Martha Graham silences Madonna
316 East 63rd Street,
New York
Autumn 1978
?
By 1978, Martha Graham has a formidable reputation. Over the
course of her career, she has danced at the White House for eight US
presidents, and baffled almost as many. (She unites both sides in the Cold War:
after a sexually explicit production of Phaedra, her work is condemned as
'pornographic' in the House of Representatives, and in the Soviet Union she is
attacked as a disturbing influence on the young.)
?
Her work is adored and reviled in roughly equal measure. The
Graham technique, taught at the school she founded half a century ago, is
tense, percussive, sexually explicit. It is her belief that female dancers
should 'dance from the vagina'. One of her acolytes explains that 'Martha's
premise was that an act of lovemaking was an act of murder.'
?
Aged eighty-four, she maintains a ferocious temper, storming
in or out at the drop of a hat. She has been known to pull the cloth from a
restaurant table, scattering everything to the floor before making her exit.
Nowadays, she is spotted only rarely in her school, though rumor has it that
she is always there, like a demanding ghost.
?
The nineteen-year-old Madonna Ciccone has just taken her
first trip in an airplane. She arrives in New York City from Michigan, with $35
and a bag of dance tights, determined to make her name as a dancer. After she
tells the cab driver to take her to the centre of everything, he drops her off
in Times Square.
?
She auditions for a dance company, but fails. They tell her
she has drive but no technique, and advise her to enroll in the Martha Graham
Dance School. Within twenty-four hours she has signed up for beginners'
classes, paying her way by working in a fast-food restaurant.
?
'I dug this place. The studios were Spartan, minimalist.
Everyone whispered, so the only sounds you heard were the music and the
instructors, and they spoke to you only when you were fucking up - which was
pretty easy to do around there. It's a difficult technique to learn. It's
physically brutal and there is no room for slouches ... At one time in my life,
I had fantasized about being a nun, and this was the closest I was ever going
to get to convent life:
?
The topic of Martha Graham provides the backdrop to every
conversation. 'I wanted to meet the mother superior, the woman responsible for
all this.' She hears that Graham visits the building often, and she even sits
in on classes from time to time, either to check up on the teaching staff or to
scout for talent. Madonna grows obsessed with meeting her, much as a visitor to
Loch Ness might long to meet the monster. 'She stayed pretty hidden. I had
heard she was vain about growing old. Maybe she was really busy, or really shy,
or both. But her presence was always felt, which only added to her mystique and
to my longing to meet her ... She had a serious Garbo vibe about her and seemed
like she really wanted to be left alone.'
?
Madonna begins to daydream about running into her. 'I was
gonna be fearless and nonchalant. I would befriend her and get her to confess
all the secrets of her soul.'
?
With this aim in mind, she signs on for extra classes, and
lingers in the hallways in the hope of catching a glimpse. Sometimes, she
invents excuses to enter the offices. And then, one day, quite by chance, it
happens.
?
Madonna is in the middle of her 11 a.m. class. She has drunk
too much coffee. Against the rules, she nips out 'with my bladder at bursting
point.'
?
She heaves open the heavy door to the hallway and steps
outside the classroom, only to find herself face to face with Martha Graham.
'There she was, right in front of me, staring into my face. OK, not exactly in
front of me, but my appearance must have taken her by surprise.' no one ever
left the tomb-like classrooms until classes were over:
?
Graham stops dead in her tracks. Madonna is paralysed and,
for the first time in her life, and possibly the last, struck dumb. 'She was
part Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. The rest of her was a cross between a
Kabuki dancer and the nun I was obsessed with in the fifth grade, Sister
Kathleen Thomas. In any case, I was overwhelmed, and all my plans to disarm her
and win her over were swallowed up by my fear of a presence I'd never
encountered before.'
?
Graham doesn't say a word. 'She just looked at me with what
I thought was interest but was probably only disapproval. Her hair was pulled
back severely, displaying a pale face made up like a porcelain doll. Her chin
jutted out with arrogance and her eyes were like shiny brown immovable marbles.
She was small and big at the same time:
?
Madonna waits for words to spring from Martha Graham's
mouth, and daggers to fly out of her eyes. 'I ignored the aching in my lower
abdomen. I forgot that I had a big mouth and that I wasn't afraid of anyone.
This was my first true encounter with a goddess. A warrior. A survivor. Someone
not to be fucked with.'
?
Martha Graham says nothing, but flicks her long skirts and
disappears into a room, closing the door behind her. 'Before I could clear my
throat, she was gone. I was left shaking in my leotard, partly because I still
had to go to the bathroom but most because I had encountered such an exquisite
creature. I was truly dumbfounded ... Much has happened in my life since then
but nothing will diminish the memory of my first encounter with this woman -
this life force.'
?
Ten years later, Madonna is by far the most famous female
pop star in the world. Her performances incorporate elaborate dance routines:
tense, percussive, sexually explicit. One day, someone from the Martha Graham
Dance School contacts her office, saying that the school is facing bankruptcy.
'Give it one day.' comes the reply. The very next day, Madonna's office rings
back, offering $150,000. When Martha Graham, now aged ninety-four, is presented
with the cheque, she bursts into tears.
?
Craig Brown "Hello Goodbye
Hello" (2011)
