Those are some very big questions indeed, Stephen! I’m happy to try to answer them, but first off I want to congratulate you and all the folks at JFC on the 30th anniversary of the foundation. I know that the creation and development of the JFC has been a labor of love by many, many people over these 30 years and I think that Joe would be so happy to see how well his work has been preserved and made available through all your efforts.   And I want to thank you for inviting me into this very special Conversation of a Higher Order about Jean Erdman, the dancer, choreographer, avant-garde theater director, wife and muse of Joseph Campbell for 49 years and, of course, one of the founders of the JCF.

I met Jean when I was just a sophomore at Ohio University and she and Joe were both very important influences in my life.  I spent the first semester of my senior year as an intern touring with the Theater of The Open Eye, the theater that they founded together in 1972 as a home for performance works of a myth-poetic nature. At the end of that 3-month internship, Jean invited me to come to work with the theater when I graduated, which I did in 1976, and it was pretty much my artistic home for the next 16 or 17 years.

When I joined the company Jean was still involved in creating large dance-based theater works that she called “total theater”.  (Actually, “total theater” was a term that a Parisian critic used to describe her most famous piece, “The Coach With the Six Insides”, an adaptation of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Jean liked the term so much that she continued to use it to describe all of her theater work after that.) Jean’s concept of total-theater was very much influenced by South East Asian theater. It involved actors, dancers, musicians, films or projections and different forms of puppetry. The company was quite large then, about 20 people, or so. That was back in the days of the original NEA Touring program that brought so many great performances to audiences all over the US.

About two years after I joined the company, Jean began reviving her early dance repertory, the work she had created between 1942 and 1956, on the small group of five dancers who were part of the larger Open Eye Company. We would perform these dances at a Holiday Dance Festival that occurred each year from 1980 – 1984 during the week between Christmas and New Years. These festivals culminated in a major retrospective of Jean’s work in 1985 at Hunter Playhouse in New York.  In addition to dancing in many of the pieces, as well as acting in a short excerpt from the “Coach”, I was also Jean’s assistant director for the retrospective.

Then, when Jean and Joe were traveling back and forth from NYC to Honolulu, stopping at Skywalker Ranch for Joe to record the interviews with Bill Moyers that became the amazing PBS television series The Power of Myth, Jean got the idea to make a video recording of many of these early dances. Having fallen in love with her dances, I offered to help her do that, not realizing that it would turn into a six-year project in which I served as executive producer, assistant director, assistant writer, photo researcher — you name it, I did it! I was totally immersed in every aspect of Jean’s work from auditioning dancers to teaching the choreography to hiring musicians to recreating the commissioned musical scores, to working with costume designers and mask-makers to recreate costumes, headpieces and masks, even a sculptor to recreate a sculptural set/costume for “Fearful Symmetry”, a piece based on the eponymous poem by William Blake.

Since the release of the three-volume archive, Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman in 1993 I have continued to stage Jean’s work on professional and student companies throughout the US. I’ve also continued to lecture, teach master classes and help other researchers and performers in their projects and performances based on the work of Jean’s many famous collaborators including Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Maya Deren and many others.

All of this is just to give members of the JFC community some idea of my experience with Jean’s work.  So as I begin to tackle these first two questions you’ve asked, they can understand that my knowledge of the work is extremely practical, as well as scholarly/theoretical.

So, finally, to your first question. Jean was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1916. Her father, John Piney Erdman was a Protestant minister, who preached in both English and Japanese, at the famous Church of the Crossroads. Her mother, Marion Dillingham was a member of one of the founding industrialist families of Hawaii. Her mother played piano and her parents enjoyed acting in amateur theater in Honolulu. So there was both a strong spirituality and an engagement in the arts in her home environment.

The first form of dance that she learned was, quite naturally, hula and she learned it from a very early age, around five or six.   I’m sure Jean’s discovery of dance as her “bliss” was rooted in these early hula dance experiences. These early forms that you study when you are a “young sponge” are imprinted very deeply in the psyche and the muscle memory. Some of the most important things that I believe became part of Jean’s personal movement vocabulary from her early hula experiences are:

1) The idea of dance as being simultaneously both abstract and narrative. The gesture language of hula tells a very specific story, or interprets specific poems, but the movements of the hula dancer are also an abstract expression of the energetic forces of those stories or poems.

