, tensile energy extending out through the extremities - HavddLns' concern with kinesthetic awareness and with varying degrees of energy eigenditure offers to the limbs a tassel-like passivity or "de-contraction" leaving their weight free to react tc the pelvis’ lead. "Ihe big muscles that integrate the thighs, pelvis, spine, and even bottom ribs are the source of centered pcwer. The legs, arms and even head forego their ex-centered aggressiveness and are free and floating" (HavMns, 1958:133).

Hawkins explores a give and take relationship betvreen the weight of the pelvis and gravity, with a fluid, bouncy quality of movanent resulting. His affinil^ with the body disciplines of the Orient is reflected in his conceiving of gravity as the earth’s still center vhich in human and animal movement works in harmony with the body’s moving center (Brown, 1971/72:21). When the body parts move through space in harmony with the laws of gravity, i.e., vten they are not bound by excessive muscle contraction, they trace paths vdiich HavddLns terms "loops." Looping is sought both in the weight shifts executed by the pelvis, the undercurve and overcurve, and in the free-flowing trace patterns of the limbs, subject as they are to the play betveen the pelvis and gravity. Reminiscent of Stebbins’ finding the spiral throughout nature and in Oriental dance "the ^iral line from every point of view" (1893:40), Hawkins finds the potential for looping in all human movement. Havddns training stresses applying to both 238 weight-bearing and gesturing body parts that degree of contraction/ de-contracticn vhich will permit the looping inherent in the body's natural relationship to gravity.

In Yoga; ütcprtality and Freedara (1969) Eliade observes that

"through all of his concrete actions - gait, bodily posture, respira­ tion" the follower of Buddha must "concretely rediscover the 'truths' revealed by the Master" (Eliade, 1969:167-168), and surely Erick Havâcins can. be identified as such a follower. Hie Havddns student develops a kinesthetic awareness permitting enlightenment through movenent. In describing the experiential enphasis of the Hawkins technique class

Brown notes above the possibility of one finding in "the seemingly tedious daily task" "a renewed experience of pleasure each time" (Brown,

1971/72:14). And elsewhere Brown writes of one of Hawkins' pieces pro­ viding to her a supreme test of her ability to "center."

I must walk slowly in a big circle around the stage. It is what I call a "people walk" - that is, I roll through from heel to toe on each step. Everyone in the world can recog­ nize a beautiful walk. In a flamboyant, conplicated move­ ment pattern, if I slightly miss, it is relatively easy to catch the flow and continue without anyone noticing an error. But to siitply walk beautifully and alone around that stage I must center ityself totally into the experi­ ence of walking, to say, "Ihis is vhere I stand; now I am walking" (Brown, 1970:58).

To "center one's self totally into the experience" is the overriding concern of the Havddns technique. Havddns the teacher is dedicated to authenticity of movement expression and to the actualization of a

totally integrated being. Surely such an orientation in movement practice r^resaits not a surface but an essential appropriation of

the Orient. 239

Eirick HawklriS; Theatre Aesthetic Although space and time are very much involved in dance, the really unique dimensicn and material of dance is gravity and the bcdy and mind that live it. Therefore it is concrete and subjective to the furthest degree and therefore it is pure fact. Pure fact, that intellectually dangerous point vdiich is when we immediately apprehend and vdiat ve immediate­ ly ^çrehend, is the basis of poetry in all the arts. This dance of pure fact is dance before it is a language, before it has meanings. There is nothing to ccranunicate, no symbols. Movement is not the subject matter. There is no subject matter. Movement simply is, for dancer and for audience, and that is not simple at all (Havd

In passages such as that above in vhich Hawkins celebrates "pure movement existing in its own awareness," (Hasdcins, 1958:133) he refers to the suchness (tathata) one is capable of experiencing upai acknowl­ edging the futility of conceptual thinking. Just as his technique training emphasizes "think-feel" attention to the suchness of movement experience, Hairfdns attempts to celebrate the suchness of existence in his dance theatre. Havkins' theatre aesthetic, like his philosophy of technique training, is influenced by his contact with Zen and by

Northrop* s characterization of the East in contrast to the West. As observed in Chapter One Northrop contrasted the Vfest's propensity for ccnceptualizaticn with the East's attending to the "aesthetic continuum of experience." FcUcwing from that distinction, Northrop observed in

Eastern art a leaning toward more constructivist, sensuous rendering in art. Northrcp's distinction between airt in its first and second functions, along with the impact upon Havkins of his more general thesis comparing East and west, provides a helpful viewpoint from vdiich to observe Havkins* theatre aesthetic, and particularly the appropriation of the Orient intrinsic within that aesthetic. 240

Hawkins defines art in its second function as "that art that uses the materials - the colors, shapes, sounds, and movements - not just for their own sake but to convey fcy means of them something in human esgerience other than the mysterious, sensuous aliveness of these colors, shapes, sounds, and movements" (Hawkins, 1966:47). It» art iiAich does celebrate this "aliveness" "for its own sake" - art in its first function - Havddns ascribes the terms "pure fact" (1958) and

"pure poetry" (1966) and in describing such art Havddns reveals his preference for dance theatre devoid of movement stylization, literal meaning, and narrative function. As for movement stylization:

Of course, a language of movement may be floated on top of this iitmediaoy of pure movement but only if it scru­ pulously desists from any interference with that first most vital level of theatre - the pure movement existing in its own awareness. Otherwise the dancing disappears and ve are once again language-ridden, prosaic, and petly (Havddns, 1958:133).

Surely Northrop's thesis contributes to Havddns' oharacterization of "the codification of movement, technique, arid aesthetics called

'ballet' " found in "Pure Poetry" (Havddns, 1966:40).

Ballet did not satisfy me because it was too much like a diagram and, for me, too much of the indescribable pure poetry of movement had to be left out. It moved like a diagram because it had developed at a period in Western culture that aiphasized theoretical knowledge and - if not puritanical - at least extronely un- sensuoas attitudes toward the body (Hawkins, 1966:39).

Seeking danoe art bearing no literal meaning, again Hawkins betrays his identification with Eastern philosophy, particularly its degrading of conceptualization.

When other worlds inhabit the mind, immediacy is destroy­ ed. It is this destroyed iitmediacy that the artist is always dedicated to recover and here the artist's in­ telligence needs its sharpest critical faculties to somehow create what the intelligence is not, to be 241

always one step beymd the cx>ncept, to have endless inven­ tion in shattering the constantly-fanning new concept. 2he concept is the great virtue and achievement of the human mind but with it the immediate esgerience of exis­ tence is always forfeited, so the unaware mind is the real enemy of the immediate and the ^mtaneous (Hawkins, 1958: 133).

The original Buddhist principle of "no-mind," Zen's subsequent philosophy and aesthetic of "no-action," as well as the Eas-c's per­ vading quest for integration of mind and body all contribute to Havddns' call for a dance theatre in which "meaning" is absent from dancer and audioice member alike.

If pure movement and motionlessness as well is to reach this very difficult threshold of awaraiess, the mind of the dancer must be constantly dissolving its ccnc^Jts as they endlessly form through memory, and this includes the dancer's private anotional storms, so that instant-hy-instant the mind is arpty enough to let the moving body inhabit it - the moving bcx^, that envelope of space, time and gravity. This is the silence in vhich the theatre of pure fact exists - the interior silaice of the mind (Hawkins, 1958:133).

While celebrating art in its first function, neither Northrop nor

Havtons denies the validity of some art in its second function, those instances in vhich meaning and narrative are communicated through dance.

But Hawkins does express definite ideas about the proper treatment of aesthetic materials vhen they are being employed in the service of this second function of art. "Each movement invented for the story must be as beautiful and fresh as a movement done for its own sake, but it has a second necessity. It must serve the purpose and irmediaoy of the story and only that" (Havkins, 1966:48). And further responding to the question Cohen put to seven choreograjiiers for Modem Dance: Seven

Stataænts of Belief (1966), Havkins addresses the issues of movement stylization, literal meaning, and narrative function involved in dance 242 art in its seœnd function. 10 "Rather than be concerned with any per­

sonalized treatment of the parable, ity goal would be to present it

stark and naked" (Havdcins, 1966:50-51).

The Zen quest for directed siirplicity informs and inspires the

"stark and naked" minimalist aesthetic in the dance theatre of Erick

Havkins. A sense of economy pervading the movanent dynamic, choreo- gr^hic and scenic design, and musical accompaniment create a ritual­

like quality in much of Hawkins' work. Kisselgoff found "Death is the

Hunter" (1975) "Mr. Hawkins' own Noh play," "a peaceful, Asian-style meditation on inevitability," (Kisselgoff, 1981) and wrote of "Black

Lake" (1969) that "the overriding sense is that of ritual, Asian in

its derivation" (Kisselgoff, 1978). Hering described Hawkins' 1962

reworking of "8 Clear Places" as "a series of rituals-of-innocence,

a series of absolutes" (Hering, 1962:59).

Each dance in an Erick Havkins concert is as refined and condensed as a haiku, and as delicately balanced in its components. As in the haiku, each deals with one mood, and its language does not rove but is judiciously pared down and burnished (Itering, 1965:62).

Ihe ecology of energy expenditure characterizing Hawkins' technique

contributes, of course, to the minimalist theatre aesthetic observed

above. The dancer's quest for kinesthetic awareness imbues wirh a

unique character the movement viewed by the Havkins audience member.

"The economy and directness of each movement - so free of ornamentation"

Selma Jeanne Cohen asked each of seven choreographers - Jose'' Limo'n, , Erick Havkins, Donald MoKayle, , Pauline Kbner, and Paul %ylor - to share his/her ideas on modem dance and to respond to the question of hew he/she would choreograph a piece based rçon the parable of the Prodigal Son. 243

(Kisselgoff, 1981), along with sparseness of scenic and choreographic design and of musical accatpaninent, help to achieve in Havdcins' dance theatre the sense of immediacy celebrated in his writings.

Audiences have often been "nonplussed," Mr. Havddns says, by the lack of overt dramatic content and "cliched vir­ tuosity" in his dance, and unable to open themselves to the Eastern aes ’letic to viiich the choreographer ascribes, the esperisicing of art with the sense of irrroediacy with vhich life itself is experienced (Dunning, 1981).

