|
The
Graham Archives
Martha Graham on The Dance Insider Online "In rejecting non-dancer Ron Protas's claim that he and he alone owns the name 'Martha Graham' and the term 'Martha Graham technique,' Federal District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum in one swift incision excised a cancer that had gnawed away at the body Graham for years and threatened to destroy the greatest legacy in modern dance, returning that body to the dancers in whom Martha truly lives and through whom she truly speaks." --
The Dance Insider, August
14, 2001
To access the articles below, you must have a user name and password. To get a user name and password, you'll need to purchase a yearly subscription with access to archives, for $34.95, with a group rate of $99 for dance companies, theaters, and schools. This gets you full access to all Archives (Flash Reviews, Buzz, etc.), going back to 1999. For information on how to subscribe, e-mail us. Keep independent, quality dance journalism alive. Subscribe today. Latest News, Reviews, & Views Flash Perspective, 6-11: ReachDoes Martha Graham appeal to young people? By Kelly Centrelli Copyright 2009 Kelly Centrelli Photography by and copyright Julie Lemberger Click here for the full article...
Flash Lesson, 3-10: Every class is a prayer
In Memorium, 3-10: Deaths and Entrances
The
Buzz, 6-1 (Headline Corrected): Point of Crossing
The
Buzz, 5-30: Deaths & Entrances
The
Buzz, 5-16: Canticle for Innocent Artistic Directors "At base this seems
to have been a power struggle, which we did not know was being fought.
We were too busy working, and we have lost."
-- Christine Dakin
& Terese Capucilli, former artistic directors of the Martha Graham Dance
Company, in ArtsCure.
"Janet... is in
New York at least once a month."
-- LaRue Allen, executive
director, Martha Graham Center, on current artistic director Janet Eilber.
For nearly a year
now, we have been waiting for Francis Mason, chairman of the board of
directors of the Martha Graham Center, to explain to the world why the
board fired
the legendary Graham dancers Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin as artistic
directors and replaced them with a director, Janet Eilber, who would not
even commit to living in the same town as her dancers. (Initially, the
board tried to spin the firing as an 'elevation,' a claim quickly torpedoed
by Capucilli and Dakin.) Now we finally have a response from LaRue Allen,
executive director of the Martha Graham Center. Her statement below is
followed by a response from Capucilli and Dakin, and one from me. Click
here to read the full article..
The
Buzz, 5-10: Diversion of Acolytes
Flash
Review, 4-21: Part Here, Part Gone By Chappelle Chambers
Flash
Response, 4-14: Misdirected
The
Buzz, 4-11: Same ol' Lamentation Well, this is great. Janet Eilber, the artistic director du jour of the Martha Graham entities, is now inferring -- to Elizabeth Zimmer in this week's Village Voice -- that Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin, the Martha Graham Dance Company's strongest pillars during the dark Protas decade, did not have the stuff to change with the times. No, it took Eilber -- who wouldn't even commit to live in the same town as the dancers when she replaced the fired Capucilli and Dakin as director last year -- to lead the oldest and arguably most important modern dance company in the world into a future that quickly assumed the contours of the dustbin of history. Click here to read the full article..
Martha Graham Company and School on Film The Dance Insider
Photo Album In January 2003, after 17 months of court battles over its very right to exist, the Martha Graham Dance Company returned to the stage for its first full season in close to three years. Our Julie Lemberger was there, at the Joyce Theater in New York City, to record new images from these famous dances. Click here to view the complete Photo Album... The Martha Graham School captured in session in New York City, just after a federal court confirmed its right to its name. Click here to view the video clip... Flash Reviews and essays listed in reverse chronological order, the most recent first. Flash
Essay, 4-6: Shape Shapes Meaning Flash
Review 2, 3-23: Everything's Coming up Marthas
Flash
Review 1, 3-16: Martha, More than Ever
Flash Review 2, 4-27-04:
A Graham Primer Except for the first entry, articles are listed in chronological order, the earliest first. Flash Document, 1-18-2001:
Who Owns Martha Graham? PARIS -- One of the
reasons I cried to see Isadora Duncan's ever-so-humble, almost anonymous
urn at Pere Lachaise cemetery here was its reminder of the historic lack
of recognition accorded Modern Dance. Besides Duncan, only one name is
universally recognized outside our circle of dance professionals and afficianados:
Martha Graham. Martha's importance goes beyond that of symbol. If Duncan
made natural movement legitimate, Graham gave it a technique that guaranteed
it would be more than just a form of expression, but one with its own
artistic language, equal in technical demand and expressive potential
to ballet. A grounding in that technique has become as important to becoming
a qualified modern dancer and giving justice to interpreting the works
of modern choreographers as ballet training is to ballet dancers. Thus,
when the Martha Graham company board suspended operations of both the
company and school last summer, citing financial reasons, as tragic as
it was to see dancers out of work and audiences deprived of their performances,
dance insiders knew that the bigger longterm danger to the field was the
closure of the school. So the news this week that the board had found
the financial wherewithal to re-open the school at its old headquarters
seemed indisputably good. However the board and former director Ron Protas,
who owns the ballets, resolved their dispute, at least the training would
continue.
