MARTHA GRAHAM AND INDIA

Abstract

ABSTRACT My dissertation analyzes American modern dancer Martha Graham, the unacknowledged presence of Indian aesthetics in her work from the 1920s through 1958, and the influence of Graham on younger Indian dancers creating Indian modern dance between 1964 into the 2000s. The dissertation examines comparative modernities between Indian and North American dance modernism, which in India encompasses the recovery of classical forms starting in the 1920s and the development of Indian modern dance in the post-independence era. Using literary intertextual theory, dramaturgical analysis, and oral history methodologies, this dissertation problematizes the facile notion that Graham was a cultural appropriator. It argues that the relationship between Martha Graham and India was not only reciprocal, but strengthened Indo-American relations through several stages of kinaesthetic and philosophical cross-cultural exchange. Graham took from her early dance training at the Denishawn School yoga breathing elements and principles such as bhakti (devotion) that she would transform into her revolutionary modern dance technique. Graham’s modernism, which many see as exemplified in her iconic contraction and release is seen to derive from the kundalini yoga and energy techniques. At the same time as Graham was developing her dance vocabulary, Rukmini Devi in India was developing her own through Bharatanatyam, based on similar notions of energy, rhythm, beauty, and liberation. All the while, Graham was refining her personal vision of India by reading Indian authors such as Santha Rama Rau, R. S. Pandit, Ceylonese thinker Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, as well as Western writers E.B. Havell, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, and Carl Gustav Jung, references to all of whom can be found in The Notebooks of Martha Graham (1973). Graham would first set foot in India during her tour of Asia funded by the U.S. State Department (1955-56). Effectively Cold War cultural diplomats performing dances that were hand-selected for their democratic American ideals of universalism and freedom, the Martha Graham Dance Company visited the Indian cities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay and Delhi. Many Indian scholars found common political ground with Graham and even indigenous critical response prioritized aesthetic over political content; the result was a successful cultural exchange between Graham and Indian dancers and thinkers. Indian audiences swiftly picked up on Indian symbolism in her dances, especially in Cave of the Heart (1946), and Ardent Song (1954). For her own part, Graham marvelled at the Indian dances she saw during her visit. Graham’s post-tour choreography Clytemnestra (1958) displayed a dramaturgical rather than technical involvement with Indian aesthetics. While taking its story from Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, it owes much dramaturgically to Indian theatrical and philosophical traditions, rooting its female-centric retelling of Aeschylus in a literary archetype of the ‘Great Mother,’ which traces back to Goddess Kali of Indian myth. Graham also draws from 5th century classical Indian poet Kālidāsa’s meta-Theater of Memory and from performance theories of rasa (the psychology of emotions in the audience-performer relationship) for the scenography and choreographic structure of the ballet. In the wake of Graham’s tour, many younger Indian dancers came to the U.S. to study and work with the Graham Company, traveling in waves between 1964 and 2009. Graham’s considerable influence on the development of Indian modern dance became evident in 1984.