In his quest for inmediacy in art Havkins writes of the role of bewilderment, "that magic instant prior to conceptualization" (Hawkins,

1958:134), and notes the capacity a work's title has for initiating be­ wilderment. Although Hawkins does not refer to the concept by name, clearly his philoscphy regarding the function of the title of a dance piece is derived from his acquaintance with the Zen koan. The koan, as observed in Chapter One's discussion of Zen, is a nonsensical rüdle

\Aich the Zen master presents to a student. The non-syntactical word­ ing and paradoxical content of the koan preclude its understanding by rational means and demand of the stuient the non-verbal experience of reality. "Ctice the solution is found, the koan ceases to be paradoxical and becomes a profoundly meaningful statanent made fron the state of consciousness which it has helped to awaken" (Capra, 1975:49). Havkins titles such as "Here and Now with Watchers" (1957), "Sudden Snake-Bird"

(1960), "Early Elating" (1962), "Geography of Noon" (1964), and "Naked

Leopard" (1965) contain the element of paradox present in the koan, sterming as it does from Chinese and Japanese nysties' general tendency to expose the limitations of and inconsistencies arising from verbal communication. 244 Hie CTie thing a title can do in a theatre of pure fact both for dancer and audience is to serve as a kind of preliminary ritual its strangeness, with that bewildering capacity to shatter any private preconceived idea that might daninate the mind and prevent it frcm opening al 1 its faculties to that awareness of existence, the existing movement (Havddns, 1958:133).

Surely one of the more important determinants of the Havdcins theatre

aesthetic, and cne contributing greatly to the sense of immediacy evoked

by his work, is the music accompanying a Hawkins place. Since her music

for "Openings of the Eye" began their close artistic collaboration in

1953 Lucia Dlugoszewsld. has composed music for all but a very few Havddns pieces. Whether accompaniment is provided ty members of the eight piece

chamber orchestra vdiich travels with the Havddns ccnpany or by

Dlugoszeski performing alone on stage, music for a Havddns concert is invariably live. "Reproduction," says the choreographer, "cuts imme­ diacy" (Dunning, 1981). Hie characteristic of immediacy in the Havddns aesthetic and that of minimalism discussed above coalesce in Hawkins' conception of music for dance.

Wfe new have a taste for the overblown, the ccrtplex, the unsensuous, and the anonymous. When the composer Lucia Dlugoszewski shakes one of her delicate paper rattles, I know she has the chance of being more poetic than a vhole symphony orchestra (Havddns, 1966:40).

In general, too much "vÆight" of sound buries the a^ro- priate kinesthetic experience in the dancer. Hie finest theatre and dance music all over the world uses only a few instruments at a time to a c c o m p a n ydance - except in the greedy West (Havddns, 1966:50).

Dlugoszewski's musique ccnrete is non-Westem in its instrumenta­ tion and in its relative absence of melodic material and meter.

Hawkins identifies melody as "musical snotion," warning that its use invites dancers to "revert to the state of unimmediate p^chological time" (Havddns, 1958:134). Hie choreographer views meter as having 245 a similar potential for destroying inmediacy in dance theatre. To recognizable rhythmic meter in music HasdcLns prefers in the dancer a

"silent awareness of an unmotivic and transparent pulse" (Havdcins,

1958:134). This awareness, which would be undermined by the predict­ ability of meter, constitutes an instant hy instant sensing of time.

Tümer observes that HasdcLns achieves "dynamism in a quiet sort or way, " describing the choreographer as "a master of stillness"

(Turner, 1971:15). This observation of Hawkins' profound use of still­ ness recognizes in his work Zen's aesthetic of inaction or "no-action"

(Kbisumi, 1983). Surely Hawkins' stated goal of creating in the audioice an enlightened awareness is a prerequisite for audience appreciation. Lacking awareness of the vertical moment of stillness, the viewer experiencing silent stillness, i.e. stage time devoid of linear action, will most certainly be, to use Hawdcins' term, "non­ plussed. "

Only when a dancer is not busy doninating gravity and has momentarily resolved the paradox of thought and action is he ever able to achieve real motionlessness on stage and of course that is often the most haunting point of a mo­ ment of existaice - the real floating life (Havddns, 1958: 134).

In a theatre vhdch attempts to convey "pure fact" or "pure poetry" there may be more meaning in motionlessness than in symbolic gesture or literal movement. For "when any movement swiftly evokes through conno- taticn or denotation an idea or conception or symbol that movanent can swiftly destroy in dancer and audiaice the immediacy of moving” (Hawkins,

1958:134). In its moments of crystal pure immediacy Havddns' is an art glorying in its first function. 24 6 Erick Haskins is dedicated to recovering to himself and to his audience that sense of immediacy destroyed ky the ocnc^tualizing mind.

His ccncem with time, sfith creating asareiess of immediate esçerience, dictates the near absence of stylized movement language, literal or

^mbolic meaning, and narrative in his stage art. Of the familiar and readily recognizable Baskins sprites: "We recognize it instanta­ neously rather than e^qjerience it in time" (Haskins, 1958:134).

Ihroi:^ the use of flashbacks and synbolic overlay in skat Ross terms a "ccndngling of past, present, and future," Martha Graham explored departures frcm the West's characteristicly linear treatment of stage time. Disregarding the past and the future, Haskins' overskelming concern, like that of his conbençoraiy Merce Cunningham, is svith "here and now."

The East/West and M o d e m Dance/Ballet Dicfaotcmies

The experiential emphasis in Haskins technique and in his theatre aesthetic and the attention sfithin Haskins technique training to natural lasfs of anatomy, kinesiology, and grasrity set his srork at odds with much of western dance, and particularly sfith classical ballet. Haskins' emersion in Eastern philoscphy and arts equipped him svell to take ip the anti-ballet torch first ignited hy Isadora Duncan (Chapter 'Rro).

The characterization of the Ecist as sensation- and experience-oriented as opposed to the west as reason- and concept-oriented, a distinction so ccnprehensively articulated by Northrop, helped Haskins determine the movement art he sought.

Sensation is one of the most iiportant qmlities of Haskins performance style. Ihe dancer must be sensitive to the floor, the air, the delicacy of touch, the expanse of space. 247

Such sensitivity datonds a vulnerability, nakedness, and relaxation of muscles that distinguish it frcm other styles (Ifeefer, 1979:111).

The muscle decontraction alluded to by Keefer and observed in the discussion of Havdcins technique above, permits in Hasdcins' movement the looping, arcing action he observed in nature. Iirplicit in Hasdcins' concept of natural or "normal" movement (Havddns, n.d.:8) is a free, unhampered relationship between the body and gravity. And in that matter of the body's relationship to gravity and of attendant muscle states lies the most crucial distinction between Havddns' philoscphy of movement and that implicit in classical ballet technique. Ballet vas able to reach the zenith of its technical development vdth the coming of the toe shoe. Pointe vrark permitted full dramatic realiza­ tion of the Romantic Ballet ideal of ballerina as ethereal, spiritual creature superior to and ultimately not to be held down by the earth- vrorld vdiich her male partner represented. Portraying energy of another vrorld, pointe vrork denied the force of the earth - gravity.

The toe shoe is a machine, it is an industrialization of movement. It makes of a voman vdio vears it something cold and untouchable instead of warm and human. It offends first because it prevents correct and truly beautiful, normal human action. It quantifies and sterilizes move­ ment (Havddns, n.d. :8).

So at the same time that his study of Zen, Japanese theater, Todd-

Sveigard theory, Northrop, Isadora Duncan, and, one should add, the

Indian dancer Shanta Rho (Havddns, 1966:39,43,44) helped Hawkins arrive at his own unique style and philosopl-y of movement, his background has also defined Havddns' aversion to classical ballet.

Isadora Duncan was tlie first dancer in the West to intuit a kinesiological truth: that human movement starts in the spine and pelvis, not in the extranities - the legs and arms. That is: human movement, vAen it obeys the 248

nature of its functioning, vAen it is not distorted by erro­ neous concepts of the mind, starts in the bote’s center of gravity and then - in correct sequence - flows into the extremities. Photographs and drawings of Isadora Duncan indicate - and her writings try to say this too - that she conceived the essence of movement to lie in transition, not in posi­ tion. When she says "Stuc^ Nature," she means "flow organ­ ically," in arcs, like the spring of a cat, the wiggle of a water moccasin, the gallop of a horse, the wave on a beach, the toss of a ball, the bellying of a sail - not like a man's mind-contrived, inorganic machine, \iAiich essentially cannot move but only take positions. It is significant that the official symbol of the School of American Ballet is Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of a man's bo(^ as it is arranged diagrammatically, geo­ metrically, ready for scientific measurement and for scientific (rather than felt) relationships. The change to a fresher and more comprehensive principle is vdiat makes modem dance (Havddns, 1966:41).

In remarking that ballet "quantifies and sterilizes movement," in noting the absence from ballet of "the indescribable pure poetry of movement" (Havddns, 1966:39), and in finding ballet's organization of the body "diagranmatic" (Havddns, 1966:39) Havddns is decrying vdnat his sensibility perceived as the absence from bal’et training and perfor­ mance of the Zen "suchness" of movement. Surely Hawkins' criticiati of ballet echoes Duncan's, but his understanding of Isadora and of her indictment of ballet is enhanced hy his snersion in the East. His reading of Northrop having succinctly defined for him East and West,

Havddns is able to criticize ballet in terms of its "Westemness."

And this fuller association of ballet with the West permits Hawkins to all but canonize Duncan for her inauguration of modem dance. Armed with such cultural ammunition Havddns' criticism of ballet renders to

Isadora's establishment of a modem dance/ballet dichotomy a fuller cultural significance, that dichotaiy becoming associated with the larger and more generally recognized East/V^st dichotony. Havddns, 249 then, accatplishes the feat of presenting East/West implications to

Isadora's revolt, a revolt claiming no origin in Oriental influence.