"Can you yourself perform the Martha Graham technique?" -- Dale Cendali, attorney for the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, questioning Ron Protas "What do you mean, perform?" -- Ron Protas, Martha Graham's heir, currently suing the Graham Center to stop it from using Graham's name
By Paul Ben-Itzak "The new corporation purchased on 12/1/56 the existing school of dance which Martha Graham had been carrying on. The corporation agreed to pay Ms. Graham $50,000, and Ms. Graham agreed not to permit the use of her name...in connection with any other school or company." -- Louis Goodkind, attorney for the Martha Graham Foundation, in a 1957 letter to the Internal Revenue Service
By Paul Ben-Itzak "...Protas is not Martha Graham." -- Federal District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, August 7, 2001 By Paul Ben-Itzak PARIS -- In rejecting non-dancer Ron Protas's claim that he and he alone owns the name "Martha Graham" and the term "Martha Graham technique," Federal District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum in one swift incision excised a cancer that had gnawed away at the body Graham for years and threatened to destroy the greatest legacy in modern dance, returning that body to the dancers in which Martha truly lives and through which she truly speaks. Click here for the full article... Though it rained heavily in Manhattan last Friday afternoon, the atmosphere inside the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance was sunnier than it had been in months. "We're out from under a cloud, a malignant cloud," explained Stuart Hodes, Head of School, "A dark force existed and it suddenly appears to no longer exist." Hodes was speaking about the initial outcome of a lawsuit brought against both the Martha Graham School and the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance by Ron Protas, sole heir to Martha Graham, as well as the artistic director of the Martha Graham Trust. The lawsuit, filed last January, challenged the School and Center's right to use Graham's name to describe themselves and the technique that they teach. Protas cited trademark infringement, among other claims, because he had been granted trademark registration for "Martha Graham" and "Martha Graham Technique" in 1995, four years after Graham's death. Click here for the full article... NEW YORK, April 1 -- In a stunning development announced early this morning, April 1, Ron Protas, the principal heir named in Martha Graham's will, announced that he would relinquish his legal claims to Graham's ballets "for the good of dance, and because Martha told me to do so." The last stumbling block to the unexpected concession, dance insiders say, was removed when the Martha Graham Dance Company agreed to let Protas stage a previously undiscovered revision of Graham's 1958 classic, "Clytemnestra," with the heretofore unknown title, "Faster, Clytemnestra! Kill! Kill!" Click here for the full article... (Editor's note: The
following are in response to Flash News and Analysis, 4-26: Errand into
the Legal Maze, Friday's
report and opinion on the Graham v. Graham trial continuing
this week in Federal District Court in Manhattan.)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Of the 191 ballets created by Modern Dance pioneer Martha Graham over eight decades, only 70 survive. And those ballets could perish forever and Martha Graham's name with them if a federal district court declares former Martha Graham Center director Ron Protas the owner of the ballets. But if Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum buys the Martha Graham Center's argument that it owns the ballets -- or at least those created since 1956, when the center was formed and Graham became its employee -- the rights of other choreographers to the work they created could also be in danger. Click here for the full article... BENNINGTON, Vermont -- In high school I was told that Martha Graham was the "Mother of Modern Dance." I was shown a video of her classic "Lamentations." That was proof enough for me. The mere mention of Martha Graham's name is what made me decide to attend Bennington College, where Graham was a member of the founding faculty of the summer dance program launched by Martha Hill. Now, I eat dinner one floor below Graham's old studio, which is filled with musical instruments, dusty and unused, and closed off because it is considered a fire hazard. But with the aid of old photographs taken during Graham's time here, I have stepped inside the studio and imagined a scene here. Click here for the full article... "It was exactly as I remember it." -- Tony Randall, actor and former Martha Graham student By Paul Ben-Itzak NEW YORK -- The Martha Graham Center owns copyrights to 45 of the ballets created by Martha Graham, Ron Protas owns one, and ten are in the public domain, a Federal judge ruled Friday, in a landmark decision that saved Modern Dance's greatest legacy by placing it securely in the trove of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Click here for the full article... For the first time since the death of Martha Graham in 1991, the Martha Graham Dance Company will be directed by dancers, veteran principals Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin, a company spokesman said this week. The company also announced a $1.5 million challenge grant from its board, including $1 million from Delores Barr Weaver, and the repertoire for its first season in nearly three years, a line-up spanning more than 60 years of Graham work demonstrating the sheer breadth of her choreographic canvas. Click here for the full article...
The
Buzz, 5-30: Fissures & Fusions, Romance & Cigarettes Graham Cracks
Flash
Statement, 6-2: Letter to the Dance World For three decades
with the Martha Graham Dance Company, we have danced for Martha, been
associate artistic directors, artistic directors, taken the company through
a boycott to win the rights to dance Martha's work and struggled to revive
the company in the face of ongoing legal and financial challenges. Our
allegiance to Martha Graham's great work and the quality of our own work
is well known. Click
here for the full statement...
The
Buzz, 3-28: Graham Grovels So the board of directors
of the Martha Graham Dance Company, which in its infinite wisdom last
year fired
as artistic directors the two people arguably most responsible for keeping
the company together during the Ron Protas years and replaced them with
a director who would be commuting from the other side of the United States,
has now reduced its dancers to begging for money from journalists in order
to make it to its 80th birthday and a series of celebrations planned in
New York next month. Click
here for the full article..
|
