Lesson Overview:

This lesson centers on four of Martha Graham's "inner landscapes" of women choreographies.

The first segment—Lamentation (1930)—suggests ways to engage students in examining Graham's early experiments in psychological and emotion-centered choreography.

The next two segments—Letter to the World (1940) and Deaths and Entrances (1941)—recommends approaches for exploring these psychological profiles based on the life and poems of Emily Dickinson and the lives of the three Bronte sisters.

The fourth segment suggests ideas for studying Diversion of Angels (1948), Graham's profile of archetypal patterns of stages of love.

Length of Lesson:

Six 45-minute class periods

Instructional Objectives:

Students will:

• consider ways intense emotion can be expressed through body movements.
• experiment with kinetic expression of emotion.
• analyze aspects of Martha Graham's Lamentation -an expression of deep grief through dance movement.
• review Emily Dickinson's biography and examine themes and forms of some of her poems.
• critique an overview statement of the narrative, as well as structural and textural development of Graham's Letter to the World.
• measure ways Graham integrates aspects of Dickinson's life and the themes and forms of her poetry into Letters to the World.
• analyze specific ways Graham builds a psychological profile of Dickinson in Letters to the World.
• acquire background information on the lives and novels of the three Bronte sisters.
• critique an overview statement about Graham's Deaths and Entrances, giving special attention to her techniques for building a psychological dance-drama based on aspects of the lives of the Bronte sisters.
• distinguish and demonstrate basic aspects of abstract expression in the arts.
• critique specific ways Graham builds abstract patterns in Diversion of Angels.
• examine the Freudian and Jungian implications in Diversion of Angels' basic theme and projection of theme.
• formulate conclusions based on collaborative problem-solving activities related to four works.
• develop and participate in a variety of creative endeavors related to study these rworks.
• write analytical essays and respond in writing to a variety of assignments.

Instructional Plan:

Martha Graham has made many innovative and provocative contributions to the world of dance. Perhaps none has had as forceful an impact as her dance images of women. These inner or interior landscapes of women are an intense reflection of the influences that affected dramatic philosophical and cultural change, reshaping the arts at the turn of the century.

Consider the following assignments as ways to help students identify with specific influences that contributed to this segment of Graham's work and understand specific statements emerging from the selected dance-dramas.

Divide the students into four groups, and pass out Assignment A: Defining Influences at Work.

After going over the questions with the students, have each group choose a reporter—who will report back to the class on what was discussed, including what items were included or excluded.

Part 1

This part of the lesson offers suggestions for engaging students in the exploration of the four selected dance-dramas with emphasis on how to draw on them to illuminate work in other disciplines.

Lamentation (1930)

Lamentation was one of Graham's first solo ventures into the deep psychological studies, which would dominate her work in the 40's. In many ways, the work was her declaration of independence from earlier modern dance forms, yet still showed influence of her Denishawn background.

Lamentation provides the opportunity to immerse students into the Martha Graham experience and appreciation of her magnificent choreographic skill and the power. It also offers a way to emphasize how dance, visual and other performing arts gave witness to the dramatic cultural changes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—changes driven by the growth of the psychological sciences, world events, and social and cultural change.

1. Share with students that Lamentation is a threshold statement of change. Note that its movement into abstract expression heralds the future of dance and other arts in the remainder of the 20th and early part of the 21st centuries.


Help to clarify this assertion through the following assignment. Ask students to volunteer to prepare—either individually or in pairs—brief oral presentations on these background topics:
• Details of the infusion of Orientalism into Western culture, particularly the arts, spurred by the opening of the Suez Canal and the Far East.
• Discussion of Art Nouveau and Art Deco as cultural movements.
• Overview of late 19th century elaborate dance settings and the impact of electric lighting on dance staging and costuming (Loie Fuller, for instance).
• Explanation of the nature of German expressionism and its impact on modern dance (Isadora Duncan) and the arts throughout Europe and in America.
• Details about the nature of Ted Shawn/Ruth St. Denis' choreography within the framework of early modern dance.

Note: A primary goal of this activity is to provide a point of departure that, through contrast, helps to:

1. illuminate the nature of Martha Graham's choreographic innovations
• introversion in themes
• stripping away of artifice through minimalist and abstract expression
• the search for new structures and movement to articulate the inner self, while still achieving distance from the actual self.
2. illustrate ways her innovations align with artists in other genres—creating new voices that articulated the impact of a world torn by war, Depression, and displacement.