Erick Hasddns' identification with the holistic, satatic potential of the Orient permitted him to recognize, as no critic or historian had been equipped to do before, the profundity of Isadora Duncan's break with Western dance practice. As evidenced in Hasdcins' drawing atten­ tion to the East/Mest implications of the modem dance/ballet dichotomy, accessibility of an Oriental world-view increasing in the West through­ out the twentieth century has brought with it definition to Duncan's naive revolution. The East/Vfest dichotomy, with, related polarities of organic/mechanistic, intuitive/rational, integrated/dualistic, affective/ effective and even right brain/left brain cited in Chapters IVro and

Six, was a strong determinant of the program of the counter culture of the late nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies and remains such for the holism of the nineteen eighties. While modem dance's attention to the East has already enjoyed a half century of precedent,

Erick Hawkins ensured that the modem dance sensibility would be rec^Jtive to the counter culture and holistic health movements and, indeed, play a vital role within them. CHaPTER SIX

Assimilating the Essence

East Meets West; 1966-1984

In 1968 Theodore Roszak published The Making of a Counter Culture:

Reflections cn the Technocratie Society and Its Youthful Opposition.

Roszak's term stuck, and, as further discussion will reveal, the

"counter culture's" opposition to the "technocracy" was oftentimes a ca.se of American youth embracing Eastern philosophy and practice as an alternative to "the establishment" of the Vfest. The late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies found young people of the United

States attempting to build into a lifestyle the alternatives to tradi­ tional Western culture suggested by that literature of the nineteen fifties cited in the cpening pages of Chapter Five. By 1958 when

Roszak observed that all the conditions were ripe for the making of a counter culture, increased accessibility of the East to the Vfest and an increasingly "offensive" military-industrial complex worked together to produce a youth culture developing considerable social and political power. Prerequisite to the establishment of the counter culture was a radical change of consciousness, and if disparate elements of the revolution hy "technocraoy's children" had to be reduced to their lowest common denominator, one would have to cite the quest after new states of consciousness as the underlying theme of the era. îfeditation,

250 251 psychedelic drugs, cotinunal living, and the human potential movanent each sought to increase awareness, to heighten the esçerience of exis­ tence, to make Maslow's "peak e:ç)erience" (Maslow, 1962, 1970) less the exception than the norm.

The first Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park was held in

1966. The ei’ent found AJ.len Ginsberg, recently returned from a trip to Japan and India; Gary Snyder, the poet who had introduced Ginsberg and Jack Ksrouac to Zen in the early nineteen fifties; Shunryu Suzuki- roshi, of the San Francisco Zen Center and author of Zen Mind, Beginner's

Mind (1970) ; and Timott^ Leary and Richard Alpert, former Harvard psychology professors and LSD enthusiasts. It seems that the associa­ tion was more than coincidental.

Whatever else LSD became in time, at that moment it was the that led a fair number of people into the dazzling land of their own mind. What had begun as the private dis­ covery of a few intellectuals and experimenters had spread in a flash, and for a second of history it was as if the veil had been rent and all the archetypes of the unconscious sprang forth. More often than not - for reasons no one could explain - these came in the guise of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. Sanshow they fit: the posters for the new bands and ballrooms, with their lush color and wavy flow­ ing lines, were right at home next to popular religious Hindu posters of blue-hued baby Krishna standing on a glowing white lotus (Fields, 1981:249). Confirmation of the fact that psychedelic experiences resembled those described in Hindu and Buddhist scriptures abounded. Leary "had recast the verses of the Tao Te Ching in a book call Psychedelic

Prayers, and had taken the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as a guidebook for the archetypal psychedlic drama of ego-death; 252 journey and rebirth" (Fields, 1981:249) Alan Watts' I£D experience included "vAat, in Buddhist terms, would be called an e^gerience of world as dharmadhatu, of all things and events, hovrever splendid or deplorable from relative points of view, as aspects of syitphonic harmony" (Watts, 1971:135).

Those ^doo do not have the time or money to go to India or Japan but vdio think a great deal about the wisdom traditions, have remarkable results vhen they take LSD. The Bhagavad-Gita, the Hindu Mythologies, the Serpent Power, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Upanishads, the Hevajra Tantra, the Mahanirvana Tantra - to name a few texts - became, they say, finally clear to them. They often feel that they must radically reorganize their lives to harmonize with such insights (Snyder, 1957:109).

While it is apparent that prior training in yoga or Zen along with acquaintance with the religious literature of the East on the part of some experimenters informed the nature of their psychedelic e:ç>eri- ence, the aspect of the mid- and late-sixties drug phenomenon of most interest to this study of East meeting West is the frequency and direct­ ness with vdiich the ISO eigerience led to meditation practice. The phenomenon of an individual turning to some form of meditation follow­ ing psychedelic experimentaticm was coranon. As Alan Watts concluded an essay for the 1971 sytposium "Drugs and Buddhism, " "many of us who have experimented with psychedelic chemicals have left them behind, like the raft vhich you used to cross a river, and have found growing in­ terest and even pleasure in the simplest practice of zazen" (Watts,

1971:136).

Charter Four noted the importance of the Bardo Thodol to C. G. Jung and cited reference to the Buddhist classic in The Notebooks of Martha Graham. 253

Among the young people of the Vfest leaving psychedelic drugs for the practice of meditation were the four rock musicians ma]cing iç) the

Beatles. P^chedelic imagery and obtuse references to LSD had entered the Beaties' recordings, particularly on the ?fagical J^stery Ibur albua. But, as Paul MoCartney said in late 1967 or early 1968: "If ve had met tis Kaharishi before ve tried LSD we wouldn't have needed to take it at all" (Fast, 1968:243) . An initial introduction through

Beatle George Harrison's fascination with the Indian sitar music of

Ravi Shankar^, and the group's meeting with the Ifeharishi Mahesh Yogi in England in August of 1967 resulted in all of the Beatles - Harrison,

John , Paul MoCartney, and Ringo Starr - traveling in 1968 to the Maharishi's ocnpound near the Swarag Ashram north of New Dehli.

There, along with Hindu holy men, the Beatles found rock star Donovan and actress Mia Farrcw, on a similar pilgrimage to the guru of TM.

Maharishi was on his way to beccme, like the members of his caste, a merchant or a clerk, and to have a marriage arranged for him when he met one of the major religious leaders of India: Swami Brahmanada Saraswati, the Jadgadguru Bhadwan Shankaracharya, and he became a disciple and spent thirteen and a half years with him. His assignment, given when it became time for the master to leave his body, was to find a siitple form of meditation for everyone to practice. Maharishi spent two years in a cave in the Himalayas and emerged with TM (Smith, 1975:124).

Maharishi set rp the International Meditation Society in London in 1960.

A joining of ancient Hindu practice with mass marketing and public relations techniques resulting in the Maharishi's ajpearance on the

As noted in Chapter Pour Shankar's brother Uday Shankar danced with Anna Pavlova in London in 1924 and was instrumental in the renais­ sance of classical . 254

Johnny Carson show. Transcendental Meditation had thousands of practi­ tioners worldwide by the late sixties.

But certaxnly less packaged avenues to Eastern meditation practice continued to be available to the seeker of new and yet ncn-substance- induced states of consciousness. Yoga and Zen meditation, or zazen, vere being taught widely native masters and converted Americans, and with the help of a growing number of self-help books on Eastern forms of meditation, the first being Kapleau's The Three Pillars of

Zen (1965) noted in Chapter Five. Among later guides to ancient prac­ tice and experiential wisdom were Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal

Talks on Zen ^feditation and Practice (1970) by the director of the San

Francisco Zen Center and Be Ifere Now (1971) by Baba Ram Dass viio prior to study in India with Maharishi Neem Karoli Eaba and Swami Muktananda beginning in 1967, was Richard Alpert, former fellow Harvard psychologist and LSD apologist of Timothy Leary. The psychedelic dropouts, seeking in themselves the "radical reorganization" to #iich Snyder refers above, often gravitated to Zen Ifeditation Centers all over the country or to

Indian-inspired ashrams of hatha yoga. And with the desire to practice together frequently came the desire to live corraunally.

A spirit of cr''.lectivisa and sub-group cooperation was a dynamic force in the counter culture. Conmunes offered a counter lifestyle, and within cities and towns of "the establishment" co-ops for such essentials as food and records forged a sense of group identity among the ccmmitted young. A number of factors contributed to the estciLlxsh- ment of coctinunes, among them the new sexual morality and the use of drugs. But a broader back-to-nature movement and a quest for isolated 255 freedom were among the chief causes of the canmunes, and many were estab­ lished for the purpose of encouraging practice in yoga and Buddhism.

Ihe yogic end of the counter culture had a consuming in­ terest in illuminative religion, a sense of vholeness and essence, a love of nature, a devotion to poverty and as- cetician, and sensitivity to one another, and a desire to "get it on," that is, to practice rather than simply to talk (Aitken, 1971:141-143).

One could argue that the ubiquitous communes of the counter culture era ^ere inspired ly the example of the Buddhist retreat. In 1966 the

San Francisco Zen Center purchased Tassajara Hot Springs, a large parcel of wilderness in the middle of the Los Padres Natonal Forest between

Carmel and Santa Barbara. Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first true wilderness hone of the American Buddhist practice, opened in July of

1966. Alan Watts observed: "That people are getting together to ac­ quire this property for meditation is one of the most hopeful signs of our times" (Fields, 1981:259). Along with the example of communal living in a non-urban environment, Tassajara played a role in another aspect of the body-oriented counter culture. The so-called Zen microbiotic diet in vogue during the mid- and late-sixties, and with it the health food phenomaion of the era, had roots in -tero cookbooks written by the

American Buddhist cook at Tassajara. The San Francisco Zen center was the source also of another prototype of the day. While Tassajara was a retreat for in-tensive training sessions in Zen practice. Green Gulch, just over -the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, was -the San Francisco

Zen Center's farming community and monastery. Organic vegetables from

-the commune and bread from the Zen Center's bakery across the street from the center were sold in the Green Gulch Green Grocery. The pat-

-tem was repeated in citûes and university towns throughout the country. 256 In colleges and universities, departments or programs in Asian studies developed further during the late sixties and seventies, as did offerings in the Oriental martial arts. By 1972, vÆien Steve

Paxton's incorporation of martial arts techniques into dance inprovisa- tion ^veloped into Contact Irrprovisation, seme form of martial arts was taught in almost every university in the country. While judo and karate arrived on carpus earlier and have been introduced to a larger segment of the American public than t'ai chi ch'uan and aikido, the seventies and eighties have seen the profoundly integrating affects of these movement forms upon an increasing nurtber of Westerners, many of whom are dancers. Al Chung-liang Huang's phencmenological descrip­ tion of the experience of t'ai chi in his Biibrace Tiger, Return to

Mountain (1973) and George leonard's rendering of the aikido experi­ ence in The Ultimate Athlete (1975) have played a role in the increased presence of these forms in the West.

