The Aging of a Star in Camelot

“It takes me ten years to make a dancer,” Martha Graham declared, and by 1961, at age sixty-seven, she had created a generation of stars. Her technically powerful company trained with the matriarch of modern dance, its “Picasso,” as they readied to tour for a new, young president, John F. Kennedy, and his sophisticated wife, Jackie. He needed to show sophistication and gravitas; in 1962, Graham and her twenty glowing dancers toured Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Poland, Sweden, West Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, traversing a complex geographic puzzle of territories contested between East and West, engaging with “containment,” the “Iron Curtain,” old-fashioned wartime European neutrality, and Bandung’s issues of nonalignment, all refashioned by the changing Cold War. Yet the tour would start in Israel, again courtesy of private funding. Greece and Turkey had been named by Truman in his “containment” policy, led by George Kennan; Graham performed as Clytemnestra for the Greeks. Kennan sponsored Graham as she went “behind the Iron Curtain” to Yugoslavia and Poland, where religious works were foregrounded to fight the Soviet “atheists.” As in 1957, she would perform in West Germany, a Cold War hotspot. In Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, she engaged with European neutrality, nonalignment, and the Non-Aligned Movement that demanded softer power. As Graham aged, she presented increasingly sexually charged works with the cover of modernism and myth. Yet her alcoholism took hold and compromised her work. Many suggested this should be a “farewell tour.”

“The New Home of Men”

While Eisenhower had called Japan the “mega-domino” in his domino theory, Graham’s tour locations also addressed concerns about the Bandung Conference in Indonesia that brought together nonaligned nations in Asia and the Middle East, and rejected Israel. As US government officials watched the planning of the Bandung Conference in 1954, Graham was being considered as an export to the region. Graham would land in Korea, as well as the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Iran. In addition, under private funding Graham could continue to Israel, which was not allowed to join the conference, and was very much on the geopolitical radar. While in Asia, Graham used her “orientalist” techniques to promote the idea of “cultural convergences” for diplomatic purposes. She brought religion and Americana to promote the American message to newly decolonizing nations. In Israel, the tour concluded with her announcement that “faith means repetition, repetition and again repetition, crushing obstacles; it means also faith in having a vision and will.” In many nations, Graham’s modernism again displaced the interwar German “free dance” that had been used in leftist practices, and local folk traditions modernized American folk. Artistic modernism supported ideas of modernization and the fruits of democracy; all cities closed with Appalachian Spring.

Prologue

In 1955, Martha Graham and her company of diverse dancers landed in Japan to begin their first official State Department–sponsored tour of Asia and the Middle East to countries that President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated as the “domino nations,” or those most likely to fall to communist influence. On the tarmac, Graham was greeted by mass crowds and children bearing bouquets. American modern dance challenged the Soviet ballet, as a tour by Galina Ulanova preceding Graham. Newspapers announced, “U.S. and Soviet Competition in Dancing: Graham and Ulanova.” Graham triumphed with her abstract works alongside tales from the Western canon, fractured narratives, and female protagonists, all to describe the “soul of mankind.” Graham became useful as she attached herself to Eisenhower’s American battle for “hearts and minds,” particularly since she added the frontier and its pioneers to the cast of archetypes presented onstage in “the language that needs no words,” and embodied what she called the “universal.” Graham was heralded as an ambassadress during high-level diplomatic exchanges and embassy parties on the “cocktail circuit of diplomacy.” Graham and her company also functioned as diplomats when they engaged with the public during lecture-demonstrations and shopping for artifacts. While Graham proclaimed that her work was “universal,” and thus not political, one critic remarked that “the patriotic placing of American national interest at the end with Appalachian Spring” served “to underscore the diplomatic nature of this cultural mission.” Graham’s dances were modernist and seemingly apolitical art as creatures of Cold War politics.

