Smuin’s version, not the Kent Stowell and Maurice Sendak version.
Francia Russell, the director of the school, said to me, “You’re perfect for ‘Clara,’ because you are much more of an actress than a dancer.”
It was a condescending compliment. I couldn’t handle her honesty, but I did appreciate it. That’s why, at sixteen, when Francia Russell told me the most I could hope for as a ballet dancer was as a corps member in some Midwestern third-tier company, I decided to quit. My excuse was that I would act. But really, something inside died. An ex-dancer knows what I mean. When I left ballet, I left my identity. None of my dance classmates phoned. I had succumbed to failure. I did not have the biology. My extension was not high enough. I had breasts. I would never be a ballet dancer. I was nothing.
At the age of twenty-five, I had a lot to prove as a modern dancer. But I had placement and turn-out and good arches and musicality and presence. Ballet had given me all that. I was ready—in modern—to learn. I worked harder than all my classmates. I had lost years. I couldn’t waste a second.
In the summer of 1993, I felt I’d been given a second chance. I was home. In my body. In the body of a dancer. Or what would soon be the body of a dancer. There was much to do: shape the thighs; get the turnout working again; get the extension going; develop strength; balance. And jump. And land without hopping. God, I loved to jump. To leap. To fly to the sky and never ever land. To take to the heavens. The blue expanse holds me there.
The spirit ...
The spirit can be broken, but not from an aching body. The spirit is broken because often the dancer’s dream is unattainable. The dancer dreams of being a star. There are very few stars in the dance world. Very few. This realization dawns slowly.
And then the pain sets in. And the pain sets in deeper. And you keep dancing because you must, because you realize you are a gambler, and you realize if you cannot get that split fall just right you will never succeed at life. If your plié does not improve, and quick, you will fail in the world. Your center is working overtime, and you do not hear reason. There is no reason. Only movement. A certain psychosis takes over. You are willing to move and to move and to move.
So I moved in the dance studios of Martha Graham. I began contracting. The Graham contraction hollows out the abdomen so that it looks like a sail filled with air. The spine is the webbing of the sail and the legs are the ropes. I contracted.
I didn’t listen to reason. I ingested four Aleve tablets a day. I took Tums. I placed Chinese plasters over my lower back, rubbed Tiger Balm Extra Strength on my hips, took an Epsom salt bath every night, massaged my feet without oil—you want tough, hard skin—and wore sweatpants to bed even in summer.
I felt that my heart could encompass the sky because I was home in a dancer’s body. There was no place else I wanted to be.
Act One
“One began a spiral fall by pivoting on both feet while leaning back and contracting on bent knees, descending and turning simultaneously until the shoulders grazed the floor and one came to rest on one’s back. The element of excitement was supplied by the fraction of a second during which the body was totally off balance and falling. One recovered by reversing the process, jackknifing, circling forward, and rising to stand erect.”
—Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham
Graham Crackers
The first day of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance Summer Intensive, there is a large spot of dried and crusted blood in the center of the main studio floor. Advanced dancers doing sparkles on the diagonal across the floor jump before the blood and land afterward.
“Take to the air,” yells Pearl Lang. She is petite, elderly, full of spine. Her gray-black hair is pulled with a small pink bow into a small chignon at the base of her neck.
One barefoot young woman lands smack on the crusted blood. Claire is usually a very careful, very precise dancer. The entire line of dancers, each waiting a turn, cringes.
Although the floor and center exercises took up an hour and a half of the two-hour class, no one cleaned up the blood. Kristi is absent. Kristi doesn’t mind cleaning up blood and sometimes checks the studio floor before class. Spilled blood is a regular occurrence in a Graham class. Since modern dancers dance barefoot, often the skin tears or burns from the pressure of contact with the floor. If there’s blood, Kristi gets the rubbing alcohol and paper towel and wipes the floor. She never uses gloves. Kristi also goes barefoot at Grateful Dead concerts.
It is a bold move to be absent for the first day of Summer Intensive, especially when company auditions will take place at the end of the six-week session. Absence means weakness. Survival of the fittest is taken to new heights in the Graham School. You must not simply survive. You must thrive or perish. If you perish, it’s your own fault. The lipid content of your cellular structure is your fault, too.
Art won’t come to the weak. And art isn’t authentic if it doesn’t bleed. In other fields—take the visual arts, for example—young people haphazardly and loosely refer to themselves as artists before they even know what it means to be touched by fire—as if without practice and guts and pain, they are already exalted simply because they label themselves artists. But at Graham, no pain means no gain. I dare you to toss around the word artiste lest you rot in hell for your audacity.
It takes ten years to make a dancer, says Martha.
Martha has been dead for two years, but Summer Intensive is still sacred: Pearl Lang teaches the composition class. It happens right after technique class. The dancers make up stupid twisty movements and call the amalgamation of their favorite moves choreography. Always one idiot dancer puts in a grand jeté—legs split, leaping high across the floor—and always Pearl takes it out.
“Yes dear,” Pearl says, “I know you love to leap, but show me something you don’t love to do, and make it original.”
Pearl speaks kindly because, usually, the girl has no talent. Pearl does not speak kindly to those with talent. It’s a given. If you can’t take it, get out. This girl, Fran, will become an arts administrator, and then she’ll marry a wealthy banker named Ted who works on Wall Street for Merrill Lynch. Pearl knows not to alienate money and the financial support of the arts. Fran might even think she could have made it. Usually the untalented in any field are unrealistic that way.
Pearl calls the short pieces “compositions,” but the dancers call their pieces “choreography.” They pronounce the “ch” as in “chore,” so the word “choreography” sounds as odd as the little squirmy dance pieces look. No matter. The dancers know the pieces look odd, and they know they look like fools flailing about center floor, but they also know the little pieces of “choreography” are just a practice exercise, like copying a famous painting into a sketch book. But there’s no framed picture hanging on the wall of Martha’s studio; instead, there’s just sweat in the air and blood on the floor. Lots of dancers have bodies that resemble gorgeous frames hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art—but not the Met where Leo will end up as a has-been dancing in the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. There are plenty of dancers with beautiful bodies but no passion within.
