Into the Heart of the Cave

One of the gems of New York City’s dance landscape is the Graham Studio Series, a programming cycle that offers behind-the-scenes interaction with the work of the Graham Company in their studio space. In early January, the series presented a Graham Deconstructed event exploring Martha Graham’s modernist masterwork “Cave of the Heart.”

Xin Ying in Martha Graham's “Cave of the Heart” at the Graham Studio showing. Photograph by Melissa Sherwood

One of the most formative dance imprints on me as a child was Medea's solo from “Cave of the Heart” performed by the inimitable Takako Asakawa. Aired in 1976 on the public‐television series Dance in America, in an episode dedicated to the Martha Graham Dance Company, the dance, the music, the set, and the dancer gripped me with their unforgettable power. These many years later, within the format of the Studio Series, I would be able to delve into and view the work (in full costume) just feet away from the dancers and its iconic Isamu Noguchi set.

Originally titled “Serpent Heart” at its premiere in 1946, “Cave of the Heart” is Graham’s distillation of the Greek myth of Medea, the sorceress who aids the hero Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece. After they eventually marry and have two children together, Jason abandons Medea along with their children to marry a princess and advance his station. The dance begins as Medea realizes that she has been cast aside and follows events as she churns her all-consuming fury along its unstoppable vengeful course.

Artistic director Janet Eilber, with her polished and direct style, wasted no time in putting the pieces together. She packed her introduction with meaningful particulars about Graham’s choreographic set-up and the extraordinary set design. Graham stripped the Medea legend down to just four characters: the Sorceress, Medea; Jason; the Princess, Creon’s Daughter; and the Chorus. At the same time, Noguchi abstracted art elements into basic forms evoking an outer and inner landscape for Graham’s psychological study of the destructive power of love.

Eilber quoted Noguchi’s explanation for the set:

I constructed a landscape like the islands of Greece. On the horizon, lies a volcanic shape─like a black aorta of the heart. To this, leads steppingstones (Jason’s voyage – the entry bridge of drama). And opposite, is a coiled green serpent, on whose back rests the transformation dress of gold.

Eilber continued, quoting Graham’s response to Noguchi’s design, saying:

When I needed a place for Medea onstage─the heart of her being, Isamu brought me a snake. And when I brooded on what I felt was the insolvable problem of representing Medea flying to return to her father the Sun, Isamu devised a dress for me, worked from the vibrating pieces of bronze wire that became my garment and my chariot of flames.

Xin Ying and Anne Souder in Martha Graham’s “Cave of the Heart.” Photograph by Melissa Sherwood

Noguchi’s set design gave Graham a geography on which to sculpt her drama with pathways to follow, forms to climb, and others to hide behind or beneath. Each of the four characters has a home base on the map. Medea’s home is the serpent, behind which she sometimes hides, flat on her belly like a serpent herself. She also uses it to hide things under, such as her props for the dance. The Chorus, a solo role, resides upstage on the aorta with its large black heart valves protruding upward. Jason’s home is the path of steppingstones, a representation of the islands on his journeys in pursuit of the Golden Fleece. Graham used the stones as pedestals on which Jason poses like a Greek god displaying his ego, pride, and ambition. As for the Princess, her home is Jason. The two are conjoined during most of the piece either through their partnering, their poses, or their gaze.

Graham endowed each character with a movement motif. The Samuel Barber score, in a similar vein, assigns acoustic qualities to each of the four characters defining them in another sensory dimension. Three of the characters─Jason, the Princess, and the Chorus─move and pose in an archaic, two dimensional manner resembling figures on a Greek vase. In marked contrast, Medea dances fully fleshed out in three dimensions with her deeply felt emotions. This is borne out in her two main solos: the lamentation over her abandonment by Jason and her dance of vengeance.

And what an unforgettable dance that is! The Barber score leads into it with a menacing theme that repeats and develops into pure malevolence. The notes seem to stoke Medea into a roiling fury beginning with her subtle trembling through her torso. She pulls a vibrating snake from her bosom and dances with it. To be more accurate, the snake dances Medea. Tied around her waist and then around her wrists, it jerks her in one direction then another feeding her rage with venom and energy. Noguchi described Medea’s dance of vengeance saying, “She is dancing with a snake in her mouth. Then she spews it out of her mouth like blood.”

Lloyd Knight (front) and Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham’s “Cave of the Heart.” Photograph by Melissa Sherwood.

The Chorus character, meanwhile, removes the fourth wall and appeals directly to the audience from the first moments of the dance. She alternates between danced entreaties to the audience and her participation in the drama onstage─sometimes comforting Medea or wrestling with her as she tries to prevent the terrible events about to unfold.

Graham also uses the technique of setting the dancers into a frozen tableau while one breaks out and dances an exposition of their emotional state. This is particularly effective when Jason performs a grief-stricken solo over the tortured death of his new bride as Medea stands frozen in time downstage center, wrapped and concealed in a trailing cloak. She forms a composite image with the Chorus, who stands directly upstage of Medea, atop the aorta, arms folded from angled elbows with hands at her heart─about to unfold a secret too horrible to bear.

The spell is broken as Medea unwinds from the fabric and reveals her murderous revenge─the body of the dead Princess falls to the floor. Inhabiting her full power, she steps over the dead bodies and dons the shimmering, spiky, wire dress. Manipulating the magnificent prop into various symbolisms, Medea dances to the aorta pedestal, mounts it, and there the dress becomes her chariot home, to the sun.

Post performance, the audience had the opportunity to visit with the dancers onstage and examine the set. Further elucidating the experience of Noguchi’s dress, Xin Ying, who has performed the role of Medea for eight years, shared that the wires vibrate and create sound while you are dancing in it. That detail sealed the magic of the evening. The Studio Series is a unique and intimate entry into the timeless repertory of the Martha Graham Company. The secret is out.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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