Note: Comparing Graham with the artistic distancing of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot may help illuminate her search and achievements, as well as help clarify the authors' works. (This approach is particularly appropriate for grades 11 and 12.)

Consider:

• Joyce's argument about the role of an author in Portrait of an Artist;
• Pound's idea of an image as a vortex;
• Eliot's concept of an objective correlative.

2. The following activity is based on the assumption that immersing students into a virtual experience—attempting to mirror the artist's creative vision—helps inculcate understanding of and appreciation for the artist's achievement.
• Place students on individual chairs spaced around the room. (If desks do not allow this arrangement, ask students to sit cross-legged on the floor.)
• Show students a newspaper or magazine clipping of a woman's face—a woman who has experienced deep grief as a result of an intense loss.
• Give students a chance to study the face; consider making copies of the picture for each.
• Ask students to close their eyes and meditate on ways the grief may be playing out in the woman's mind and heart (ex: feelings of guilt, thinking of what might have been, "what ifs.")
• Instruct students to begin to move their bodies, expressing through movement the grief the woman is experiencing.
3. Show videotape and/or clips or graphics of Lamentation. (The Martha Graham Dance Company has an excellent performance videotape, which can be purchased and is available in some libraries.)




Explain to students what they are about to see and initiate a brief discussion on the meaning of the word Lamentation.

Consider showing the film (which is brief) twice.

Ask students to note:

• the use and impact of the jersey material covering the dancer
• the range of grief covered
• how a specific movement portrays a particular aspect of grief
• the contribution of facial expression (does it change or is it static?)
• the relationship of the music to the movement

Discuss Lamentation with the class, covering the aspects listed above.

• In what specific ways does the dancer's use of flexible material support the dancer's projection of grief?




Concepts to cover include:

• The material is an intrinsic part of the dancer's deep emotional context of grief, symbolically reinforcing the assertion that the grief is all-encompassing, penetrating every fiber of the body. The harder one tries to pull against it to shake it off, the more the grief constricts.
• The tube covering could be considered as a symbolic shroud—a death-in-life symbol, a state from which one cannot ever escape.
• Describe how the dancer's movements project deep grief.

Some possible responses:

• interplay of prolonged—wailing motions with abrupt hit-in-the-heart contractions;
• rocking, tilting motions that suggest a momentum of anguish that can't be stopped;
• thrusts of the body that suggest lightning hits of uncontrollable pain;
• movements of the head that suggest moments of disbelief—reinforcing the awareness that nothing can be done, the finality of the loss, the impossibility of shaking off the grief.
• Describe the facial expression(s) and what it contributes to the projection of emotion




Note: This discussion could center on whether a passive face (a single, sustained expression of grief) or shifting facial expressions best reinforces the thematic center of the choreography.

After hearing students' views, share the opinion of a noted critic that shifting demeanor seemed to take away from the dramatic impact of a performance. What argument could support that position?

(Possible response: the distancing of art—a passive face or one sustained face of deep grief is more universal)
• Comment on specific ways you think the music reinforces the sense of grief and the dance movements projecting grief.


Possible responses:
• the dissonant tone quality;
• the forceful punctuation of the thrusts of movement;
• the undercurrent of primal wailing, which adds to the sense of no escape from the grief of loss
• What is the significance of Martha Graham's statement that her audience was really only composed of one woman?


Encourage students to think in terms of Carl Jung's archetypes of
• a universal woman grieving
• the figure as an abstract representation of all women from all time grieving a deep loss

Special Topics for Research and Discussion

• It has been suggested that Martha Graham took inspiration from the 1907 bronze sculpture Russian Beggar Woman by Expressionist Ernst Barlach. Students could be encouraged to compare them
• What is similar?
• What goes beyond in Graham's work?
• Share with students that the Riverstown Arts Council in Dobbs Ferry, NY headlined their annual fall dance event with a performance of Lamentation in tribute to those who died in the terrorist attack of 9/11.




You can use this information to initiate a discussion about possible ways the audience may have responded:

• As a shared experience of grief and mourning too deep for tears.
• In the context that the nation will never be able to throw off the deep grief felt about September 11.
• As an acknowledgement that people want to go on but will never be able to escape their anger and/or the nation's searing scar?
• As a statement that universal grief helps heal.
• Other ideas.