Banes shares seme biographical information about dancer Simone

Forti, vdTO had worked with Halprin in the latter nineteen fifties and was a vital force in the Judson Dance Iheatre of the sixties, this information serving as an index into the effect ipon the modem dancer of those counter culture developments discussed above. Banes draws frcm interviews with Forti and from. Forti's Handbook in Motion (1974).

Joining half a million people at the Wbodstock Festival later that surattEr, Forti "perceived a set of mores regarding the sharing of space and fate which seemed to form a whole integrated way. "I fell in love with that way, and remained with it for a year." She stopped thinking of herself as a dancer, trying sirply, in the countercultural idiom, to "be ms." She traveled, learning "hippie protocol," staying at carmunes, always studying the ciianges and movenents in her own bocfy and in the processes around her. For exanple, she speaks of a small dance of balance she discovered while 257

standing on a rock and holding another rock en her head, of watching a rock wall crumble slowly and then standing on the wall to test its movement, of the intensity of 0iysical sensations vdiile cn drugs. Her dancing and move­ ment observations were part of a cottmmal vision in vrtiich everyone was a dancer, a musician, a cook, a guest, a host. When evaitually she felt the unity of that carmunal vision disintegrating, she returned to New York and for a short time studied singing with Pandit Pran Nath, an Indian master and teacher of La ffcnte Young. Then she went to California vinere she practiced Tai Chi Chuan (Banes, 1979: 31).

Forti's pilgrimmage in consciousness was not unique. A generation of dancers bred on Graham, Cunningham, and Hawkins were equipped philo­ sophically and somatically to experience the sensations and insights of the counter culture era to their fullest and, through continued contact with the East, to sustain sane of its spirit in subsequent work and life.

Historically, as the West became associated with the scientific method and the technological advances made possible by that method, there has been a tendency to set the science of the West and the intu­ ition of the East's religious and philosophical tradition in opposition to each other, to consider them mutually exclusive. Due to the West's association with science and to the counter culture's general indict­ ment of "the establishment" in the Wëst, there was in the program of the counter culture a definite anti-scientific strain. Roszak defined the technocracy as "that society in vhich those vho govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts vho, in turn, justify them­ selves by afçeal to scientific forms of knowledge. And beyond the authority of science, there is no appeal" (Roszak, 1968:8). This anti-scientific stance was strengthened by associations of science with the arch foe of the counter culture, the military-industrial 258

corplGx. During the Viet Nam War era the anti-war movenent solidified

that stance. Thus, a distrust of science became a part of counter

culture rhetoric, insuring that the fruits of the scientific method wruld not mingle with those of the contenplative traditions of the

East embraced by the rebelling children of the technocracy. Perhaps the counter culture's anti-scientific stance was necessary in order for its innocent message of "get in touch with yourself, nature, and the cosmos" to be heard. But as counter ailture ideas have entered the mainstream, as elanents of lifestyle practiced ty a "drcçped out" minority have become viable alternatives for "straighter" manbers of

"the establishment, " perception of science as being inimical to the experiential concerns of the East have decreased.

In the human potential and holistic health movanents, psychology, a product of Western science, has become an arbiter between East and

West, rendering the East/West dichotomy less distinct. Both of these movements, the former developing during the counter culture, the latter emerging in the eighties, were the result of numerous meetings, in structured seminars and impromptu conversations, between Eastern masters and health professionals trained in the "Third Force" of p^chology, Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology.^

Maslow had inaugurated a new direction in psychology by focusing on health instead of disease. Maslow's studies of healthy, "self-actualizing" individuals, had led him to a serious consideration of vÆiat he called "peak experi­ ences." In his last book, Maslow had characterized

The psychoanalytic method of Sigmund Freud and the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner are considered the first two phases of psychology, the humanistic thrust of Maslow's work termed the "Third Force." 259

individuals v h o had such ©çieriences as having achieved a high level of growth and maturity. He found that t h ^ led lives vhich reflected vholeness, simplicity, order, effort­ less energy, ccnpletion and dichotcny-turanscendence. This description had much in cctrmcn with the definition of a Buddha as one vho had reached the highest develcpment of his human potential - to use a term in vogue at the time. It was thus possible for sons psychologists to see en- lighteiment as the ultimate state of mental health (Fields, 1981:313).

The showcase of the human potential movatent, established in 1962, but not receiving wide^read notariety until late in 1967, was the

Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California. A course in Oriental reli­ gions at Stanford University had led Michael Murphy, a young upper middle class Californian, to the Sri Aurobindo ashram in India. Upon his return Murphy established Esalen, described by Smith as "a right brain citadel," "the counter culture's university," and "Ansrica's leading ashram" (anith, 1975:73). The purpose of the institution is officially stated as exploration of "those trends in the behavioral sciences, religion and philoscphy, v^iich emphasize the potentialities and values of human existence" (Encyclopedia of Associations, 1984:

7963). Ancng those trends pursued at Esalen have been meditation, message, Rolfing, Feldenkrais Awareness "Through Movement, the gestalt p^chology of Frederick Peris, and other manifestations of Maslow's

"Third Force. " Of this meeting place for the bcv^-^nind concerns of

Eastern philosophy, body systems, and humanistic psychology, Murphy states: "Our primary concern is the affective domain, the senses and feelings" (anith, 1975:73-74).

Socre aspects of Esalen and of the human potential movement in general went sonevhat far afield of the ascetic, contenplative tradi­ tion spawning the wisdom of the East. Arising some years later than 260 Esalen and founded vçcai an avcwedly more religious oonoeption, however, was the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, üferopa was organized by Chogyam Trungpa, RLnpoche, a Tibetan master of T&ntric Buddhism and

Shanfchala training. Upon arriving here in 1970, Trungpa found America

suffering from "^iritual materialism," "deceiving ourselves into think­

ing we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our

ego-centrici-ty through spiritual techniques" (Trungpa, 1973:3). In

1974, after the publishing of his Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

(1973) Trungpa organized Naropa's first summer session. Ancng the tvro

thousand teachers and students ooming to Boulder for Naropa's first

suniner were Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, and John Cage.

Ihe premise of Naropa Institute was that clear, hard think­ ing is central to a sane spiritual journey; vAiat was needed was a crossroads where the intellectual-critical mind of the West and the way to e^çaerience and meditation of the East could iteet headr-on - "a place vAiere intellect and intuition could come together," according to the brochures and cata­ logues wAiich ware mailed out for the first summer session in 1974, announcing courses on meditation, Tai-chi, tea ceremony, thangka painting, Tibetan and Sanskrit, madhyamika philosophy, anthropology, physics and cybernetics (Fields, 1981:316-317).

A theme running throughout the meeting of East and West in this

century, certainly evident in Dharnapala's third visit to the United

States (1902-1904) during which he toured technical schools and attended

William James' p^chology class at Harvard, has been a call for reoon-

cilation betoreen East and West, a fusing of dharma and technology.

Naropa has furthered that end. After another session in 1975 Naropa

begar. offering B.A. and M.A. programs in Buddhistic studies, psychology,

and performing arts. Later in the seventies the Institute became ac­

credited by the North Central Association and in 1984 continues to offer

a curriculum fusing the disciplines of East and Vfest. 261

Influence from the East was felt in the academic discipline of physical education viiich, historically, through cortmon pursuits and administrative organization, has been closely aligned with dance edur- caticn. Physical education graduate students' involvement with the stusty and teaching of Oriental martial arts and philosophy, and their acquaintance with the phencmenological theories of Marleau-Ponty applied to sport and movement eaçerience hy such scholars as Seymour

Kleinman (1964) and Carolyn Ihcmas (1974) combined to produce a number of theses and dissertations on the phencatenological experience of sport participation. Tie ejq5eriential thrust of some of these studies included reference to existentialist philosophy.

An existential approach vhich utilizes phenomenology illu­ minates the depth and fullness of human movatent experi­ ences. . . . The subjective approach to human movement provides an understanding of the bcx^ in meaningful rela­ tion with the world; esqseriential reflection and description enhances man's self-awareness through involvement in that activity. Ihe existential viewpoint suggests that sports and itDvemsnt are viable nodes of self-eagression, human activities that contain the potential for the e^gerience of freedom (Bruner, 1974:34).

Along with experience in Eastern bo<^ systems and sound philosophy ical theory in \hich to ground their experiential studies, students found precedents, although they be more popular than scholarly, in

Baba Chanpion's Yoga-Itennis (1973), Michael Murphy's Golf in the

Kingdom (1972), Fred Roh'e's Zen of Running (1974), Timothy Gallwey's

The Inner Game of Ttennis (1974), as well as the phenomenological accounts of aikido and t'ai chi ch'uan hy George Leonard and A1 Huang cited above. Physical education students drew from Maslow's concepts of "peak experience" and "self-actualization" and from Oriental 26 2 categories of enlightenment to explain experiences reported in these accounts. In 1976 Kleinman had ^xplied the East/West dichotcmy to the history of the acadanic discipline of physical educaticn, noting the effects of the West's dualistic answer to the mind-bocfy question, but discerning in developments such as those cited above, the beginnings of a holistic approach to plysical educaticn in vAiich Eastern thought and movement forms would play a major role. By 1981 Kleinman and colleagues had established the Movement Arts Program within the Depart­ ment of Physical Education at The Ohio State University, among the country's most prestigiais departments in that field. In summary, in the field of physical educaticn a merging of Eastern philosophy and practice, humanistic psychology, phenotenological and existential­ ist philosophy has produced in some a sonatic vision permitting the discipline to relate closely with the holistic health movement. Out of the human potential movenent, the West's increasing aware­ ness of Oriental notions of health, specifically the dominance of the yin-yang totality in traditional Chinese medicine and intrinsic in

Maslow, has brought about the holistic health movement of the nineteen eighties. In the Western paradigm of philosophy and health, there exists no counterpart to the t'ai chi t'u, the model of wholeness so deeply embedded in Chinese culture. The concept of ohi flow through the twelve meridians of the body; the healing practices of acupuncture and acupressure utilizing that ccncept, the five-element theory vhich permits the designation of healthy individual organs as representing various degrees of yin and yang conposition; and the movement form t'ai chi ch'uan all stem from the ideal of balance of yin and yang in the t'ai chi t'u. 263

Eastern ways of health and healing are being increasingly accepted in the West. Native practitioners are being trained, and are introducing the public to the realities and the limits of this old, new medicine. And, trans­ planted to new soil, ancient traditions are being trans- farmed, as they themselves transform their participants (Estrin, 1980:249).