Introduction

“When they sensed internal mayhem / They sent out Martha Graham / That’s what we call cultural exchange,” wrote Dave and Iola Brubeck with Louis Armstrong for the opera The Real Ambassadors. Graham disavowed political attachments: indeed, understanding what she said she was not is often a way to understand Graham as an actor in US diplomatic history. Allegedly not political, she also disavowed herself as a modernist, feminist, and American missionary. Rather than proving that she was what she said she was not, the introduction outlines the methodology to understand why Graham made these pronouncements while touring for the US government during the Cold War. While Graham initially was a part of the targeting of the elite in “trickle-down diplomacy,” over time she grew older and modernism ossified, just as the government sought to target the youth. In response, Graham posed for pictures that billed her as “Forever Modern,” with dances that were “Too Sexy for Export?” featuring a troupe of young, technically brilliant dancers to represent the United States. Graham passed away in 1991, the same year as the official Cold War end.

Coda

In the early spring of 1989, First Lady Barbara Bush received Martha Graham at the White House for a social call and a discussion of Graham’s upcoming tour, again “behind the Iron Curtain.” They exchanged gifts but also broke with protocol as they played with the Bush dogs; a relaxed familiarity infused the women’s smiles as the new pups jumped on Graham’s lap. The company would return to Poland and Yugoslavia, move to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and then finish in Russia, appearing in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Graham prepared for the tour with a gala featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, the newest Soviet defector, in a “premiere” of American Document, with Baryshnikov dancing and reciting words from American documents such as the Declaration of Independence. Graham would come out of retirement as a dancer, and a film of her dancing with the defector would be shown on tour. Graham recruited Barbara Bush to become gala chair, and wrote notes describing the tour plans. Although the Wall would not fall until November, the month Graham was to perform in the bloc nations, peaceful revolts began to take place in Poland and Hungary. Reserved in his approach, President Bush may not have appreciated Graham’s heavy-handed Americana. Remaining ever-contemporary, Graham’s tour scout returned from Moscow to the United States, sharing a plane with Donald Trump’s own real estate scout. The Bush tour never took place. Graham passed away on April Fool’s Day, in 1991, the same year the Cold War officially ended.

Dancing along the Wall

“You Are Leaving the American Sector,” signs read as Martha Graham and her company crossed from West Germany to celebrate Berlin’s 750th anniversary. The East German government sought reunification; for the communists, “reunification,” “peace,” and thus the promise of “human bonds” became political weapons. Although the “Stalin Note” in 1952 promised West Germans “the rights of man” and some freedoms, Stalin demanded military neutrality. The US and West German governments finally decided it was communist propaganda. “Peace” remained a contested term with the “peaceful Soviets,” positioned against a “warmongering America.” Graham’s East Berlin repertory featured Frontier, the same work of Americana that had she had presented at the White House in 1937 and then more recently under Gerald Ford. Unlike Graham’s pioneer woman, East Berliners stood in front of a wall, a barbed-wire fence; Graham’s dancer stood in front of a fence and envisioned an expansionist future—not a stopping point. “The girl is seeing a great landscape, untrammeled,” Graham said to an East German of her pioneer woman, performed by an African American dancer to emphasize racial inclusion as an American tenet: “It’s the appetite for space, which is one of the characteristics of America. It’s one of the things that has made us pioneers.” Five months later, Ronald Reagan stood in the West demanding, “Tear down this wall.” Reagan and Graham worked in tandem to bring East Germany into the Western fold.