Letter to the World (1940)

This psychological dance-drama is centered on the life legends and poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Much of Emily Dickinson's life was lived through her wide-ranging imagination. She communicated with the world through her poems, which were crafted as dialogues, conversations between her inner self and a silent outside listener—an other. Her poems were her letters to a world that did not answer back.

By choice, Dickinson lived in solitude. But her inner landscape—the filter through which she experienced, viewed, and communicated with the world—was an incredibly rich universe, full of complexity, intellectual astuteness, intense passion, and provocative, vibrant metaphorical visions.

Martha Graham and Emily Dickinson had much in common. Both were of New England stock and in disharmony with their rigid, Puritan backgrounds. Both were rebels, daring to reach for innovative ways to express the creative drive within. No wonder Graham was drawn to Dickinson's life and poetry as a subject for her genius choreography.

Studying Letter to the World is best achieved by recognizing the reciprocal value of Dickinson's poetry and Graham's choreography, in tandem, noting ways that analysis of one can illuminate the examination of the other.

1. Assign students, as homework, to gather biographical data on Emily Dickinson's life.
• Have the students share their information in class.
• Construct a master list of key points, including her:
• Puritan upbringing in an intellectual family on the Amherst College campus;
• reason for leaving South Hadley Female Seminary (Mount Holyoke College);
• presumed love infatuation with a married minister;
• withdrawal from society;
• place in the American Transcendental movement—prevalent among New England intellectuals at the time she was writing.
2. Discuss with students general approaches to understanding a poem.
3. Prepare the students to be able to explain forms and themes of several Dickinson poems, including Letters to the World, for the culminating section of the lesson.


The goal is to help students grasp the conceptual center of Martha Graham's Letter choreography, as well as recognize common themes and forms found in Dickinson's poetry and Graham's dance composition.

Suggested Approaches

• Differentiate between form and theme.
• Form—the way the poem is crafted.
• Theme—the statement that emerges from this craftsmanship (form) of the poem.
• Encourage students to examine the form of a poem from two perspectives:
• Structure—the arrangement of parts of a poem in order to build cohesive whole (the way each part is related to each other part)


Note: Structure, in Dickinson poems, also includes third dimensional patterns (also found in Graham's choreograph), which results in the poems having enhanced artistic force.
• Texture—the internal element of the poem: diction; syntax; rhythm(s), use of rhyme or off-rhyme, images, resulting tone quality.
• Remind students that the poem's theme—its primary statement—emerges from its form (the way it is constructed).

4. Divide the class into groups of three.
• Assign each group one of the following poems to explain:
• I'm Nobody, Who Are You(1);
• The Soul Selects Its Own Society(3);
• I Dreaded That First Robin So(3) (5);
• I Could Not Stop for Death(3) (5);
• A Cemetery(2);
• Papa Above(1);
• I Like to See It Lap the Miles(3);
• A Fly Buzzed When I Died(4);
• I Saw a Fellow in the Grass(3) (4);
• I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed(4) (5);
• Letters to the World(3) (2)
Note to Teacher: The number designations above match the numbers of types of structure(s) listed below in "Suggested Possibilities."
• Indicate that each group will be responsible for sharing its analysis of their poem's form and theme and recommend that they use the suggested guidelines for the assignment.

Guidelines for Explaining a Poem

• Pass out Assignment B: The Elements of Structure and Texture in Poetry (Student Version). Refer to Assignment B: The Elements of Structure and Texture in Poetry (Teacher Version).
• Go over the guidelines in class.
• Have them use this Handout B for the assignment.

Structure

Ask students to consider element(s) that bind the parts of the poem together. Note that Dickinson poems often have concentric levels of structural binding.

Suggested Possibilities

Dickinson's poems:

1. are interior private monologues crafted as conversation addressed to some outside other, often in syntax of direct address.
2. use juxtaposition of two opposing elements (large/small; this world/another "world; life/death, etc).
3. are bound together by a central image that wraps around the poem—sustained metaphor; sustained personification.
4. contain metaphysical conceit (a sustained metaphor or simile that binds concrete and abstract references together in such a way as to produce an intellectually shocking effect).
5. contain progression toward an inductive clinch.

Ask students to analyze the elements of texture defined on the worksheet.

Ask students to analyze the elements of texture defined on the worksheet.

• Request that each group share, in large group format, conclusions reached in the analysis of their assigned poem.

