About Errand into the Maze (1947)
November 29 marks the release of the 5th volume in the Collection Chefs-d'œuvre de la danse (co-published by micadanses and Nouvelles Éditions Scala). Written by Daniel Dobbels and Hélène Marquié, Errand into the Maze. Martha Graham, contextualizes the work within the choreographer's wider career. You can pre-order the book on the Decitre. For the occasion of its release, we take a look back at the original ballet.
Errand into the maze (1947) is a 15 minute long ballet featuring two characters, a woman and a Creature of fear, or in other words, a female Theseus and a Minotaur-like character. Martha Graham’s choreography is indeed derived from the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur, as will be explored later. The title, however, comes from the opening lines from a poem, “Dance Piece”, written by her poet colleague Ben Belitt.
The errand into the maze,
Emblem, the heel’s blow upon space,
Speak of the need and order the dancer’s will.
But the dance is still.
[...]
The ballet premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in February 1947. To this day, it remains one of Graham’s most best-known ballets, in that it has remained in the Company’s repertoire, and gave its title to Deborah Jewitt’s biographical book, published in 2024. Renowned dance writer, she draws on more than a decade of first-hand research to portrait Graham, placing her at the heart of her creations, to which she was intimately linked as she often was the main character.
It is worth mentioning the few changes the ballet has undergone over the years, notably the change of choreographer from Martha Graham in 1947 to Gertrud Bodenwieser in 1954. Both versions use the same music, but in different ways. Martha Graham had originally commissioned it from the well-established stage composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The musicians - in typical chamber orchestra composition -, play a tonal music, rhythmic, “angular”, reflecting the movements of modern dance.
Burkhart, Rudolf. Model of Noguchi’s Set for Errand into the Maze. 1947. Photograph. The Noguchi Museum
Another important element is the forced change of set and costumes. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the basement storage room of the Martha Graham Dance Center got submerged for over a week. 8,000 (original) costumes, 100 (original) sets, templates, archival paper material were damaged or destroyed. The ballet was nevertheless programmed by artistic director Janet Eilber, in a version without the original costumes designed by Martha Graham and the sets designed by Isamu Noguchi. These surrealistic sets were part of a larger artistic collaboration with Graham which had begun in 1935 for Frontier. Graham's choreographies were less and less about time and place, and this was reflected in the sets created in collaboration with Noguchi, “[whose] sculpture became the furnishings of a woman's mind”. As quoted in Conley (2016), Graham explained that:
“Without Isamu Noguchi I could have done nothing. He gave me a sense of inhabited space, space that is vibrant and living, not just empty… . Always he has given me something that lived on stage as another character, as another dancer, I have Isamu to thank for that” (Eilber, Printz, and Rychlak, 2004, quoted in Conley, J. L. (2016))
· A choreography derived from myths ·
The subject of the dance derives from the Greek myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur. As a reminder, the myth tells the story of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur, a bull-man monster living in an unsolvable maze from which no one can escape. As she enters the labyrinth with Theseus and the other young men sent as sacrifices, she leaves behind a thread that will enable them to escape. Later, Theseus is said to abandon her on the island of Naxos, where she meets Dionysus.
With these elements in mind, one understands better the ballet’s themes such as conquering one’s inner demons. However, Janet Eilber herself explained that the myth was so abstract, diluted, that it functioned more as a metaphor than as a retelling (Conley, 2016). At its core, the ballet “[...] is an errand into the maze of the heart’s darkness in order to face and do battle with the Creature of Fear” (original programme, 1947)
Martha Graham had begun incorporating women from Greek myth and literature into her choreography as early as 1946, but was reluctant to name them as such. At the creation of Cave of the Heart, Graham identified herself as “One Like Medea” and her dance partner Hawkins as “One Like Jason” (Jewitt, 2024). In Errand into the maze, neither the protagonist (Ariadne) nor the Minotaur are named as such. Yet we understand their presence. In the myth, Ariadne carries a thread: on stage, it becomes a rope. The length of the rope and the irregularity of its layout alone suggest the labyrinth. As for the creature of fear, with which the protagonist is confronted three times, Noguchi has partially masked it with a bull's head, which would evolve in the 1980s into a golden headdress in the shape of a bull's horns.
