ERRAND INTO THE MAZE

Portrait of a modern dance icon.

Veteran dance critic Jowitt offers an authoritative, sensitive biography of the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894-1991), who created more than 100 works and danced in most of them during a critically acclaimed career. In 1916, she enrolled at Denishawn, the school founded by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis, who became important artistic influences. Within a few years, she was teaching dance. In 1923, she debuted on Broadway in The Greenwich Village Follies, and in 1926, she made her debut as the choreographer of her own company. Intellectually voracious, ambitious, and determined, “Graham at thirty-two,” Jowitt writes, “manifested the focused energy of a tiger stalking a potential meal.” That energy infused her dancing, which was stripped of what she called “decorative non-essentials.” “All her movements,” Jowitt notes, “pulsating on her strong legs, twisting against her stance, recoiling, thrusting—took place between her shoulders and her knees.” The author chronicles the evolution of Graham’s work; the literary, cultural, and musical sources that inspired her; critics’ responses; and personal dramas. She had a long relationship with pianist and composer Louis Horst, who served as the music director of her company; her affair with Erick Hawkins, 15 years her junior, led to a short-lived marriage. To her students, she could be “both inspiring and a terror,” as demanding of them as she was of herself. By the 1960s, she choreographed dance works without demonstrating steps; she “reluctantly retired as a performer in 1970.” Resisting aging as long as she could, she underwent several facial surgeries and turned to alcohol. “She recovered from alcoholism, relapsed, was hospitalized, and recovered again,” Jowitt reveals. “But only temporarily.” Graham carefully honed a striking image: “thin, plain, gaunt, unadorned,” a journalist for Mademoiselle wrote in 1937. “She looks like a New England school teacher come to town on a limited dress and food budget.”

Prodigious research informs an insightful biography.