Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 124

4JL ') A rehearsal for Martha Graham's Clytemnestra part of a repertory of dance-dramas derived from classical Greeek sources which will be performed during the company" Broadway engagement first dancing lesson was with him I was very tittle and he had me look through his microscope I still remember the books I had to stand on to see into the microscope On the slide he put a drop of waiter and he asked me what the drop looked like I said it looked like dear water and then when I looked through the microscope I saw hundrecb of little wriggles My father said 'Always look for the truth" 1 A parable? Or course Martha Graham often explains herself by quoting a parable a fa verity story You begin to see dearly why die favors a metaphoric style in her choreography as you follow her oblique but always appropriate answers thing to Martha Graham Not only has ehe created more than 140 works trained a veritable army of dance artists and created a form of intensely dramatic dance-theater that has been internationally imitated she has origins tedybet ter yet distilled a style of pure dance movement so logical and expressive that it seems to epitomize the term "modem "If you're honest" she says "you claim or strive to be original You simply use anything you can I believe all experienced everything in some unconscious way I necessarily mean through reincarnation or anything like that but hi some way we have a memory of what has gone before us Tve been the bird the bush the tree and if I drink from the waters of forgetfulness those experiences are available to me if I have the courage to find them and delve into them bound by nothing and if I can communicate to my audience a shock of recognition on their part "Several years ago I went on a State Department tour which included performances in Rangoon Burma and I urns given a Burmese driver from the diplomatic pool to chauffeur me Weil the American diplomat in charge was riding with' me and he made some slurring remarks about how the Burmese understand our dances Now he thought that our driver understand English but he did And after we did and of course about aa American as you can get the driver wrote down his impressions of what the dance meant Do you know he was absolutely right about every point That land of understanding is Since Miss Graham has usually danced the pivotal role in most of her own works with her company she has kept alive her own choreography through sheer performance Now however as she appears ready to give up her on-stage work the process of recording her dances through a pictorial charting system known as laba notation has begun Yet she seems not at all ready for a cozy and comfortable retirement "I get my ideas for dances from reading or just talcing a she says aomes a moment when you face the ultimata fact that you might have to stop but that would be a death of a kind For me no such thing as amusement Dance for me is a kind of divine turbulence and when struck with that you simply go and you like it" IK example: How does it fed to be a legend A in your own time? "I know al- ways so busy dreaming or Fer-A AA haps if I had known how the impact of my work was growing I would have been frightened like the story of the young woman who was sent to the temple as a girl to leant to dye doth and it fell to her to dye the robes of purple and scarlet Once they were dyed those odors they could never be washed out Well once you wear the purple robe never free "My life belongs to the- theater To me theater is a verb before a noun the act of theater the important thing When I started in modern dance with Ted Shawn and Ruth St Denis more then 50 years ago there was too much emphasis (Hi ideas and not enough on craft Now there are thousands of fine young dancers and the problem is where are the ideas the choreographers? person is on some kind of voyage and the job of the artist the choreographer is to express the essence of that voyage Actually I never wanted to be a choreographer Once when choreographer Antony Tudor asked me whether I'd like to be known as a dancer or choreographer I said as a dancer he mid how unfortunate' It probably would have been a typical reaction from any artist who learned that yet another person is planning to attempt a career in a field promising hitterly hard work and few rewards Yet in the case of Miss Graham Tudor evidently knew Just how important her choreographic talents wen There is scarcely a modem dancer or rapher of the last 40 years who owe some Friday April 20 1973 5 A.