As a culmination of this assignment and to further ready students for study of Graham's Letter to the World, consider giving students one or more of the following assignments:

Suggestion One

Ask students to develop a brief written summary (a few paragraphs) about what aspects of Dickinson's life experiences seem to be reflected in her poetry.

• Have students draw from the master list constructed from the biographical research assignment.
• Also have students draw from their shared analysis of Dickinson's poetry.

Encourage students to consider some of the following, as well as their own thoughts on what's significant:

• Dickinson's response to her rigid New England Calvinist Puritan background.
• The amount she was influenced by 19th century Romanticism, particularly the belief in a Sublime in Nature.

Note: Some of Dickinson's favorite literature included the poetry of John Keats, the Cambridge poets—Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell, as well as the writings of Emerson and Thoreau. She also was an avid reader of the Bronte's novels and other contemporary literature of her time.

• Her presumed unrequited love.
• Her attitudes toward death.
• The effect of being raised in an intellectual environment.
• The effect of living much of her life as a recluse.

Suggestion Two

Divide the class into working pairs.

Ask each pair to construct a profile that defines the students' view of specific aspects of Emily Dickinson's inner landscape. Tell them to base their study on the poet's background and selections of her work.

• Sample: If students were going to develop a collage of Dickinson's inner thoughts and emotions—the stream of her mind—what would they include?


Some possible responses include:
• Nature images;
• Indications of a split personality—how she seems to be so engaged in life even though she has withdrawn from it in other ways;
• Her imaginary conversations with others;
• The way she lived in the world of her imagination—a world peopled with small concrete images that project provocative observations;
• Her ambiguous responses to the outside world;
• Evidence of many diverse moods and emotions;
• Threads of happy, youthful memories;
• The varying tone qualities of her poetry as she seeks to reconcile memory and longing for love and companionship with the actualities of her life;
• Her rebellion against her strong Calvinist Puritan heritage and upbringing;
• Her affirmation of something beyond—a spiritual other and place;
• Her heartache from a lost love;
• The strong contradiction between being the intellectual, logical prim observer of life and someone passionately engaged in the beauties of Nature and joys of life;
• Her wit;
• Something that captures the interplay of the simple and the complex—her intellectual leaps, using small, ordinary concrete images to build statements about immensities.

Suggestion Three

Initiate a class discussion of:

• Why Dickinson's poetic form was considered shocking by traditionalists when her poems were published after her death.


Some possible responses:
• fragmentation;
• elliptical constructions;
• ambiguity of images;
• eccentricities in punctuation and capitalization;
• use of off-rhyme.
• What aspects of form contribute to Dickinson's work being considered intellectually complex—in spite of it seeming to be simple poetry with simple diction.

Select a strong oral reader to read Emily Dickinson's poem, Letters to the World.

Have the class, as a group, read the poem a second time.

Review earlier conclusions reached about the structure, texture, and statement of the poem.

If possible, share some graphic displays of the choreography before moving on to Assignment C.

Provide students Assignment C: The Overview of the Choreography.

Suggestion for a Culminating Activity

Initiate an open discussion of specific ways Graham's choreography aligns with the theme and form of Dickinson's poem, Letter to the World.

As a basis, use definitions from the overview statement, as well as students' choreographic ideas projected in their performances.

Deaths and Entrances (1941)

The title of this Gothic psychological dance-drama is based on a line from a Dylan Thomas' poem.

The choreography of Deaths and Entrances is loosely based on the lives of the three Bronte sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The inner landscape of Emily Bronte is the central voice; brother, Branwell, is a peripheral figure.

A study of Deaths and Entrances can evoke interest in the Brontes' novels, encouraging students to read them, out of class. In classes where the novels are assigned reading, a study of an overview of Graham's choreography can result in stimulating discussions about how Graham's psychological dance portrayals of the three sisters match episodes of their lives (mainly Emily's), help clarify the diversity of their personalities, and resonate elements of their literary works.

The devices, structural patterns, and kinetic symbols Graham uses to capture the haunting statements of Emily Bronte's memories—which are the structural control of the choreography—offer a provocative study in the way art can articulate the telescopic lens of memory.

Start by polling the class about their previous experience with the Bronte family background and Bronte novels, particularly Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (which many students may have read by the middle of 12th grade.)