But vjhile the benefits of a given acupuncture or acupressure treatment

might be evident to anyone, if the forces of healing are of a spiritual

nature and, therefore, are not verifiable by scientific inquiry, tradi­

tional Vfestem medicine has difficulty sanctioning such practice. But

also while the Western paradigm does not permit a full embracing of the

practices of traditional Chinese medicine, in the holistic health era

of the nineteen eighties the West's concept of health has been signif­

icantly affected by the Orient. T h e ideal of the t'ai chi t'u has in­

spired in enlightened health professionals a dynamic vision of health

as balance and has encouraged dancers and physical educators more and more to view their work as related to health or "wellness."

Contact Improvisation

By 1970 alumni of Robert Dunn's conposition workshops and the

Judson concerts had become sonevhat separated by teaching positions

outside New York, solo concerts, and engagonents outside the city.

'The last concert at Judson Church was in 1968, and the dynamic experi- itental energy vhich had been channelled into concerts there for a

period of six years was dispersed to create concerts in other churches,

art galleries, lofts, and other nonproscenium spaces in and out of

New York. This decentralization of post-modern dance activity, along

with the counter culture's general tendency toward coUectivian and

the rich legacy of improvisation in modem dance, led to the formation 26 4 of the Grand Union in the fall of 1970. Many of the nine itionbers of the grocç) had seen and perfarmed in each other's work since the first

Judson Church concert. Most of the dancers had studied with Merce

Cunningham and three had been members of his company.

Grand Union, an "anarchistic democratic theatre collective"

(Paxton, 1972:128) in vhich dancers, during performance, "ate, hurtmed, walked away from a group activity, explained to the audience vhat was going on, consulted their partner during a lift about his or her confort or state of mind" (Banes, 1979:211), was solidly part of the Judson aesthetic. Its thrust was both irtprovisatory and collective. The group had no director or chief choreographer, though various of its nine members - Becky Arnold, Trisha Brown, Dong (Lincoln Scott) ,

Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Nanoy Green, Barbara Lloyd, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer - contributed isolated structures to the irrprovisa- tion. When Rainer disbanded her company before her visit to India in

1970, she had suggested that the company members work collectively and

Grand Union was an outgrowth of her "Continucus Project Altered Daily"

(CPAD) (1969) in vdiich inprovisation p l ^ e d a major role. With time the structure of CPAD was l ^ t behind, Rainer relinguished all direc­ torial authority and became an equal member of this irprovisatory dance company dedicated to equality and collectivity. Banes writes of the years during vhich individual members of Grand Union and such colleagues as Ann Halprin, her student Simone Forti, and Deborah Hay worked with improvisation.

During those years, American culture generally expressed ■themes of concern with cooperation, collective living and working situations, and attention to process over finished product. In politics and social situations as well as in 265

the fine arts, pec^le began to look to spaitaneity and iinprovisitory methods to provide life better than that vdïLch a rigidly constructed,' individual-oriented, hier- archial society had created (Banes, 1979:208-209).4

While the manbers of Grand Union vrere trained movers, movement was only one type of currency enplcyed in the improvisatory transactions of

Grand Unicsi. The group manbers' feelings about performing were shared with the audience, and the mechanics of both movement and structuring of material articulated. Due to the relative stability of membership.

Grand Union members were quite familiar with each other ii: and out of performance, and sane structured "bits," to use Paxton's term (Paxton,

1972:131) were used again and again, although transitions into than vere improvised. The personalities of the Grand Union manbers consti­ tuted an element in the improvisation process and in the resulting exchange of energies, physical and psychological.

During a Grand Union residency at Oberlin College in 1972 Steve

Paxton was sharing some Grand Union material with eight other men, adding to the improvisation the special concerns of touch and weight bearing. "Eventually the work centered around exploring the parameters of the basic duet from: What happens when the partners give weight, lift, carry, wrestle each other, give in to the floor and gravity, all in a way that breaks cut of the typical male habits of aggression and

It was noted in Chuter Four's discussion of the origins of dance education that the process thrust of progressive education was at its height vÆien future dance educators such as H'Doubler were doing graduate work in physical education at Columbia University Teachers College in the late nineteen teens, twenties, and thirties. It is due to this initial thrust, along with Isadora Duncan's evocation of spontaneous movement, that improvisation has remained part of dance educaticn practice even during those periods vhen the mainstream of professional dance activity seemingly has ignored improvisation. 266 fear of tenderness?” (Banes, 1979:64). The results of this e^glora- ticn evolved into a fern of iErprovisaticn, for wonen and men, vdiich left behind the verbalized ez^ression, set "bits," and Judson theatrics of Grand. Union for a fully physical, e:$)eriential celebration of in­ finitely variable exchanges of weight and energy. Paxton clarifies the relationship betveen the Judson aesthetic and the system arising from his inprovising with veight, momentun, balance, flow, and "contact." The vnrk is ongoing. It is still, in Johnston's phrase, about "any old people," but it is no longer focused on personal incidents within pedestrian forms. Personal incidents happen now in the context of a duet system that has been named Contact Irarpovisation (Paxton, 1975:40).

Since 1972 groups of "contactors" have gotten together for sessions in vàiich they, two at a time, revel in the laws of physics and bio­ mechanics by engaging in movement iitprovisatiai based upon touch and balance. The total focusing of attention upon the sensations arising from the operation of internal and external laws governing human motion requires a supreme integraticn of body and mind. While in Paxton's development of Contact Inprovisation, techniques of aikido, gymnastics, and meditation were added to siitple inprovisaticn on touching, on making intimate ccmnunicaticn the basis of movement (Paxton, 1981:48), such techniques lose their specific identity'in the resulting flow of move­ ment, "non-rationalized, intuitive movement leading to unforseen phras­ ing, positions and gambits" (Paxton, 1981:47). Contact Inprovisation is "an approach to movement in vhich the student moves from the motiva­ tions of reflex and intuition . . . , aiming for a freedom from ratio­ nalized movement" vhich Paxton oppses to "willful/technical" movement

(Paxton, 1981:48). 2 6 7

Each party of the duet freely iirprovises with an aim to working along the easiest pathways available to their mutually moving masses. Those pathways are best perceived vhen the muscular tone is lightly stuetched to extend the limbs although not to a degree that obscures the sensations of monentum and inertia. Within this flexible framework, the sh^je, speed, crienta-tion, and personal details of the relatd-cnship are left to the dancers vho, however, hold to the ideal of active, reflexive, harmonic, spontaneous, imtnal forms. The ideal creates the attitude, which is manifest in the quality of energy-use. This system is based in the senses of touch and balance. The partners in the duet touch each other a lot, and it is through txuching that the information about each other's movement is -transmitted. They touch the floor, and there is atphasis on constant awareness of gravity. They touch themselves internally, and a concen-tra-tion is maintained rçon the idiole body. Balance is not defined by s-tretxhing along the cen-ter columns of the body, as in -tradi-tioial dancing, but by the body's relationship to that part vhich is a useful fulcrum, since in this work a body may as often be on head as feet and relative to the partner as often as •to the floor. The stuff sesns -to exist in the wrestling, jit-terbug. Aikido, gymnastic, dance area. I feel ve have invented nothing; rather specified a way of activity that is exclu­ sive of the aims of other duet forms (Paxton, 1975:40).

When he describes contzactors "working alcng the easiest pathways available to their mu-tually moving masses," Paxton recalls the ety­ mological essence of "ju-do" as the "gentle way" of overcoming an opponent through redirection of energy flow. When he glorifies Con­ tact Improvisation as a "duet system" and observes that it "seems to exist in the wrestling, jitterbug, Aidiko, gymnastic, dance area," the originator of the Contact sys-tem recognized the principle of aiki which entails harmonizing one's flow of ki with the flow of ki in one-'s at­ tacker. As in judo, aiJddo, and the combative forms of Chinese kung fu which direct the ongoing balanced circularity of t'ai chi ch'uan towards an attacker, such attention in the practice of Contact Impro­ visation permita partners to J'roll, fall, and fly along a mutual path of least resis-tance" (Nelson, n.d. ). 268 Ccntact Irtprovisaticn centimes a concern with time in modem dance theatre beginning with Graham and running through Cunningham,

Hawkins, and the Judson Dance Theatre. But Paxton goes to the root of perception of time, seeking its physiological basis.

Here is \iAere iry sense of the connection of the endocrine system to time began to form - that is, how the body reacts to the situation and how the perceptions are changed by that response (and then, vhat actions result from the new per­ ceptions) . The hit of adrenalin when the body receives signals of danger is amazingly swift. If the dancer is aware that the signal has occurred because of a sudden lift and remains cool, the main effeort of the hit is a great stretching of time VJhen one becomes used to perceiving the distortion calmly, it is useful - especially if both partners enter into the perception and can recognize it in each other. This is the sort of thing meant by "sensing time" - coming to grips with the ways vre sense time (Paxton, 1975:41).

Paxton's plysiological peroeptions are noted elsevhere:

You want the heart to be strong and active, you want the muscles to be well-stretched and prepared, you want the person to be used to taking veight. The adrenalin should come from some organic cause, and then it should have a calm on top of it, so that the kick of adrenalin - vhat you feel when you almost fall - can be enjoyed, and calmly watched. It changes your perception of time, and it's one of the most enjoyable sensaticns in the vhole Contact mode. It happens to me vhen I'm standing perfectly still and just being aware of the slight fall of the body. There's a real feeling of danger in standing still, if you pay attention to it (Paxton interview in Banes, 1979:65-66).

