The Body Speaks- Part I
In life, heightened nerve sensitivity produces that concentration on the instant which is true living. In dance, this sensitivity produces action timed to the present moment.
Nothing is more revealing than movement. The body says what words cannot.
— Martha Graham
Today I begin a three-part series on three women (Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis, and Isadora Duncan), muses really who fueled my exploration into the art of sacred dance, and continue to do so. I’ve never met or engaged in their technical style but the devotion to their missions, their understanding of the body as a human-spiritual mechanism for prayer and communication and their clarity of vision have greatly influenced my work. And since I believe their wisdom speaks through me today I’m excited to share how their work intersects with mine.
Martha Graham (1894-1991), who died at the age of 97 was still dancing and working on a piece of choreography, “Goddess” at the time of her passing. Martha Graham was an icon of modern dance able to exceed boundaries between sacred and secular dance. It is my contention that she was able to this because to her, dance was in all ways sacred.
My first encounter exploring the relationship between dance and worship as an adult was when I was invited to dance at a church I was visiting regularly while training at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in Winnipeg, Canada. While initially I thought I was preparing for a social event at the church, it soon became apparent that the priest intended for me to dance at an upcoming Sunday worship service. It was not without some alarm and acknowledgement of my lack of skill in creating dances that I stepped into the task and accepted the invitation. That event changed my life and understanding of the human form as a spiritual tool, as well as my role as an artist. It became the foundation for my understanding of the body as a sacred mechanism, a messenger of the regenerative power of a fully embodied holistic experience for others.
Martha Graham’s foundational technique involved an intensive use of breath through release and contraction of movement. For a ballet dancer the use of breath is much different in that the shapes are focused on the elongation of the spine and lingering in erect extensions which can often appear rigid and forced if not imbued with the natural breath to sustain the shape. So across the two technical styles (modern and classical ballet) there are similar uses of breath creating different results.
I see what the body does when it breathes….I have based everything that I have done on the pulsation of life, which is to me, the pulsation of breath.
— Martha Graham
Martha Graham’s creative experiments were filled with themes focused on the divine feminine. An underlying element of Graham’s work was the alignment of body and spirit, which is always the challenge of dancers presenting in sacred settings, where the public is generally uncomfortable with or unable to identify the beauty and grace of the human form as a tool for prayer. Consequently, it becomes the work of the dancer to dive deeply into inner journeying in order to transfer to outer expression that which can get lost in words and intellectualism. Additionally, this happens against the backdrop of a societal overemphasis on entertainment, rather than the sheer appreciation of creativity and art, and in the case of dance, the fluid articulation of the human form.
Martha Graham speaks eloquently about the relationship between the creative artist and the spiritual realm—
Art always has a relationship to the Spirit in creating it and appreciating it as something through which one enters the spiritual world. Yet one cannot be an artist without giving one’s own creation an objective existence, so that it lives in the world, which one is also considering from a spiritual point of view. If one forgets that spiritual relationship, art goes through a transformation and changes more or less into non-art.
Graham was an exceptional woman and through her committed endeavors, a unique artistic life flowed which broke down barriers between the secular and spiritual worlds. She persisted in spite of ridicule and a lack of understanding even by those closest to her. She seemed to thrive on something else, ignoring the outer disturbances and influences of ignorance. She seemed to know from where her true essence arose; from the mind of Christ and that is where she put her trust and faith.
Because of the intensity of the training especially ballet (in my case) a keen sense of the body eventually arises, either through the management of daily aches and pains or an acute injury that results in a longer recovery. Both of which I’ve experienced. The training exercises are more than routine experiments in artistic discovery, they are attunement devices for enhancing skill and the unequivocal intersection between body, mind, and spirit. Understanding human form as the tool for deepest expression, it is no surprise that Martha Graham would say:
The body never lies. The body is a very strange business. The chakras awake the center of energy in the body. . . The awakening starts in the feet and goes up. Through the torso, the neck, up, up, through the head, all the while releasing energy.
How is it that I’m so deeply influenced by someone I never met, but merely read about and observed on videos? One of the connections was Graham’s interest in depicting Mary. Long before I accepted sacred dance to be my “calling” defining the simplicity and utter surrender of Mary, the mother of Jesus inspired me as it did Graham. Just as she would withdraw into private time to discern the true meaning of her art, the studio aloneness is not wasted on me. There is a spaciousness and holiness that is found in seclusion.
Perhaps it is now that Graham’s influences can be most helpful in my work and how I share it with others. For the choreographed pieces are not really entertainment. They are meditations or prayers that allow observers to peer into an artistic viewpoint of an icon or sacred image through embodiment.
It is my belief we all are agents of light and beauty offered through a variety of expressions, and we can’t help but move into that essence because we breathe. It is my prayer that we all become more conscious of movement resting on breath in our daily lives in order to honor the Presence that is all around us.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul. —Martha Graham