Ask if any class members have visited the Parsonage in Haworth, England. Assign students to research biographical information on the Brontes and Haworth Parsonage, using print and Web sources.

Drawing from student responses to the initial query and research assignment, construct a master list of significant points about the lives and the literary achievements of the Brontes and their literary influence.

Some suggested points include the:

• nature of the time period (1816) during which Brontes lived and wrote, giving particular attention to woman's place in the early 19th century;
• impact of Romanticism on the times;
• emphasis on individuality and freedom and emerging literary voices of women—like Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley—although the Bronte sisters first published under male pseudonyms;
• emphasis on the Sublime in Nature;
• influence of Romantic writers and their work, especially Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron and the Byronic hero;
• impact of the Gothic novels on Bronte sisters' writings;
• effects, both positive and negative, of the isolation of Haworth Parsonage on the sisters;
• tragedy of the early deaths in the family;
• supporting figures in the wake of tragedy;
• individual outside experiences of the sisters;
• descriptions of their novels' settings;
• nature of their novels' key female and male figures;
• assessments of the three sisters' personalities, based on biographical data, accounts of each other, and the nature of their writings.

Note:A film version of Death and Entrances is not available.

Discussion of Graham's approach to building the choreography, along with exhibition of available graphics, could provide a valuable lesson in illustrating the impact of psychology on patterns of 20th century artistic expression. It will also evoke interest in and illuminate the lives and work of the three Bronte sisters.

Key elements of the choreography follow:

• The dominant structural pattern of Deaths and Entrance is memory—the stream-of-consciousness of Emily Bronte as she struggles with enclosing madness, gains self-awareness, and restores self-control.
• The setting is evening in the rooms and halls of an antique house. Stated in the 1943 program notes, the choreography reflects "the restless pacings of the heart on some winter evening...imagination kindled at antique fires."
• The configurations of dance movements are shaped through the presence of the three sisters—the One in Black (the "bitter" Emily), the One in Brown, (the "brooding" Charlotte), and the One in Gray (the "frustrated" Anne).
• Dance movements reflect Emily's mental images of dreams and past experiences—including childhood memories of her sisters, her loves and hates. They also take into account her shifting, often wild, violent emotions of repression and desires, haunting nightmarish feelings of terror, and eventually, her vibrant acceptance of life's terms.
• The isolated, moor atmosphere of the Haworth Parsonage—although not specifically delineated—seems to hover around the recall.
• Four males are part of the mind stream recollections and revelations. The two key male figures are The Dark Beloved (originally danced by Erick Hawkins) and The Poetic Beloved (originally danced by Merce Cunningham). Two other males, the "Cavaliers", move in and out of the central dance actions, joining the primary dance figures and sometimes dancing with the sisters.
• The subconscious, emotional mind stream flow of the choreography moves in and out of time—past, present and future.
• The rhythm and dance landscape of the mind are developed through the snatches of interruptions—sometimes fragmented, sometimes sustained, and often elaborated, hyperbolic images surrounded by peripheral figures that are characteristic of memory.
• The expansion of the fantasies and replay of actualities of memory are enhanced by stage props- a chessboard, a shell, vases (one large, two small), a bowl, a blue goblet.
• These props help characterize and differentiate the sisters' personalities, serving to evoke recall and contour the episodic structural pattern projecting the choreography's psychological statements.
• The goblet, a symbolic cup of life, contributes the clinch of the denouement as Emily Bronte sets it firmly on a table, signaling her affirmation of life.

Note: Graham's use of props and the purposes they serve are reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' later use of stage props and Arthur Miller's concrete mosaic images in structuring their memory plays. The date of the premiere of Deaths and Entrances was 1941. Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie opened in 1945; Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman premiered in 1949.

Suggested Assignments

The following are some suggested topics for verbal and, perhaps, written assignments using Deaths and Entrances as a springboard to interesting students in the work of the Bronte sisters, as well as exploring broader topics on creative endeavor in the arts.

Write these issues on the blackboard and ask students to consider them:

• What, in their perception, are key sources of creative inspiration? As an extension of this question, encourage students to read vignettes of The Notebooks of Martha Graham (perhaps sharing some in class)
• What profile emerges of Emily Bronte from the structural development of her memory?
• For those who have read Wuthering Heights: Who would identify in the text as "The Dark Beloved" and the "The Poetic Beloved." Why? (This may seem a simplistic question, but it could generate some interesting considerations of the ambiguity of the words "dark" and "poetic" as they relate to Heathcliff and Edgar Linton)
• In what ways does the choreography's Gothic tone align with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre?