2) The division of the body into distinct parts, each working in its own rhythmic pattern to create a multi-faceted expressive whole.

3) The use of the pelvis as an initiator of movement and as a rhythmic base for this complex multi-rhythmic movement expression.

4) The subtle and expressive use of the hands as an important part of the expressive nature of the dance.

The next form of dance that Jean felt was very important to her creative development was Isadora Duncan technique. Duncan, was one of the two female progenitors of American modern dance. She was a true revolutionary as a dance artist, as well as a feminist.  In the very early part of the 20th century Duncan set out to discover a style of dance based on the natural movements of the body, freed from corsets, shoes, or any other restrictive encumbrances of Victorian fashion or feminine ideals. Duncan found her inspiration in the Doric columns of ancient Greek temples rising up from the ground toward the heavens.  She developed a style of movement based on breath in which the solar plexus was the center of the physical and psychic center of the body.

Jean encountered Duncan dance technique as a student at the Punahou School, a private preparatory academy, well known today for another of its famous graduates, Barack Obama.  When Jean was a student at Punahou, it was not acceptable for young girls to participate in athletics, so instead of physical education the young female students were taught Isadora Duncan technique. The most important things that Jean incorporated into her own movement style from this experience were:

1) The idea that dance was not just a combination of steps, but that it was about something important and meaningful to the dance maker

2) The use of the breath as an initiator and motivator for movement

The third important influence on Jean’s personal style was Martha Graham. Graham, a dancer and choreographer is often noted as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. She was a disciple of Ruth St. Denis, the other progenitor of American modern dance, but in many ways, she was the fulfillment of Duncan’s idea of the “dancer of the future”.

Jean was introduced to Graham’s percussive, torso-based, emotionally expressive dance technique as a student at Sarah Lawrence College.  She was immediately challenged and enthralled by it. Graham was equally entranced with Erdman and invited her to join her company, which Jean did in 1938. She remained a member of the company until 1943. Jean created several roles in the repertory of that period, most notably The One Who Speaks, the speaking aspect to Graham’s “The One Who Moves” in  “Letter to the World”, Graham’s groundbreaking ode to the American poet Emily Dickinson.

Jean always said that the most important thing she took from Martha was her “use of the torso as the chief expressive aspect of the body”.  Dance historian Don McDonagh credits the many speaking roles she had in Graham’s repertory as a probable inspiration for her later experiments in combining movement and text, including “Twenty Poems”, a   cycle of dances to poems by e.e.cummings, “The Coach with the Six Insides”, her previously mentioned award-winning adaptation of Finngans Wake, as well as “Moon Mysteries”, three Irish Noh plays for dancers by William Butler Yeats, among others. Jean also credited her dance composition classes with Louis Horst, Graham’s musical director, as being absolutely essential to her understanding of musical and dance form.

Last but certainly not least among Jean’s important influences and mentors was Joseph Campbell, who Jean also met as a student at Sarah Lawrence College. While Joe, obviously didn’t contribute to Jean’s movement vocabulary, he certainly gave her a grounding in aesthetics. Jean always credited Joe with being the disciplining force in her creative development. Once they were married he certainly did create a written schedule for them that was probably more rigorous and stricter than she would have made for herself!  And it was Joe’s study of comparative mythology that inspired her to return to her love of world dance, making a careful study of the physical and aesthetic elements of each form that became a very important part of her own aesthetic philosophy.

So this leads me quite nicely to your second set of questions about Jean’s process.  Something that will probably surprise the members of the JFC community is that even though Jean was greatly inspired by Joe’s work, in her dance repertory, she never set out to explore a mythological character, or illustrate Joe’s ideas —NEVER!  Her dances were inspired by various types of explorations. For instance, “The Transformations of Medusa”, which she later described as ” the embodiment of evil” began as an exploration of the two-dimensional archaic movement style she learned in one of Louis Horst’s classes. Jean was fascinated by the style and wanted to know, “What type of person would move like this?” Jean’s answer to the question, an answer that welled up inside her from the sensations she experienced while limiting her movement to just two dimensions was that it was “a fanatic, someone who could see only one point of view”.

