Classical Mythology

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN MUSIC, DANCE, AND FILM 739

The following are more examples of classically inspired Denishawn dances,

choreographed by Shawn:^43

• Diana and Endymion (part 4 of Grecian Suite), 1914.


• Pan and Syrinx and The Pipes of Pan, 1914. Music by Delibes.


• Gnossienne or A Priest of Knossos, 1919. Music by Erik Satie. Shawn, as a
  priest of ancient Crete, danced a ritual at the altar of the snake-goddess.


• Death of Adonis (or Adagio Pathétique), 1924. Music by Godard. "He per-
  formed nude (except for fig leaf), his body made up to simulate marble
  as he moved through a plastique."^44


• Death of a God, 1929. Music by Debussy. Shawn and fourteen dancers.


• Les Mystères Dionysiaques, 1920. Music by Massenet.


• Orpheus, 1928. Music by Liszt.


• Prometheus Bound, 1929. Shawn's "Prometheus is man of any age seeking
  to free himself of bondage."^45


• Death of the Bull God, 1929. Music by Griffes.


• Orpheus Dionysus (with Margarete Wallman, choreographer), 1930. Music
  by Gluck.


• O, Libertad, 1937 (after Denishawn). Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers. Mu-
  sic by Jess Meeker. A kind of history of the United States with a section
  on the Olympic Games.^46

MARTHA GRAHAM
Martha Graham (1894-1991) was one of the most original and American inno-
vators in modern dance; she preferred to call it contemporary dance because
"modern dance dates so quickly," as she observed in her autobiography, Blood
Memory.^47 She explained her early and abiding fascination with Greek myth: "I
remember how father used to recite stories to us from Greek mythology. My
days would be filled with these tales, these word paintings. ..." Eventually two
preoccupations dominated her career: "My interest was in America and the
women of classical Greece."^48 In 1914, while still in high school, she first saw
Ruth St. Denis dance and she became enamored of this "goddess figure." In 1919
she enrolled in the Denishawn school in Los Angeles and made her debut, at
age twenty-two, in the Denishawn dance pageant of Egypt, Greece, and India.
In 1923 she left Denishawn to accept a role in the Greenwich Village Follies, and
from there went on to evolve her own persona as an artist and a dancer. "I felt
I had to grow and work within myself. I wanted, in all my arrogance, to do
something in dance uniquely American."^49 Graham has influenced many im-
portant dancers, among them Doris Humphrey, nicknamed "Doric" Humphrey
by the composer Louis Horst "because she was always doing Greek dances."^50