Helen McGehee - Mostly Dance

Now a full time student at Juilliard, I stopped taking outside technique classes. That was easy to do because some Juilliard classes were with the same teachers I had had at the Graham Studio. In ballet I really adored Alfredo Corvino’s classes and was glad to be studying with him consistently. The schedule at Juilliard was so full that it left little time for anything else. I was up early and in class at 9 in the morning and often didn’t get back until 9 at night. The program was exhausting and I can remember sometimes falling asleep in my leotard and tights. At that time Juilliard had no dorm and I was now living at the Barbizon for Women, which was a good 45-minute subway ride from the school, which was located at 120 Claremont Ave on the upper West Side. Since Columbia University was located nearby I could continue the two academic classes I was taking. When I returned in the fall I began taking academic classes at Juilliard and did not return to Columbia University’s School of General Studies. I don’t remember anything about the academic classes at Juilliard and don’t think they were very interesting or challenging at the time.

Besides the technique and Horst’s composition classes, two classes stand out strongly in my mind: Literature and Materials of Music taught by Caryl Friend and Labanotation taught by Muriel Topaz. They were challenging and helped me relate to dance in new ways. “L and M,” as we referred to Friend’s class, introduced us to the various forms of classical music and we often had to create dance studies related to the musical form we were studying. We had to study each piece of music carefully, as her exam consisted of her dropping the needle down on the record and our having to identify the piece and where in the piece she was playing. The second year, we began playing the piano and I remember writing short piano compositions. In fact, during the second year, when I was dating Murray (who later became my husband), I sent him a series of themes on the tune “Happy Birthday” using my new skill at music composition. As he was attempting to figure out what I had written, his Mom walked by and identified the piece as variations on “Happy Birthday.”

Muriel Topaz was an excellent teacher and I was fascinated with Labanotation and at one point even toyed with going further with notation. Analyzing movement to write it down helped me understand it better and it was fun to begin to read movement scores of famous pieces.

Of course a highlight continued to be having the opportunity to study composition with Louis Horst. Modern Forms was great fun and I enjoyed not only the course material and assignments but other students in the class, particularly Martha Clarke and Diane Gray. There was even a time when the three of us put together a dance study which I seem to remember we titled “Minding your P’s and Q’s” that related to an assignment we had. Behind our back each of us held in one hand a cupcake in honor of Louis’s birthday and the end of the piece we presented him with the cupcakes. In my second year at Juilliard I was able to take Louis’s third-year course Group Forms. The class consisted of students who were seriously interested in composition and each of us progressed from doing a trio to a quartet and then a quintet. You had the option to continue with the course as long as you were a student … so it gave me an opportunity to get to know some juniors and seniors. I spent the first semester developing a trio based on the book Green Mansions and was pleased that it was included in a concert of student works. The next semester I focused on a quartet about people looking at a painting. It was inspired by the long lines I would see winding around the Metropolitan Museum of Art when the painting Mona Lisa was on view. I never finished the piece but did have fun beginning to find my sense of humor in dance.

While I had enjoyed taking technique classes at The Martha Graham School they were even better at Juilliard as over the year and a half at Juilliard I consistently got to study with Helen McGehee, Ethel Winter, Bertram Ross, and (when the Graham Company was on tour) Donald McKayle. Each of the teachers had their own style and favorite combinations, and they were excellent teachers and outstanding performers.

Helen McGehee was my favorite. She had a fierceness as a teacher that I found I responded to. I was curious if she was still alive. She is and is in her late 90’s. There is a wonderful interview of her done around 2010 by Doug Hamby that is mainly a sharing of the piece The Lady and the Unicorn, which she choreographed in 1945 and which was filmed in 1957. I highly recommend the first 7 or 8 minutes, which include excerpts from the piece and her interview. She talks about creating one section in Louis Horst’s class. Her descriptions of Horst is quite wonderful. Here’s the link.

Ethel Winter had a much gentler style of teaching. I found her combinations to be much more lyrical and she was a good balance to McGehee. She died at the age of 87 in 2012. Anna Kisselgoff wrote a beautiful obituary that perfectly captures what I remember.

Bertram was simply Bertram. He had a fun sense of humor and would often join students at a table in the cafeteria. I think I enjoyed him more as a performer than a teacher. Bertram died in 2003 and here is a link to the obituary that Jennifer Dunning wrote about him.

Classes with Donald McKayle were extraordinary. An outstanding teacher, he put together combinations that I loved. He died in August 2018 at the age of 87. I found particularly meaningful the obituary in Dance Magazine which included video of Rainbow Round My Shoulder, performed by the Alvin Ailey Company. Here’s a link to it.

The time I spent at Juilliard was demanding and after two years I left, which I will write about in the next blog. The time in NYC and then at Juilliard shaped me as a choreographer, giving me a discipline and a structured way of working and approaching things that I am very grateful for. This also carried over to other areas of my life, particularly how I approach painting and filmmaking.

I researched to find a picture of The Juilliard School on Claremont Avenue but couldn’t find one that looked like I remember it. I did find this picture of Louis Horst as I pretty much remember him in class. The only thing missing is a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but if you look closely, he is holding it in his hand. No credit is given for this photo.

Photograph of Louis Horst found on the Internet.