The protagonist walks towards a suggestive V-shaped wooden frame. Some see it as a tree, others as a woman's crotch; Graham and Noguchi referred to it as “the pelvis”. At first alone, she seems to be fighting internal emotions, contracting, trembling (Jewitt, 2024), giving the sensation of emotions occupying the whole space of the scene. In the choreography, we notice a movement that is still being learned in Graham's class: “[it] involves standing on one leg and, over and over, circling the other slightly bent leg forward and then oppositely to the back to create a figure eight. Performed with the dramatic intent that Graham brought to it in Errand into the Maze, it suggests someone preparing for violence, whipping herself on.” (Jewitt, 2024).
After the confrontations, the dancer subdues the creature, which falls to the ground in surrender. In her work with myths, Martha Graham makes time elastic, allowing different events and places to appear simultaneously. Sometimes the dance stops, while others dilate time (Conley, 2016). In the case of Errand into the Maze, the protagonist still dances when the curtain falls. Martha Graham was influenced by Jung's theories of psychological archetype; her heroine's dance can then be seen as a journey into the self, and, in the landscape created by Isamu Noguchi, a journey through the landscapes of mind and body.
The dancers' bodies maintain dynamic relationships with the stage and sets (Conley, 2016). But, after the loss of the originals in Hurricane Sandy, does the meaning and understanding of the work remain the same? In particular, we might wonder about the new scope of the dramatic intent of Martha Graham's work between the first version in 1947 and Errand's premiere in 2013: what changes for the audience, what changes in the dancers' expression? (Conley, 2016)
Errand into the Maze. 1947. Photograph. Pictorial Press, London, February 28, 1947
As a conclusion, this quote from Errand into the Maze (Jewitt, 2024): « In the coming years, Graham would continue to draw roles for herself from history and legend. But these works of the 1940s seem to have been not only inspired by the times and by her readings, but forged from her own most powerful terrors and desires. Audiences received them as great, daunting, perhaps mystifying works of art; for her they were also lessons in endurance, confrontation, and survival. »
· bibliography ·
AllMusic. (n.d.). Errand Into the Maze, ballet for Martha Graham (from “Cave of the Heart”). AllMusic. Consulté le 7 novembre 2024, à l'adresse https://www.allmusic.com/composition/mc0002358764
Conley, J. L. (2016). Visions of Landscape in Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze. Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings, 2016, 72–80. doi:10.1017/cor.2016.12
Library of Congress. (2001). Errand Into the Maze: Graham’s vision of myth and modernity [PDF]. Library of Congress. Consulté le 7 novembre 2024, à l'adresse https://lcweb2.loc.gov/natlib/ihas/service/graham.1/200153664/200153664.pdf
Martha Graham Dance Company. (n.d.). Errand Into the Maze (1947). Martha Graham Dance Company. Consulté le 7 novembre 2024, à l'adresse https://marthagraham.org/portfolio-items/errand-into-the-maze-1947/
Prince, A. (2008). Uncovering Graham’s Landscape. Journal of Dance Research, 23(1), 45-56. https://doi.org/10.3316/INFORMIT.651458295123477
Siegel, M. (2013). Visions of Landscape in Martha Graham’s Errand Into the Maze. Congress on Research in Dance Proceedings, Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0149767713000231
Sulcas, R. (2013, 17 février). Martha Graham’s “Imperial Gesture,” Reconstructed. The New York Times. Consulté le 7 novembre 2024, à l'adresse https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/arts/dance/martha-grahams-imperial-gesture-reconstructed.html