Now, remember that I told you about the schedule that Joe set up for Jean and himself in their married life together? One of the things that schedule included was a weekly Friday afternoon meeting in Jean’s studio where she would show Joe what she was working on. It was in one of these sessions that Joe identified Jean’s dance as an abstract embodiment of Medusa, the young, devoted priestess of Athena, who was raped in her temple by Poseidon. Jean never mentioned to me, or to any interviewer with which I am familiar, what it was in the short three-minute segment that led Joe to the idea of Medusa, but after he came up with it, Jean spent a lot of time at the Metropolitan Museum studying the ancient Greek vases and went on to create two more sections of the dance which, follow the psycho-spiritual development of the character from her early fanatical devotion to Athena to her cursed existence in which anyone she looks at is turned to stone.

Other of Jean’s dances had very different genesis stories. For example, “Creature on a Journey” was an improvisation that Jean recognized as inspired by the dance and people of Bali, an island she had visited on a trip around the world with her parents. Remarkably, she remembered the entire improvisation, which anybody who improvises knows is a pretty hard thing to do.

Another solo, “Hamadryad”, was inspired by a walk through the woods while the sounds of a flutist practicing Debussy’s “Syrinx” came wafting through the dappled light.  “Ophelia”, begun under the working title “The Window”, was an exploration of what happens to a person who is called to the hero’s journey, but cannot successfully answer the call?  “Passage” created at the same time, was its mirror opposite. Jean felt compelled to create it because she needed an antidote to the physical and emotional exhaustion of exploring the unsuccessful threshold crossing.

The thing that links all these creative journeys, these choreographic births, if you will, is a tremendous curiosity about movement and the human condition and a remarkable sensitivity to the sensations of the body and to the emotional states related to these sensations. It is a combination of body, mind and spirit. She had to give herself over to the sensation and emotional truth of what she was discovering and she had to have the discipline, the mental capacity to understand the appropriate structuring of time, space, and dynamics in order to capture those sensations in a form.

It’s an immense honor to be in an interactive session with a person, whose name I read alongside Jean Erdman Campbell. I have come across your name several times, and most recently on  the back cover of the book, “The Ecstasy of Being”.

Thank you for such an elaborate discussion on Jean’s life, her three main influences, and her principal works. You’ve given such a wealth of information that I am not sure where to begin, what to ask, what to digest, and perhaps wait and then come back with a decent question.

But I’ll ask  the questions that have been on my mind since I read passages from “The Ecstasy of Being”.  ”

“In Dance of the Chosen (1931), later and better known as The Shakers she had turned for inspiration to an American folk tradition of dancing away one’s sins, which brought to this particular composition a strain of religious fervor, along with its imagery of Americana.”

1) Did she incorporate any of the movements from this tradition of ‘group dancing’ in her style, while teaching and choreographing at the NYU drama dept., and elsewhere?

2) The Shaker style of dancing is similar to the  Sufi dancing or the dance of the dervishes. The Sufis merged their meditation practices with specific body movement — very specific, right foot first, etc., so as to abandon their personal desires and merge with their maker. In both the Shaker style and the Sufi style, there is a tremendous influence of religion on art/dance/movement. Is there an influence in the opposite direction, that is, of art on religion? Or of dance on religion?  Or are these traditions so removed from nature that this form of art (religious group dancing) has no impact on religion?

Nancy, here is a personal true story, about Jean’s dance, that I wish to share.

In 2004, I was in the audience, when Jean Campbell and Robert Walter danced on the stage. It was a celebration of Joe Campbell’s 100th birthday at Esalen, Big Sur, CA.  In 2003 I had had an incredible experience, but I was still mystified, confused, and absorbed in the wonder of it all. My mind worked 24/7 to figure out why and for what reason I kept thinking of one individual.  I was on a brief hiatus from this absorption, as I watched Jean’s fascinating and gentle movements on stage. And suddenly, a flash, and I had the answer! It would have been impossible to prove it logically, yet there it was, unquestionably the RIGHT answer. Utterly grateful to Jean Erdman Campbell from that day onward.

And so, I now believe that to experience a sacred space, you have to visit it too. A mere virtual watching of that dance could never have allowed me to sense Jean’s “remarkable sensitivity to the sensations of the body and to the emotional states related to these sensations.”

