Martha Graham, Mexico, and the American Gesture

Snow, K. Mitchell

doi:10.1080/01472526.2017.1272037

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“…in Spanish America as well. The second scene depicted what Shawn called the “fanatic” Hermanos Penitentes and their ritual crucifixions, apparently drawing on some of the same heavily sensationalized sources that Martha Graham was using in her own evocations of the Southwestern United States, Primitive Mysteries (1931) and El Penitente (1940) (Snow 2017, 16–19). Although he was not specifically describing Prescott's work, historian Ramón Gutiérrez captured a significant element of the cultural context from which it sprang: “Protestant authors in the nineteenth century focused on the brutality and barbarity of the bloody flagellants and their crucifixion rite to validate Anglo-American presuppositions … namely, that centuries of Roman Catholic rule in what became the U.S. Southwest had bred a backward, primitive, and savage piety that hampered the civilizing mission of the Anglo capitalist gospel” (Gutiérrez 1999, 253).…”

Section: The Noche Triste De Moctezumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

Snow¹

2019

Dance Res. J.

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The opening decades of the twentieth century saw a passing fashion for “Aztec” dancing in the vaudeville theaters of the United States. Russian classical dancers Kosloff and Fokine tapped the orientalist currents of the Ballets Russes, adopting the Aztec as superficial signs of the American. Conversely, works by Shawn and film director Cecil B. DeMille, which served as points of reference for the Russians, represented a continuation of equally orientalist attitudes toward Mexico's past, forged during the realization of the United States’ policy of Manifest Destiny. The emergence of a cadre of trained dancers from Mexico, trained by students of Kosloff and Shawn, would bring a distinctively different perspective on the presentation of their heritage to the dance stage, one that was no longer based in the imagination of an expansionist America.

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Section: The Noche Triste De Moctezumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

Snow¹

2019

Dance Res. J.

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“…70 Even Martha Graham may have had such an idea in mind when she applied for a Guggenheim to collect dances in Mexico in 1932; at that time Louis Horst was her lover and travelling companion, a situation that required some delicacy at home, where Horst was known to be married to someone else. 71…”

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Identity and the Neoclassical Ideal in Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez'sDark Meadow

Gibson¹

2020

Twentieth-Century Music

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If the ideal artistic collaboration is one of shared vision, open communication, and exquisite professionalism then Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez strayed far from it in the making of Dark Meadow (1946). As this article documents, their relationship was full of antagonism, misunderstanding, disdainful gossip, and regret on both sides. Three sources of conflict are examined: 1) a misunderstanding between the two collaborators on the meaning and utility of Greek allusions in art created conflicting aesthetic expectations for a dance with a plot derived from Greek mythology; 2) both artists defied the modernist community's expectations about how each of them should perform their gender identity as artists; and 3) similarly, the press's consistent Othering of Chávez in racist, nationalist terms was contagious, influencing Graham's beliefs about what Mexican music could or should be. Despite significant obstacles, Chávez and Graham produced a work that continues to represent the mid-century Modernist aesthetic.

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Martha Graham, Mexico, and the American Gesture

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

Identity and the Neoclassical Ideal in Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez'sDark Meadow

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