Paxton's concern with the endocrine system, his phenomenological description, not just of the doing of Contact Inprovisation but also of the sensations of that play betweai glands and secretions which acccnpanies the doing of Contact Inprovisation, reveals the degree to vhich development of awareness has become the quest of the modem dancer. A similar intensity of awareness addresses the function of peripheral vision within Contactors. In light of these eitphases on 269 the part of Contact Drpiovisation's originator, it is not surprising to find Contactors generally interested in research in anatoty and alignment, particularly the work of ïbdd and Sweigard, and in matters of philosophy and p^chology \vtiich can contribute to their understand­ ing of "the Contact mode." Contact Quarterly, a journal evolving in

1975 from the earlier Contact Newsletter, continues the newsletter's function of keeping Contactors in touch with each other and, with articles in the areas of philosophy, psychology, and body thermies, contributes to the literature of the human potential and holistic health movements.

To a far greater extent even than did its parent. Grand Union,

Contact Inprovisation reveals the counter culture spirit of collectivism flourishing at the time of Contact's origin. "It takes two to tango," and it is natural that a ^stem such as Contact, vAiich in its lovrest cdttnon denoninator is cooperative, should continue to embrace the co-op, collective thrust of its counter culture roots. Contact Quarterly con­ tinues to publish in every issue the section "Contacts - viiere to find

Contact Irrprovisaticn, a referral system," listing by regions the names and addresses of Contact groups and indivdiuals around the country and the world. Of this networking Banes observes: "Like the food co-op movement that flourished in the same decade, and motivated by the same populist ^irit. Contact Inprovisation sets up a network for distribution (of dance, rather than vegetables) outside the big business of the dance world" (Banes, 1979:68).

Many philoscphical trends within modem dance coalesce in Contact

Inprovisation. In coimenting upon the need in the West for inprovisa- tory activity like that of Grand Union and Contact Improvisation, 270 Paxtm cites Laban's conviction that dance must provide for industri­ alized nan an escape from the death of the mechanistic assembly line

(Paxton, 1972:133). Echoing dance education's "process over product" roots in progressive education (Chapter Four), the originator of

Contact Inprovisation states: "We're focused on the phenomaicn rather than on presentation" (Banes, 1969:67). And finally, with its glorifi­ cation of the p l ^ of gravity, mcmentxm, and energy flow characteristic of Eastern movement forms, and its profound attention to the innermost awareness and heightaied consciousness of the participant. Contact

Inprovisatuon in many ways constitutes modem dance's most authentic appropriation of the Eastern world's essence.

Deborah Hay's Circle Dances

Ctapter One's discussion of Thoism noted its criticism of the social artifice of Confucianism. It is not surprising to find the counter culture drawing inspiration from t'ai chi ch'uan, the thousand year old movenent discipline embodying Ihoist philosophy. It was inevitable that the gentle, balanced flow of subtly centered power of this somatic objectification of Oriental wisdom would c^ture the interest of modem dancers in the era of the counter culture.

During dance class and performance there ware caily brief moments when I -transcended my body and no longer felt responsible for my own movement. Those were the most exciting moments of my specialized dance career. Soon after this realizatrLon, I became a student of Tki Chi Chuan with Professor Cheng in New York City. Here I began to let go of all i had learned, and to trust a new thing called flow, or myself, or the universe.

I wanted to combine ity Tai Chi experience with every­ day natural m ovement to bring to the at-tentd-on of others, some of the basic values of lai Chi in ordinary living. . . . 271

(tfoving Piroiigh. the lAiiverse in Bare Feet attenpts, throu^ the doing of the ten dances, to oannunicate that breath is movement and movanent is dance and anyone can dance (Hay and Bogers, 1974:4-5).

With this and with an excerpt from the I Ching Deborah Hay begins her bode Moving Through the Ifaiverse in Bare Feet: Ten Circle Dances for

Everybody (.1974).

H^' s circle dances are a unique fusion of the Orient with American popular culture, specifically of t'ai chi ch'uan's essential movenent dynamic with the album music of fourteen popular artists or groips, interestingly enonÿi among them the Beaties' Magical ly^stery Tbur cited above for its psychedelic imagery. The opening pages of Hay's manual include such diverse information as a general introduction to the noticxis of center, flew, and relaxed knees in t'ai chi and a listing of phonograph record albums to accotpany the dances. For each of the ten dances, three "sides" of L.P. records are played, totaling around sixty minutes, . Hay suggests that the dances be presented in order, due to an increase in experiential meaning inherent in their conception.

Ideally, do five dances one week and five the following . . . every weekday evening for two weeks, (considering people are woricing daytime hours). If that is not possible do them once, twice, or three times a week until you have carpleted all ten. Then do them again for an even more intensive experience (Hay and Rogers, 1974:14).

The dances are the product of Cunninghamr-Judson veteran Hay's four year search for the means of providing to participants an enlightening oaniiunal dance experience. The search began with two year's exploration with a "pretty steady twenty-five" people, working in a New York City 272

loft. After moved in 1971 to Mad Brook, a farm in rural Vermont,

she continued her search for another two years. While the initial

loft meetings had had a choreographic thrust, had provided the Jrdson artist an outlet for irrplenenting choreographic ideas, the point of the ten resulting dances is experiential rather than choreographic.

As illustrator for Hay's book and regular participant in the dances

Donna Jean Rogers observes, "People caning together, tuning into their bodies and tuning in with the greater body, get high" (Hay and Rogers,

1974:232).

In the case of Deborah Hay the world of theatre dance has led to a vernacular folk dance (Banes, 1979:125) vhich - inspired by the consunmate ej^^erssion of Oriental mind/body integration vhich is t'ai chi - is based upon breath and not upon steps as is European folk dance. But as is noted above in her notes of introduction. Hay's departure fron theatre dance goes beyond folk dance to a conception of the breath of the dance and its accatpanying consciousness infusing everyday life.

Bring the dances with you to the lab and the A&P. Bring 'em on the bus, into the garden, and upstairs. Take than out walking and take than to bed.

Trust yourself. Use the images to take you as far out and as far in as you will go. Trust yourself, your breath, to feel everything there is (Hay and Rogers, 1974:231).

Among directions of the various dances are:

"Becone together through energy" (24), "Outside of skull sensitive to particles of space around it"(25), "Breathe into a gaitle arch like a supple bcw" (29), "Keep the image of water pouring from your ears, top of head, center of chest, palms of hands" (39), "Sitting in lotus position . . . hands resting on knees . . . breathe. . . . Expand body to feel each cell surrounded and bathed in fresh oxygen" (43), "The distance between 273

vertebrae esçanding and growing rich" (52), "Standing, relaxed, together. Turn your head from facing ri^t to facing left shoulder. Breathe the movement into existence. Imagine a great force of water caning out of both ears irrigating land on either side of you. You probably won't move in any visible sense more than one inch but in other ways you will cross continents"(60).

The extraordinary thing about the phenomenon of a modem dance class in the nineteen eighties is that suggestions such as those above are not unusual. Accounts of Graham, the progressive tradition in dance education, Hasdcins, Halprin, and Paxton cited earlier, and of the body therapies to follow reveal the fact that such organic imagery, so alien to an acrobatic, mechanistic conception of dance, owes its origin to breath frcm the East.

Chapter One's summary of the philosophy and body systsns of the

Orient found pervasive in the Eastern worldview a mistrust of cognition as means of attaining wisdom or enlightenment, an attention to the universe of phenonena - within the human organism and within the cosmos - as an integrated totality, and a quest for enlightened awareness of that totality through physical-mental-spiritual integration gained through the practice of various body-^nind systsns. Hay's circle dances constitute an essential appropriation of the Eastern worldview identified above. In editing the breath force of t'ai chi ch'uan, a solo form, to dances in a circle. Hay adds to t'ai chi's benefits of personal awareness and of micro/macrocosmic identification, the benefit of group experience so sought by her era.

There were indeed times . . . when we were so together that out bodies seemed molded into one large circle of energy .... All sense of separation and isolation dissolves in the warm equality of the circle (Hay and Rogers, 1974:232). 274 Body Therapies; Body/Mind Centering

Mjdem dance has played an inçortant role in the human potential and holistic health movements. Dancers have been in a frame of mind and b o ^ not only to embrace and to be strong e^çonents of boc^ ther­ apies arising outside the discipline of dance, such as Alexander tech­ nique and Feldenkrais "awareness through movenent, " but also to develop within the dance establishment such systems as Ibdd-Sweigard Ideokinesis and Laban-Bartenieff Fundamentals. As Margaret Pierpont suggests in her introduction to Martha tiers' six-part Dance Magazine series ”Bo(^ Iher-

^ies and the Modem Dancer" (February-July 1980), an interest in the

East has played a role in producing Americans' current interest in the body therapies as yogic paths to awareness and vmoleness (%ers, Feb.

1980:90). Certainly modem dancers' considerable contact with the

Orient has been instrumental in bringing about rec^tivity to these thermies cited above and, as later observation of Bo%/Mind Centering will reveal, produces yet another aj^ropriation of the Orient, this in the form of a unique bo(^ therapy.

The kinesiological-kinesthetic thrust in the work of H'Doubler and Halprin has played a significant role in the current link-tp be­ tween modem dance and the boc^ therapies of the human potential and holistic health movanents. The mutual corroboration of Ttodd-Sweigard theory and Zen Buddhism, and Erick Hawkins' work resulting from their inpact upon him strengthened in the modem dance sensibility this con. ion betsreen knowledge of kinesiology and heightened conscious­ ness or awareness of movement. The fusion of kinesiological knowledge with experience in yoga, meditation, and martial arts, and with knowl­ edge of the concepts of yin and yang, chi or ki flow, and of the 275

general Oriental vision of the universe as an interrelated vÆiole has

created in modem dance a notewnrthy receptivity to the concems of

the human potential and holistic health mcvanents. This fusion is a

symptom of, if not a precursor of the general reckoning between tradi­

tional Eastern and Western scientific positions cited in the historical

survey vhich began this chuter. Modem dance's receptivity to the

b o ^ therapies is evidenced in their having entered the curriculum of

the during the nineteen seventies and in the

Merican Dance Festival's 1980 conference "Bo^ Thermies" vhich

brought practitioners of these ^stsns together vd-th manbers of the

medical community. Due to the Festival's position historically as

being at the forefront of developments in modem dance, four therapy

! systans will be described briefly in the order of their entering the

carcriculum there.