Thank you.

Shaheda Rizvi

Thank you so much, Nancy, for being here for the 30 year anniversary celebration of JCF. It is wonderful of you to share your stories, knowledge, and experience of Jean and her art of dance, and of her and Joseph’s lives. It is a wonderful opportunity you give us here to learn more about Jean and her work. The details you have shared with us in your response to Stephen’s questions are scintillating, and Stephen’s questions, as well.

I love hearing about Jean’s discovery of hula. When I was very young, the first dance I did on stage with the dance class I was in was hula and the beauty of the hand movements expressing the narrative, being the main component of telling the story of the music we danced to has “stuck” in my memory ever since. While I did not go on past age 15 in dance classes (other than to take one modern dance class in college), dancing and music (as well as the natural world around me) are memories so dear to me. I feel that I have been given a tremendous gift today as I read your post to go back and dwell joyously within the world of one of my early loves in life. When I was 12, I went with my parents to Hawaii and we went to a Kodak Hula event, as well as other hula performances around the islands. That was in 1972. I will look for my photos to share with everyone here, and would also like to share a video of a friend of mine who is a hulu dancer and instructor in Hawaii. I will post these things later, separately from my response here. In any case, something about hands has always fascinated me every since. I love the mention what you mentioned about the pelvis being the initiator of movement in hula and how this along with the hands influenced her from an early age on. Depth psychologist C. G. Jung wrote, “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” I have always enjoyed that quote as implicit in dance, in playing a musical instrument, or in the visual arts, and as you write, the large dance productions of Jean’s “Total Theatre” and onward  involve the musicians, the stage settings, the making of masks and costumes and such, all the material work of the hands in various arts to produce the totality of the dance production. I also think here about what you wrote about Jean studying Greek vases, made by hands, as part of Jean’s study for her Medusa dance. I also like how your post displays Jean’s move in dance theory from pelvis as in Hula to torso as in her main influence of Martha Graham and I imagine–or wonder if–she then incorporated both areas of the body sometimes at once, and that is my first question for now, if Jean incorporated or combined two different centers/places of body, in regards to areas of the body near one another, in her dances/choreography either at times or in general, and if so, are there any examples you could give us to view those–such as pelvis/torso or hands/arms? I also wonder that if it is so that she did that, was she conscious/aware of it at the time or did it (do you think perhaps) just happen as expression or manifestation of the building blocks/scaffolding of her learning experiences and training? Also, I would like to add how amazing I find it how you have provided us with such an organization as to demonstrate those building blocks/scaffolding of the influences on her work.

I have one more question for now: How large a part might have traditional ballet and musicals have upon her work? I am wondering this in regards to how traditional her family might have been, being that her father was a minister and how this blended with those on the island who were indigenous. It seems like a very interesting mix of influences.

I wish to express my gratitude here also to Stephen and everyone at JCF for having this special event with Nancy in the forum and for all the years and work those at the Foundation do, and wish everyone a Happy 30th Anniversary!

Thank you so much,

Marianne Bencivengo

Dear Shadevi,

Thank you so much for your response to my first post. I’m so happy that my response to Stephen’s “big” questions stimulated so many thoughts of your own.

In response to your specific questions:

1) Doris Humphrey, a contemporary of Martha Graham, not Jean, choreographed “The Shakers”, the dance to which Joe refers on pg. 149 in The Ecstasy of Being. But your question brings up a much broader important issue about the relationship between spirituality and dance in Erdman’s work.

Although Jean was never inspired by the movement of a particular spiritual tradition as a basis for a dance, she, like Joe felt that dance (and the arts in general)  “is the funnel through which spirit is poured into life”.  (The Ecstasy of Being, pg. xi) She believed that the work of art-making followed the arc of the Hero’s Journey wherein the individual artist was called by his /her curiosity into a journey of creative work that involved many physical and psychic trials and ultimately, if successful, resulted in a work of art that was a life-enhancing spiritual gift to the artist’s society. (Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman Part Two: The Group Dances)

2). Many, many religions outside the Abrahamic traditions use dance as a major part of their rituals and practice. The exclusion of dance, and the body in general, from spiritual practice has been a great source of pain, anger and no doubt, inspiration, for American Modern dancers from the beginning. Isadora Duncan spoke about it in her book, The Art of the Dance and Ted Shawn (Ruth St. Denis’ husband and collaborator), wrote about it in his book, Gods Who Dance.

