The Art of Stillness

Martha Graham said that “movement never lies”—but what of stillness? For NYC Dance Project’s latest book, Martha Graham Dance Company: 100 Years, photographers Ken Browar and Deborah Ory set out to explore Martha Graham’s legacy through photos.

Browar and Ory, who are married, are the founders and creative team behind NYC Dance Project, which has previously published two critically acclaimed dance photography books, “The Art of Movement” from 2016 and “The Style of Movement: Fashion and Dance” from 2019. This forthcoming book is the first to focus on a singular company and repertory.

In selecting a subject, Browar and Ory said they were drawn to the enduring relevance of Martha Graham’s work.

“We saw “Chronicle” [Graham’s 1936 piece about war and resilience] recently after Russia invaded Ukraine,” Ory said. “We felt there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience; everybody was so moved by it, still feeling as much as they did 100 years ago. The movement is iconic: Graham’s message has withstood the test of time.”

The Graham Company book is organized by Graham ballet, featuring about 25 dances from Graham’s oeuvre. Browar and Ory spent numerous hours studying the dances before photographing them.

“Every photo session we did, we watched archival video of the dances, we read about them, we looked at old photos,” Browar said. “The more knowledge you have about a piece, the more you can interpret.”

Ken Browar and Deborah Ory

While Ory’s background is in dance (she began photographing when she was sidelined by an injury as a young dancer), Browar’s background is in fashion. Another draw to Martha Graham was the choreographer’s iconic costumes, many of which Graham designed and made, herself.

“When we would show our friends photographs [of the Graham Company] they’d ask who the designer of the costumes was, and it would be Martha Graham!” Ory said.

Graham’s costumes came as surprises to Browar and Ory in other ways, too.

“We were shocked when we picked up a few costumes to bring out to the Hamptons for a shoot and they weighed 50 pounds—it was hard to carry them,” Ory said.

“When we first started photographing dancers, we would use costumes that were very light. But with Martha Graham, we discovered that a lot of her costumes were very heavy wool. This was intentional—they moved a different way,” Browar said.

“There was a cape for “Lucifer” and neither Ken nor I could hardly pick the thing up,” Ory added. “But [dancer] Lorenzo Pagano could throw it around and somehow make it hang in the air like it has its own life to it.”

Capturing life within stillness is at the heart of what Ory and Browar do. According to dancer Leslie Andrea Williams, for Graham dancers, too, capturing life within stillness is often central.

“The concept of stillness in Graham is very specific,” Williams said. “Even if you’re standing still in a shape, you’re always finding a way to grow in it, to radiate while in the stillness. That is what is so beautiful about a well-taken Graham photograph, but that is also what is challenging about it.”

Graham technique is a dramatization of the body’s natural tendency to contract and release through breath. Ory and Browar found this connection to breath both unique to the Graham dancers and incredibly useful for capturing photographs.

“We often found ourselves taking the same breath,” Browar said. “When they took their breath before jumping, I would actually take the same breath before taking the photo.”

Working with a group of dancers, as opposed to a soloist, always provided more of a challenge. Especially in these instances, the use of breath was vital for dancers and photographers, alike.

“The “Primitive Mysteries” picture [where dancers hover in the air with flexed feet over a central figure in white, each perfectly aligned with one another] is a great example of the exactitude of what we were aiming for—exact same height, flexed feet, angles, eye line—and yet there isn’t stiffness, or anything forced,” dancer Laurel Dalley Smith said of the process. “It’s a pause in time, an intake of breath and feeling of being one with each other. We all definitely knew when we got the shot. There was a visceral collective feeling when it worked.”

In portraits of Graham’s most famous “Appalachian Spring,” Smith plays the Bride: Viewers can see her flying ebulliently over a wooden fence, with a sunny blue sky sparkling behind her.

“For something like “Appalachian Spring,” we were not able to get the set in the studio for the photoshoot and we thought it would be fun to take it outside,” Ory said. “We wanted it to feel like the rolling hills [that Martha evokes].”

“I remember seeing the morning brightening as we were driving to the site and having a feeling of anticipation and excitement, very much like the feeling I have before entering the stage at the beginning of the ballet,” Smith said. “Some of the locations have actually become part of what I envision and think about when I’m dancing the role of the Bride: the fence, the horses, the sunrise, the open green expanse. It reminds me of my home, back in Bath and the Cotswolds in England.”

Many of Browar and Ory’s photos were taken outdoors in the Hamptons, where the couple has a home. In the book, viewers can find So Young An and Lloyd Knight supporting each other on top of a large rock by the ocean in duet from “Circe,” a stoic Williams catching a silver light on her cheek as she stands barefoot on a pebbled beach in “Dark Meadow,” and much more.

“We woke up very early one summer morning and went to this beautiful beach next to some sand dunes,” Williams recounted. “The light was hitting the water so beautifully, so we decided to take photos there, even though it was not a planned location!”

“Most of us were just waking up, and the light would be so magical,” Ory said. “We’d have an hour at the most to take the photo, and then it was almost as if we’d dreamed the whole thing, like it never happened.”

In addition to preserving this living radiance within their photography, Ory and Browar ultimately hope that their books can act as artifacts from an art form that typically leaves no traces.

“The dancers don’t have anything tangible to take from a performance and a performance is very fluid; it’s ephemeral,” Browar said. “[With our photos], we are able to freeze these moments in time for the dancers. We realized, too, from our previous two books that it also exposes a lot of people who would not normally go see dance.”

“We had a lot of collectors of our first book who were not necessarily dance audiences, which surprised us. A lot of them started to see dance afterwards,” Ory said. “Having a book brings new audiences and exposes new people to the art form.”

Martha Graham Dance Company: 100 Years will be available for purchase on October 7.

Cecilia Whalen

Cecilia Whalen is a New York City-based dancer, choreographer, and writer. She is a graduate of the Martha Graham School and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In addition to her work with Fjord, her writing can be found in various publications, including Dance Magazine and Commonweal Magazine.

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