“And Martha Knew How to Play That”

In 1978, Martha Graham capitalized on the Egyptomania that was sweeping the United States and choreographed Frescoes, the story of Cleopatra, which opened at the newly situated Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Architecture again met dance as diplomacy. In September 1978, the same month that the Temple of Dendur first opened to visitors, President Jimmy Carter had supervised the negotiations between Egypt and Israel at the presidential retreat Camp David that led to a historic peace treaty between the two nations. In August 1979, Graham would perform Frescoes in Egypt and tour in Jordan and Israel on what her dancers called the “Jimmy Carter Goodwill Tour.” Although the company could not perform in Lebanon because of civil war, dancers were brought to Amman to take class and see the repertory, which they could take back to Beirut. In Israel, the company performed Legend of Judith, using Israelis for the set and music. Despite crumbling relations over time, and with the promise of cultural diplomacy being realized, diplomatic representatives gathered in Cairo and signed the 1980 “Cultural Agreement between the State of Israel and the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

“Grahamized and Americanized”

Upon Graham’s return to the United States, the State Department declared her a “very valuable asset.” As the “First Lady” of modern dance, Graham had “made a positive contribution to overall Department of State foreign relations objectives.” Performances “convinced everyone that modern American culture had made an important contribution to the development of the twentieth century.” While photographs of Graham and Kissinger show a mutual if stiff respect, Graham’s principal alliance shifted to First Lady Betty Ford as Graham looked for White House invitations and financial support. Even as her company remained unstable, plagued by deficits that left it veering toward bankruptcy, Graham stayed on the government diplomatic resource list, and she tightened her alliance with the East Wing through to the West. As New York City veered toward bankruptcy, Graham staged lavish galas and star-studded events with Soviet defector and ballet star Rudolf Nureyev in tow. Betty Ford and Halston became key figures in her promotional efforts. Graham received the Medal of Freedom from Ford, but with his election loss to Jimmy Carter, Graham refocused her strategy.

“Forever Modern”

Just weeks before Graham was to leave on her tour under Nixon, he resigned. “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” the new president, Gerald R. Ford, declared. For Graham, having Ford in the White House and Henry Kissinger at the State Department promised to be a dream come true. The new first lady, Betty Bloomer Ford, had been Graham’s student and performed with the company in her youth; Kissinger supported Graham’s upcoming tour. Graham became a political bond in a moment of triage. “A principal objective of the Graham visit is political,” declared a State Department official. “Or politico-cultural,” he then corrected himself. Graham would begin in South Korea and then travel to Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, and South Vietnam. She would also return to Japan, but since she was popular there, box office receipts would pay her way. The itinerary reflected Nixon and Kissinger’s desire to soothe any mayhem regarding their desire to open China to the West, a policy continued by Ford. With the publicity of Soviet ballet defections, Graham promised the first lady that she would deploy Nureyev for a new work of Americana for a gala in New York upon her return. Americana was back on board with Graham “center stage” as a matriarch of what came to be described as “historic” or even “old-fashioned” modernism.

Triumphing over “Exhaustion,” 1963–1974

“She may be too tired to tour again,” announced a State Department official at a meeting to discuss Martha Graham’s 1962 tour. Performance shots of Graham’s sexually explicit Phaedra showed her as the aging protagonist in a long, bejeweled cocktail dress costume, with an extended leg inarticulate and bent, foot unpointed, its rounded, bunioned joints in evidence. Although she had used the cover of modernism to challenge the boundaries of sexuality with Phaedra on tour in 1962 in order to keep herself relevant, the strategy backfired. After touring for the Kennedys, the company performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and Graham came under congressional scrutiny for her work. In addition, foundation funding began to dry up as ageism enveloped Graham and modernism. After the assassination of Kennedy, Graham performed in London and Portugal with State Department support under Lyndon B. Johnson, but her failing physicality became a press refrain. With great reluctance, she retired and lapsed into an alcoholic coma. As the company struggled to survive, Graham recovered and retook control with Ron Protas. With renewed vigor, Graham tapped old contacts in Washington and staged fundraising events, drawing on her expertise with glamour and diplomacy. She obtained a tour under the Richard M. Nixon administration back to Asia, a primary area of diplomatic concern. After Nixon’s resignation, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger continued to support Graham, and she also latched on to the new first lady, Betty Ford, and left for Asia as the “First Lady of Modern Dance.”