Suggestion for a Culminating Experience

Assign students a creative writing assignment—development of a manuscript based on vignettes of memory.

• Advise them that they can draw from their own memory or build from the virtual memory of a hypothetical, literary or historical figure.
• Suggest that they integrate one or more concrete object(s) that serve as the recall of memory.

Diversion of Angels (1948)

Martha Graham's Diversion of Angels (1948) is a joyful, lyrical piece that departs from the deep currents of dark emotion that dominated Graham's work during most of the 1940's.

A dynamic romp of lovers in love with love and life is energized by kaleidoscopic-like patterns of rapid comings and goings of individuals and couples, mixed with sustained moments of interaction. The overriding structural design is of three archetypal stages of love—adolescent, erotic, and mature—each experienced in stages of and in intermittent pulses within the heart and mind of one (archetypal) woman.

The ebullient nature of the choreography is best expressed in the lines of Ben Belitt's poetry, which is the source of the title and inspiration for the work's structural design and movement.

"It is the place of the Rock and the Ladder, the raven, the blessing, the tempter, the rose. It is the wish of the single-hearted, the undivided; play after the spirit's labor, games, flights, fancies, configurations of the lover's intention; the believed Possibility, at once strenuous and tender; humors of innocence, garlands, evangels, Joy on the wilderness stair; diversion of angels."

These assignments suggest ways that students can read, understand, and appreciate the compelling design intricacies that Martha Graham weaves together to articulate her creative vision.

Part I

A. Consider sharing with students the anecdote from Martha Graham's autobiography, Blood Memory (p. 98), where she discusses her first experience viewing modern art. She went to the Art Institute in Chicago and felt great identification with the works of Chagall, Matisse, and others.

An abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky with"...streak of red going from one end to another", drew her attention like a magnet. Her recollection about gazing at the painting—"I will do that someday. I will make a dance like that...and I did...the dance was Diversion of Angels."

B. Discuss the term abstract, helping students to form a working definition that applies to art expression.

C. Briefly explore symbolic implications of color, encouraging students to share examples. Some might include:

• purple as related to royalty;
• green as related to jealousy;
• being "in the pink";
• the blues;
• giving one a green or red light;
• seeing the world through rose-colored glasses;
• blue collar /white collar.

D. See if any students have access to the geometry computer program, Geometers Sketchpad.

• Encourage them to experiment with moving around diverse geometric shapes to create a variety of abstract designs.
• Remind them that a choreographer experiments with spatial relationships and geometric shapes. On a dance floor or stage this experimentation can mirror the students' experimentation on the computer.

E. Ask students to develop a written piece in which they define their personal perceptions of love. Suggest that their writing take the form of a prose or poetic vignette. Ask volunteers to share their perceptions.

F. Discuss Ben Belitt's lines of poetry. It can be provided to students in a handout or displayed on an overhead projector.

• Ask students to individually underline key images in the lines (on the handout).
• If using the overhead projector, discuss as a class and then underline the images.

Note: Both methods could be used to reinforce the power of the images.

The lines of poetry give a word sketch of an imaginary garden of love. The setting of Diversion of Angels is an imaginary garden of love.

• Construct, with the class, a specific description of this imaginary garden from the images in Ben Bilett's poetry.
• Request that students write a brief summary profile of love developed within this garden setting projected through the collective images of the poem.

Note: This activity could help students define complexities of the choreography and recognize ways, through dance movement, that Graham captures love as projected through the poem's image. Ex: the image of raven in relation to rose.

G. Provide students with a brief overview of the structural design of Diversion of Angels.

• Explain that the choreographic patterns are built around three stages of love—each distinctly expressed by three different dancers (and their male partners)—but as aspects experienced by one woman.
• Further explain that color plays a dominant role in the development of the choreography
• the "adolescent" figure is costumed in yellow;
• the "erotic" figure in red;
• the "mature" love figure in white.

In Blood Memory, Graham comments, the "woman in red who flashes across the stage is the Kandinsky flame I had seen so long ago at the Chicago Art Institute."

H. Consider initiating one or more consciousness-raising activities to further ready students to view Diversion of Angels:

Arrange students in collaborative groups of three.