Todd-Svreigard Ideokinesis

Lulu Sœigard's Ideokinesis, first taught at the Festival in

1975, is based upon the posture-alignmait work of Mabel Ellsvrorth

Todd. The Thinking Body (1937) and other vnritings hy Todd have been

influential in dance education (î^ers, June 1980:90) and in the develop­

ment of Havhins' philoscphy of technique. Sweigard's work is based

upon the pranise, verified in anpiracle observation of dancers at the

JuUiard School, that the use of visual movement imagery rather than

voluntary action will bring about desired alignment and movanent, as

voluntary action interferes with the more efficient involuntary facil­

itation of desired action by the nenro-muscular-skeletal system. The

healthiest and most efficient alignment and movanent patterns are 276 developed in students through the visualization of nine "lines-of-mcve- ment" thrcwghout the body. An image offered to proaote the line-of- loctveinent "To Lengthen the Spine Downward," for exaitple, is "Visualize the trunk as a sandwich in a vertical position with a back layer, a middle layer of filling, and a front layer. Watch the back layer slid­ ing downward" (Sweigard, 1974:238-239). It was the affinities between such an ^proach and the Zen concept of "no-action" which contributsd so to Hawkins' wrork. ]h reference to the human potential movement afoot at the time of its publication lulu Jweigard entitled her study of increased movement efficiency through image-derived allignment

Human Movement Potential: Itzs Idedkinetic Facilitation (1974). Pri­ mary espcnent of Todd-Sweigard Ideokinesis is Irene Dowd who studied with the late Sweigard at JuUiard. Dowd has -taught at the Naropa

Institutie and publishes reports of her work in Contact Quarterly.

Bartenieff Fundamentals

Bartenieff Fundamen-tals, named for its originator Irmgard

Bartenieff, stems from Laban's Effort/Shape Theory of Movanent Analysis.

Making rç> a large part of the Certificatre Program in Laban Movement

Studies at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New

York, Fundamen-tals was first taught at the American Dance Festival in the late seven-ties. Analysis of alignment and movement fall into cate­ gories of dynamic alignment, or concern wfith alignment changes as body position changes; reflection of feelings in one's body attitude; pin­ pointing from whence movement is initiatred; and analyzing the subtleties of wveight transfer. Along with Feldenkrais ' vrark, Fundamen-tals exhibits more concern with the ^)atial environment of the body than do the other 2 7 7 body thermies. Bartenieff's career as a physical ther^ist and dance ther^ist brings into the movement r^)ertory of Fundamentals the most basic of movements, including sane drawn fron studies of developmental movement in infants and children. Through the student's introduction to basic motor patterns, he can isolate and become fully acquainted with muscle action. "There is concern for the total body and an em­ phasis on connecting muscular seisaticns with the quality of movement, a connection that leads to personal insights as well as to nore fluent, efficient movanent patterns" (I^ers, Mar. 1980:90).

Alexander Technique

Alexander method or technique, based rçon the nineteenth century practice and writings of Mathias Alexander, was introduced to the

ànerican Dance Festival in 1978. Qrphasis in Alexander work is upon carriage of the head in relationship to overall posture in standing, walking, and sitting. Frequently a simple downward and backward move­ ment of the student's head by an Alexander teacher will produce a radical change in tension levels throughout the torso and limbs. The kinesthetic effect of lightness, the hallmark of the Alexander tech­ nique, can be demonstrated by an experienced teacher in a relatively short time, often in a matter of minutes, inlying light pressure with his hands, the dononstrator changes the balance of the subject's head.

Properly carried out, the procedure will establish a new dynamic balance between the weight of the head and the tnmis of the muscles so that within a limited range . . . the head behaves like an inertial system vhich can move or be moved freely in any direction without a feeling of weight (Jones, 1976:5). 278 "NDOr-end-gaining" is a basic principle of the Alexander technique

(Jones, 1976:31), the term suggesting the method's affinities with

Sweigard technique and with the Zen notion of "no-action" and will- less-ness.

Feldenkrais Awareness Through Mcvemait

Feldenkrais "Awareness Through Mcvement" developed frcm the efforts of a diversely educated man to rehabilitate his knee after serious injury. In his early eighties Moshe Feldenkrais is director of the Feldenkrais Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel, lecturer at Hebrew

University there, and with the uncanny knack of a guru teaches his mathod of bcx^ re-education in workshops around the world. Movement qpqnpnf?ias in Awareness Through Movement include the simplest of joint and lever explorations and, like Bartaiieff Fundamentals, reflexes frcm early childhood. Also like those of Bartenieff Fundamentals, Feldenkrais students focus tpon minute changes in body sensation arising frcm the slightest of isolated movement. This detection of change in body sensa­ tion is a priority in Feldenkrais' work, and the effect of gravity tpon boc^ sensations is among areas explored. Such concentration en- gmiders loind-body integration, a theme in Feldenkrais' sixteen books and in his workshops. With years of yoga practice .ind a black belt in judo Feldenkrais brings attention to breath into his nethod. In a unique abject of Feldenkrais method, movement of the eyes in one di­ rection is enplqyed to release some holding vdiich is hampering move­ ment elsevhere in the bocfy.

TO categorize loosely, movement in the various body therapies just discussed includes patterns drawn fecm pl^sical ther^jy and from 279 knowledge of movenent develcfment in infants and children, the simplest walking, standing, and sitting, and minute eaplorations of joints and levers. Attention to alignment plays a central role in each of the systems, chouÿi the specific subject receives less attention in

Feldenkrais' work. While imagery is predoninant, of course, in Todd-

Svreigard Ideokinesis, it is a tool used in all four of the systems.

While some manipulation of a student hy a pr^±iti.cner takes place in all of the therapies, it seems to be most crucial in Alexander tech­ nique and in Feldenkrais' cne-on-one Functional Integration. Breath

is more emphasized in the work of Feldenkrais vdiose extensive back­ ground in yoga and judo insure such emphasis in his work. The ther­ apies all work toward neuromuscular repatterning aiding a dancer in rehabilitation from injury, in increasing range of movement quality

for dance performance, and in self-awareness. Collectively, these

systems view the body organically, as a gestalt of processes vdiich,

through adherence to principles of efficioicy and self-awareness,

functions as an integrated ^Aole.

If one had to characterize the various bot^ therapies as fitting

a "Western" or "non-Westem" mode, their general attention to knowledge

of kinesiological facts could lead one to view these pursuits as falling

into the experientially, aesthetically barren pattern of abstraction

and theory associated with the Wfest in philoscphical carpariscns of

East and. West. This is not the case. With the body thermies, scien­

tific knowledge of the body and its functioning facilitates an esperi-

entially intense awareness of sensation. At the same time that this

awareness contributes to efficiency in movement, it enhances self-image

or, to use Maslow's term, promotes self-actualization. The mental 280 activity demanded by these systems is not an aloof cogniticn separated frcm bodily saisation, but a concentrated attention to and even guiding of bodily action and attendant sensation. In light of Northrop's characterizing the East's concern with the "immediately apprehended aesthetic component" of experience (Northrcp, 1946:310) and the west's predelection for the theoretic component (Ch^Jter One) - the body ther­ apies studied by modem dancers in the nineteen seventies and eighties are decidedly "non-îfestem" pursuits.

Body/Mind Centering

Ihe developmait of boc^ therapies continues, as does their appli­ cation to dance. In the case of Bonnie Bainbridge Oohen and Patricia

Bardi, Erick Hasdcins' East-in^ired stress of kinesthetic awaraiess was instrumental in the creation of a form of bcx^ work \diich makes further appropriation of the Orient. Through Cohen and Bardi's background in dance, the experiential quest of the School for Body/Mind Centering and its faculty continue the flow of Eastern sensibility to modern dancers and, as will be revealed, to teachers and students of classical ballet.

Ihe work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and protege Patricia Bardi is less widely known than those systems cited above, and perhaps further frcm the traditional Western paradigm. Cohai founded the School for

Body/Mind Centering in New York City in 1973 and in 1977 established a branch of the school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Cohen's work now centers in Amherst and is disseminated throuÿi workshops at the school and through writing and interviews in Contact Quarterly, the journal 281 publishing information relating to the raised consciousness required and developed in Contact Inprovisation.

Cohen's training and career background offer an index into the synthesis resulting fron the coming together of modem dance training, the human potaitial and holistic health movements, and first-hand expe­ rience with the movement forms and b o ^ systems of the East. Orig­ inally trained and licensed as an occipaticnal therapist, Cohen worked

1962-72 with severely disabled adults and children. Tbward the end of that period she was a student of Erick Hawkins and manbers of the

Hasddns coipany, and Cohen identifies Havddns as "one of my major mentors" (Cohen, 1981:4). She is certified as a nauro-developmental ther^ist in England, has studied Ibdd-SwigardrClark neuro-^nuscular re-education with Andre Bernard, and dance therapy with Marion Chase.

During a two year period in Japan the originator of Body/Mind Caitering studied Katsugen Endo, "the art of training the nervous systan." Cohen brings to her work e^qperience in yoga, meditation, aikido, and Latan-

Bartenieff effort/shape analysis.

From such a background Cohen has developed a mode of exploring the experience of mo^^nent vhich goes a step further than do the more estab­ lished therapies discussed above, moving beyond attention to neuro­ muscular-skeletal awareness to a search for a psychophysiology of move- mait experience. In 1981 Cohen's description of her discipline revealed

its experiential, as opposed to theoretical viewpoint.