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In my last blog, I began to write about my recent trip to New York City. In a later blog I’ll share more about the trip, in particular about a workshop that longtime friend and collaborator Regina Ress and I did at New York University’s Forum on Theater and Health. For now, keeping with this blog’s title of synchronicity with my recently published blogs, I now jump to my last night in NYC and attending the closing night of the Martha Graham Company’s April 2–14, 2019 performances at the Joyce. I had debated about even getting tickets for the performance, but finally, a few days before I left home I went online and purchased a ticket for Program C. I mainly selected this program because I had Sunday evening free and there was a piece by Pam Tanowitz in the program. I had never seen any of Tanowitz’s work and I was aware that she was getting lots of rave reviews.

Write-ups about her, as well as her biography, interested me, particularly reports that she was known “for her unflinchingly post-modern treatment of classical dance vocabulary” (http://pamtanowitzdance.org/bio). This spring she was not only creating a work for the Martha Graham Company but also for The New York City Ballet. That is indeed impressive and so I made sure to select a program that included the New York Premiere of her piece Untitled (Souvenir) for the Graham Company. Also on the program were two Graham classics, Errand into the Maze (created in 1947) and Chronicle(1936). Another world premiere by two choreographers who were totally new to me, Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith, completed the program.

When I bought the ticket I felt disappointed that one of my very favorite Graham pieces, Diversion of Angels, was not being performed that evening. But I made my decision based on seeing the Tanowitz piece, as very few choreographers are able to cross over from ballet to modern commissions as she does.

So off I went to spend my last night in NYC at the Graham concert. The opening piece, Errand into the Maze, was one that I remembered seeing years ago (on one of my return trips to NYC) performed by one of my favorite teachers and Graham performers, Helen McGehee, in the leading female role. I don’t remember who performed the male role with her. I do remember her fierceness and passion in dancing. It appears that the piece had not been in the Graham repertory for 15 years when it was brought back in 1968 and Clive Barnes wrote a review:

The choreography – it dates from 1947 and has not been seen in New York for 15 years – wonderfully mixes the swift and angular lightness of the female with the heavy solemnity of the male. Set against the bones of Isamu Noguchi’s skeletal setting, and the sonorities of Gian Carlo Menotti’s score, the work powerfully conveys the archaic mythical pattern of despair, hope and achievement.
As the female, danced first of course, by Graham herself, Helen McGehee, as intense as a flickering flame, possesses just the sense of nervousness despair and faith this view of Ariadne demands and Clive Thompson’s Minotaur-Thesus, both ponderous yet buoyant, is the perfect stolid partner to her impetuous neuroticism. (The New York Times,October 26, 1968)

Errand Into The Maze opened the concert and I was pleasantly surprised at the performance it was given by Charlotte Landreau and Lloyd Mayor. A rush of positive emotion filled me as a dance vocabulary and approach I so love was beautifully performed. I have always loved how Graham turned to classical mythology for inspiration for her choreography and I remember writing a fairly long paper for an English class in High School on Graham’s use of mythology. It received an A and I held onto it for a long time but at some point, along with programs that I had kept for years, it got thrown out when we were cleaning out our papers for one of our many moves.

The second piece on the program was Deo by guest choreographers Doyle and Smith and frankly I don’t remember anything about it. Following intermission came the Tanowitz piece. I could clearly see how she was manipulating the Graham technique in a new way and found that rather interesting but that was really all I got from the piece. Disappointment was my overall reaction. I can see why critics like what she is doing and from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating but it didn’t emotionally move me in any way.

The last piece, Chronicles took my breath away. It is in three parts and I was familiar with the piece because Deborah Hanna, a dancer who worked with Avodah for 7 years and with whom I continue to keep in contact, had danced in one of the sections of the piece when she was in the Martha Graham Ensemble (a junior company of Graham in the 1980’s and early 90’s). I don’t remember getting to see Deborah in it but did know that it was being revived. The original program notes were included in the Joyce program:

Chronicle does not attempt to show the actualities of war; rather does it, by evoking war’s images, set forth the fateful prelude to war, portray the devastation of spirit which it leaves in its wake, and suggest an answer.

The first Part, titled “Spectre – 1914,” was powerfully danced by Xin Ying. She managed the huge black and red shroud with power and was a good start to what followed. Section II is entitled “Steps in the Street (Devastation – Homelessness – Exile)” and is a powerful group dance that along with Section III, “Prelude to Action (Unity – Pledge to the Future),” shows the female members of the company in an excellent light.

A review by Joanne DiVito for the LA Dance Chronicle of a performance just a month before the one I saw describes the second section wonderfully:

The second movement Steps in the Street begins with one soul, played by the incredible Anne Souder dressed in black. She backs onto the stage; step, drag, hesitate, step drag, hesitate, all in silence. This remarkable section, comments on the devastation of people caught in war. The stunning use of tiny runs, continuous jumps, and reconfigurations, static against kinetic, calls for the dancers to defy gravity and rise to all manner of challenges which this piece demands. Their sudden heroic prowess surprises and adds to the tension and release of this remarkable piece. (https://www.ladancechronicle.com/grahams-brilliant-legacy-lives-today-with-eilbers-leadership/)

But it is the last section that totally took my breath away. The women’s leaping and repetition of strong Graham phrases became heroic and so powerful that it was no surprise that the audience (a wonderful mix of young and old) rose to its feet shouting and applauding loudly, to acknowledge the beautiful performance. That kind of energy we rarely see in dance anymore – and what a treat!

Afterwards, as I ran into several contemporary fellow dancers in the lobby, one remarked, “That lady [referring to Graham] certainly had talent.” And indeed she did, for it was Graham’s two pieces, not the newly commissioned ones, that stood out. And it was a wonderful way for me to finish my trip to NYC!!

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Synchronicity at Play – Spring Trip to NYC (Part Two: Martha Graham Company)