Campbell, also wrote about it a great deal, not only in the pieces collected in The Ecstasy of Being,but throughout his work because dance as spiritual practice is an important part of religion from Africa to India, through Asia, across the Pacific Rim  to Native American tribes. Other contemporary writers have tried to uncover many of the lost, or secret movement practices in the Abrahamic religions. While I’m not an expert in this area of research, I suggest that you may want to look into current research on labyrinth walking, dance traditions of “pagan” Europe and those of the Jewish mystical traditions of Eastern Europe.

Thanks so much for sharing your story about the effect Jean’s dancing at Esalen in 2004 had on you.  Bob Walter sent me a short video of that event, at which he marveled, as well. While I certainly agree with you, that watching dance on video is simply not the same as seeing it live, it was obvious to me that while Jean was well passed her prime as a performer by then, something had awakened her old connections and deep sensitivities that day. Lucky you to have witnessed it!

All best,
Nancy Allison
http://www.jeanerdmandance.com

Dear Nancy,

Thank you ever so much for your heart-warming, in-depth response to my two questions, and the 2004 event, where I watched Jean dance, and yes, it was exactly as described in the book, ‘Erdman brought a characteristic fluidity and grace of dance and gesture quite her own’. 

Thank you also for clarifying that Jean was never inspired by a movement of any particular tradition. but that like Joe, she felt, ” that dance (and the arts in general)  “is the funnel through which spirit is poured into life”.  (The Ecstasy of Being, pg. xi)

Talking about dance being the funnel through which spirit is poured into life, I am wondering what about those women/men (esp.women) who grew up in cultures where their natural desire or even a passion for dancing is stifled in the service of some psuedo-morality and  modesty? Is it psychologically injurious? Wonder if some dance enthusiasts have done exploratory studies of such cultures?

Ah I found the passage in the book, (pg. 118)  that best describes what I witnessed that day in 2004.

Chapter 8:In a widely published essay entitled “The Philosopher’s Stone of Dancing,” Isadora Duncan wrote the following:

“…..Imagine then a dancer who, after long study, prayer, and inspiration, has attained such a degree of understanding that his body is simply the luminous manifestation of his soul; whose body dances in accordance with a music heard inwardly, in an expression of something out of another, a profounder world. This is the truly creative dancer, natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of himself and out of something greater than all selves.”

To me the above lines describe Jean’s dancing that one wonderful night. She danced in a way that her body, her movements, her gestures, her facial emotional expressions, all of that was a  manifestation of her soul. Her body danced in  accordance with a music she  heard inwardly, which was  ” an expression of something out of another, a profounder world.” To me , she was a messenger from a profounder world.

And, how can I thank you for your response and also in mistyping my name. You referred to me as Shadevi, instead of Shaheda. Now that is a high honor that I won’t claim, but deep thanks, if the auto-corrector, converted Shaheda to Shadadevi!

Shaheda

Hi Marianne,

Welcome to the discussion. Thanks so much for joining.

I wonder how many other people reading this thread have shared an introduction to the world of dance through hula? The kind of hula you describe, both the kind you danced and the kind you saw with your parents at the Kodak event in Hawaii, were, I imagine, similar to the kind of  “picnic” hula that Jean learned as a child. It is the type that is used primarily for entertainment.

I just want to mention that later, (I think in the 1950s, but certainly by the 1960s during the height of the Native Hawaiian Renaissance, which Jean greatly supported), Jean also studied ancient, or sacred hula. Joe often accompanied her to Hawaii, to visit the family of course, but he also went to the sacred hula lessons where he learned to play the drums and chant many of the chants that accompany the dances. Ancient hula is one of the many types of dance used for religious practice to which I was referring in my response to Shaheda. Joe writes about sacred hula and its connection to spiritual practice in pre-colonial Hawaii in his 1946 article, “The Ancient Hawaiian Hula”. The article is included in The Ecstasy of Being.