Body/Mind Centering is not a "formed" systan of bcxfy work; there is no specific ordering of techniques that determines the work's ^plication. Instead, this rapidly growing and evolving bo<^ of information is applied in the same way that it is gathered - empirically, through a process of dynamic observation and experience (Cohen, 1981). 282 Cdhen' s search for means of developing sensitivity to the inner­ most of sensations, the underlying thrust of Bo<^/Mnd Centering, began around 1973 with attempts to understand hew to work with the hands to guide another person's movement. This original intzerest in the sub­ tleties of touch has remained in much of Cohen's work, betraying her background in ther^y and aikido and oontzibuting to the particular relevance of her work to Contact Improvisa-ticn. This initiial work was concerned with bones and muscles. During the time early in 1977 when

Cohen was traveling from Amherst to New York for \ireekend workshops, the work of Cohen and colleagues Patricia Bardi and Gail Turner had

"turned to an ezgerientdal inves-tigatdcn of the organs of the bo<^.

Cohen and Bardi had met earlier in the seventd.es \hile both were stui- daits of Erick Haskins. Incorporatdng principles and practdces learned from Cohen, Bardi and Turner oonpiled The Organ tfanual and in the sunner of 1977 the School for Bo<^/Mind Caitering offered a month long vrorkshop based ipon that material. An observation of Bardi's work with "the presence of the organs in dancing" will follow a review of

Cohen's woric throuÿi 1983.

By 1980 Cohen, colleagues, and studente had moved, -touched, breathed, hissed and directed other sounds into an awareness of the nervous system, the endocrine sys-tem, and the fluid system of circur-

latory, Ijitphatdc, and cerebral-spinal fluids. In an intierview at

the close of 1980 Cdhai recognized the need for an organiza-tional

"overview" of esgerientlal data accumulated by Boc^/Mind Centering work 1Ç) "to that tine. The ^llabus for the School's "two month in-

-taisive" during the summer of 1983 sugges-ts that Cohen and colleagues

have accortplished that "overview. " 283

This course of stucÿ will be divided into two major units: tbs skeletal-^nuscular system controlled by the somatic nervous system and the organs, glands and boc^ fluids controlled by the autonanic nervous system.. While the former is traditicnally considered to be the voluntary control system and the latter to be the involuntary con­ trol system, we will eiglore both as having aspects of each other. Each supports the other and together com­ prise one system. The first r^resents the container, structure, and form; the other the contents, process and flow. Each unit of stucfy, vdiile earphasizing one systan, will include the shadow and supporting function of the cccplanentary system (Cohai, 1983).

And of the second unit:

The inner vitality, organic flow, and wholeness of being is directed from the organs, glands and fluid systems. Each organ and endocrine gland will be eiglored sep­ arately and in cxahina-tion as they ini-tiate and support movement. The glands %\dll also be relatzed to the energy centers (chakras) along the ^ine and to the basic neuro­ logical patterns they govern. The dynamics of flow in meditation and movement - the con-tinum between rest and activity - will be experienced through the one oan-tinuous flow of b o ^ fluids (blood, lyrtph, tissue fluid, cerebral- ^inal fluid and synovial fluid). We will also e:ç)lore the balance between inner and outer focus projected by the synpathetlc and parasyitpathe-tic nervous complex of the autbomatdc nervous ^ s t e m (Cohen, 1983).

Modem scientific knowledge of the boc^ and an Eastem-in^ired quest

for the absolute in self-awareness have created here a tsrentieth century

t'ai chi t'u. Bo(^/Mind Centering offers to Cohen and her followers a vivid vision of yin and yang balance rootzed in scientific fact and their

own personal experience.

As daserved above Bardi was collaborator on The Organ ^fanual ;Aich

brou^t together insightzs and experience coming out of Cohen's Body/

Mind work with the organs up through 1977. While Cohen has gone on to

investigatze various otzher systzems witzhin the human organism, Bardi has

chosen to further exp)lore the organ work, its potential for the teaching

of h o â ^ awareness and for fuller dancing. 284

In terms of ix3eas, it (the organ work) vas one of the most provocati'v;^ to me - just tapping into sensations in areas of the boloration had really been neg­ lected. It vas fascinating to itE and, at the saite time, it was producing a conscious use of the bo(^ tliat nothing else could produce in terms of a flow of energy. At that point, all the work I had done seemed like separate activ­ ities. I felt the organ work began to bring those dif­ ferent areas of my life, training and work into a common e:ç)eriential focus (Bardi, 1981:33-34).

Contacting and activating tbe organs is accomp lished by a mental process involving visual imagery and the imagination. With concentrated practice, the martal process connects with "the kinesthetic sensation of movement recorded proprioceptors in the organ's smooth muscle"

(Bardi, 1981:34).

The thought and sensation of movement are maintained throigh a c).ear visual concentration on the organ's structure, form and placement in the torso, and a sense of weight falling throuiÿi the organ, integrating a natural coordination through organ, bcme, joint and muscles. It is qualitatively different from moving in any other way. The qualitative sensation of an organ supporting movement has a feeling of a mass, three- dimensional tissue mass, vdiich activates a movemait from all surfaces (front, side, back) of the torso, rather tijan a linear one-surface initiation (Bardi, 1981:34).

Bardi writes that prerequisite to the execution of an "integrated movenent" is the awareness of an organ supporting a particular area of

the body and of that organ initiating the movement. In the organ man­

ual, this process is referred to as "organ support precedes initiation

which precedes movement" (Bardi, 1981:34).

In introducing students to "the presence of tie organs in dancing, "

Bardi relies upon breath, that dynamic vAich has so determined the boc^

disciplines of the East and modem dance. Bardi the teacher urges stu­

dents to "direct the breath, direct it past the boney structure, and go 285 deeper within the torso" ®ardi, 1981:34), stressing to them that

"circular, three-dimensional breath" can isolate viiat practice has permitted them to perceive as a mass of tissue with clearly defined form and location.

Then the organs beocme vital and energized, rather than a passive mass vhich only serves its autonomic function and does not develop a "conscious" function. It is im­ portant to develop a conscious alertness that makes a performer alive and real. I feel that ty tapping into the internal presence of the body, the outer presence of the performer is really enriched. With the breathing, focus becomes very deep within that person's realm of themselves; it is a personal, internal experience (Bardi, 1981:35).

During the time that Patricia Bardi and fVn'i Turner vere preparing

The Organ Manual, collecting factual anatomical information from text­ books and discovering exercises for developing awareness of the sensa­ tions of the organs, Bardi was studying ballet with Colette Barry.

Her (Barry's) method of teaching classical ballet had evolved throu^ a structural understanding of Laban effort/shape and Bonnie Cohen's work, rather than a specific style of ballet. Biis gave me time in the classes to ^ p l y what I was learning about iry organs (Bardi, 1981:34).

Sunmary

It is in the Orient's celebration of the interconnectedness of existence and in its cultivation of mind-body integration as means of experiencing that interconnection that the traditions of East and West historically have differed. In the era of holism that dichotoiry be­ tween East and West, and with it the mo d e m dance/ballet dichotory grew less defined. With the nineteen eighties the modem dance/ballet dichotcny has proven to be a dialectic permitting to the most tradi­ tional of Western dance forms an assimilation of Eastern modes of 286 perception. Patricia Bardi and Colette Barry are but isolated examples of many contenporary dancers engaged in refined pursuits of ircLnd-boc^ integration, üi these practitioners of holistic, experiential dance one finds the fruits of the surface to essence journey of modem dance, for it is in the experiental realm that the essence of the East lies.

Conclusion

We were not only crude but vicious in our attitudes toward the Orient, and with infinite gratitude I can say very hmbly that I believe these early dances of mine helped to lay the groundwork for a better appreciation of Eastern culture and beauty. The rhythms, the costuming, and the constant suggestions of Oriental philosophy, implicit in the performance, caused discussions and research that have subtly penetrated the whole of America (St. Denis, 1939:139).

Historically the arts have both reflected and contributed to the wider cultural context of vdiich they are part. Such has been the case with modem dance. In the two hundred years since Sir William

"Oriental" Jones' establishment of the Asiatick Society in 1784, the

Wëst' s kncwledge of the East has progressed from near total lack of "awareness on to a vague abiliiy to recognize stereotypes’ of Qfien-tal style and custom and further on to a considerable understanding of the religious and philosophical matrix fixm which that style and custom arise. Likari.se, and as an index into this cross-cultural development, those aspects of the Orient attracting the attention of modem dancers have increasingly moved from style to substance, from surface to essence.

In 1898 Isadora Duncan indicted ballet as unnatural, as a cerebral ^stem di’vorced from the soul and body of the dancer. In so doing Duncan inaugurated mod e m dance. Due to its progressive. 287 nature-based birthright from Duncan, modem dance has been in a unique position to contribute to the West's increased understanding of the East. Ruth St. Denis' obsession witii the Orient insured that elenents of the Eastern world would figure in the develognent of modem dance. In an era of popular entertainment in ^Æiich siçier- ficial rendering of Oriental movement, dress, and decor ware standard fare, St. Denis gave the style of the East serious stage treatment.

Martha Graham e^glored the full potential lying in the Oriental legacy of St. Denis and Denishawn, her technique retaining much of the Eastern line St. Denis popularized in the West and her breath- in^ired "contraction-release" first objectii^ing that credo Duncan had been able to state only subjectively: movement is initiated fccm the CENTER. Graham's borrowing from J^«nese Noh and Kabuki in her dance theatre's treatment of time set the stage for Msrce

Cunningham's theatre of the moment vhich, in turn, spawned Zen- influenced post-modern dance. Graham technique, along with Zen and

Todd-Sweigard theory, influenced the technique of Erick Has«kins, which subsequently offered much to a cult of self-awareness through movement.

In the seventies these trends - that toward dance as ccsttnunal activity and that toward dance as self-actualizing therapy - merged in such ncn-presentational forms as Contact Improvisation and the t'ai chi ch'uan-inspired circle dances of Deborah Hay. Contemporary modem dancers gain acquaintance with the concepts of yin-yang balance, chi flew, and a general Oriental vision of the universe as an inter­ related totality through practice in yoga, meditation, and Oriental martial arts, enhanced by a background in kinesiology and psychology. 288 Running parallel to the assimilation of East by West in the holistic

health era of the nineteen eighties are instances of classical ballet -

flcwer of the mechanistic, dualistic West - being influenced by the

organic and experiential thrust of a modem dance still looking

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