Provide each group with a few sheets of yellow, red, and white construction paper, scissors, and auxiliary material—poster board, paste, string or thread, as needed.

Assign each group to construct one of the following designs:

• an abstract collage, on paper, intermingling shapes in the three colors;
• a mobile, in which the colors are placed to interact with each other;


Share with students that the sculptor Alexander Calder was a close friend of Graham's and designed mobiles and stabiles for two of her ballets—to, in her words, "enlarge the sense of horizon".
• a live collage or mobile with each student attaching to him/herself a sample of one of the three colors. Have students plot an abstract design of color interaction, which they'll demonstrate through movement.


This activity could be expanded to include two groups—a total of three boys; three girls

Suggestions for Special Projects (or Extensions)

Previous activities, using Diversion of Angels as their centerpiece, could serve as springboards for developing a class-wide project in abstract expression.

1. Consider immersing students in a class project in which they design a choreography based on an abstract poem, painting, or piece of music.

Note: The ambiguity of an abstract selection and the provocative symbolic references that help build the ambiguity could generate a lively intellectual argument over what should be the center of gravity of their design.

The first step is to negotiate what should be the center of gravity of their conceptual plan, based on an agreed interpretation of the source.

• If the group selects an abstract painting or poem as its source, suggest that a volunteer/volunteers select or write an original vignette of music to match their choreography. Or, ask them to select or write a common score for all the groups.
• Ask each group to perform their choreography; then explain the rationale of their structural pattern and kinetic movements.

2. Have students provide their views on the specific ways abstract art expression reflects 20th and 21st century culture through a class discussion or essay assignment.

Encourage students to review arguments concerning:

• the relativity of human perception;
• the power of symbol to release individual perception;
• Freudian theories of the divided self;
• Jung's ideas of buried, archetypal myths released into overt consciousness through images and symbols:
• heightened awareness of simultaneous processes of the human mind;
• the fragmented tempo and dislocation of modern life;
• the aesthetic edge projected in machines and modern technology.
3. Discuss ways that both Letter to the World and Deaths and Entrances follow a basic pattern —a psychological disturbance that increases in intensity to the point of traumatic upheaval, and then ends in a positive resolution.
• Students who go on to the lessons on Graham's use of ancient Greek sources will find that Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, and Clytemnestra have a similar structural drive.
• Some students might want to explore whether this pattern, reflects aspects of Martha Graham's life.

Assessment:

Use Assessment Rubric to determine each student's progress.

Extensions:

Drawing cross references to themes and forms in other Modernist sources:

• psychological themes in D.H. Lawrence novels;
• stream-of-consciousness techniques in Faulkner and James Joyce;
• the alter ego structural and textural form of T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;
• the "eccentricities" of e. e. Cummings poems

Direct your students' attention to the ARTSEDGE Mini-site: A Dancer's Journal: Learning to Perform the Dances of Martha Graham.

Sources:

Print:

• Cohen, Selma Jeanne, ed. International Encyclopedia of Dance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• deMille, Agnes A. Martha: The Life and Works of Martha Graham. New York: Random House, 1991.
• Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (ed Thomas H. Johnson). Boston: Back Bay Books, 1961.
• Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds (chapter 8). New York: BasicBooks (a Division of HarperCollins Publishers), 1993.
• Graham, Martha. Blood Memory. New York: POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.. 1991.
• Jowitt, Deborah. Time and the Dancing Image. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.
• O'Neill Jane. The World of the Brontes. London: Carlton Books Limited, Inc, 1997.
• Stodelle, Ernestine. Deep Song. A Dance Horizons Book. New York: Schirmer Books, 1984.

Media:

• Harris, Julie. The Belle of Amherst (Recording of stage play based on life and poetry of Emily Dickinson). Directed by Charles S. Dubin. Writing staged by Timothy Helgeson, AV#87999, 1976.
• Martha Graham. Martha Graham Dance Company (Dance in America series—excerpts: Lamentation; Diversion of Angels). Produced by Emile Ardolino; Directed by Merrill Brockway, Total playing time of videocassette:90 minutes. Thirteen/WNET, 1976.

Special Sources:

• Courtesy of The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance: Programs from performances of Martha Graham choreographies: Letters to the World and Deaths and Entrances; John Martin review articles from the New York Times; also, a 16mm film of Letters to the World

Authors:

• Jayne Karsten, English, Grades 9-12
  The Key School
  Annapolis, MD US