I found it very interesting that the “storytelling through the hands” aspect of hula seemed to have such a profound effect on you.  I love the quote from Jung about how the sub and unconscious faculties seem to work through the hands. While I can’t personally recall an experience like that specifically through my hands, I, as well as many of my dance colleagues, have had many, many experiences where our bodies have remembered things and even “solved mysteries” with which our intellects had “struggled in vain”. In fact, this ability of the body to problem-solve, to think, has been well documented by dancers working in the healing professions such as Mable Elsworth Todd and Marian Chase, as well as more recently by medical professionals, such as Oliver Saks and Antonio Damasio. It is surely the basis of dance therapy and I would go so far as to say part of why dance is such a deeply moving expressive art.

As to your particular questions about whether Jean combined the use of multiple centers of the body in her choreography my answer is a resounding, “YES!” Sometimes she used the various centers in succession and sometimes she layered them so that the dancer simultaneously performed two different intricate rhythmic patterns simultaneously, such as a 2/4 rhythm in the feet and a 6/8 pattern in the shoulders. You can see many short examples of this on the Repertory page at http://www.jeanerdmandance.com
I specifically refer you to the video excerpts from “The Transformations of Medusa”, “Hamadryad” and “Daughters of the Lonesome Isle”.  (I’m sorry if the phenomenon may be hard to see in theses short excerpts, but we can also talk about this further if interest persists.)

As to how conscious Jean was of her use of these multiple centers, I think there is truth in both possibilities you propose. Jean always set out on an art-making journey with a question, a focus, in mind, but she also allowed for, and even honored, the contributions of her unconscious faculties whether they brought their gifts to her through her mind or her “thinking” body.   Like any creative artist, she could only become consciously aware of these “gifts” and their sources in hindsight.

In 1937 Jean took a trip around the world with her parents where she observed many cultural dance forms in their “natural settings”, while simultaneously receiving a running commentary on the mythologies of those cultures via letters at every port of call waiting for her from “Professor Campbell”. This was during what would have been her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College. It was on her arrival in New York that Joe proposed to her and they were married just a few days after.

During this trip Jean observed the many different ways that bodies could be organized into formal dynamic rhythmic expressions.  Was she also aware of the multi-rhythmic body use patterns of hula, the high solar plexus center of Duncan technique, and the low pelvic center of Graham technique buried in her own muscles as she observed Indian, Balinese, Spanish Flamenco and other dance forms?   Hard to say.

But several years later in the early 1940s and for the next 10 to 15 years Jean re-examined all the styles she had seen and learned, in an organized method inspired by Campbell’s exhaustive study of comparative mythology. She added her analysis of each new style that she studied, including ballet, to her on-going notes.

These notes are part of the Jean Erdman Papers housed in the Jerome Robbins Dance Research Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.  Anyone can visit the library and see these precious documents. They may even be available on line. (If you are interested please check out the library’s website. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.) It is abundantly clear from these notes, and I can certainly validate it from my own experiences learning choreography directly from Jean, that she was well aware of her use of multiple centers in the body later in her career.

In fact, among the materials in The Jean Erdman Papers is a manuscript for an unpublished book about Erdman’s technique, in which she outlines seven movement centers from the pelvis to the crown of the head. Somewhere in the vast literature about Joe, I think it may be in Stephen and Robin Larsen’s biography, A Fire in the Mind, there is a passage of Jean describing her discovery of these seven centers and Joe remarking something like, “Jean, those are the seven chakres!”

During the time in which I worked with her, Jean often asked me to move from one center or another, but I don’t recall her referring to the psychic, or spiritual aspect of any of those seven physical centers. I have no doubt that she was aware of the connections between body, mind and spirit in her choreography, but rather than speak about them in words, I think she chose to let the truth of the body reveal itself to me, and to her audiences, through the physical experience.

I hope this begins to address your questions, Marianne. As with Shaheda, I feel I am only scratching the surface here, so please feel free to respond and continue the discussion.

All best,
Nancy

Dear Shaheda,

Just wanted to take a moment to respond to some specific questions and comments in your second post.

1) Yes, it is true that many women and men who grow up in cultures where their “natural desire, or even passion for dancing is stifled”. It makes the development of their unique gifts that society needs so much, particularly difficult. While I know there are many dance therapists and dance artists working in both research and practical programs that offer some support to these individuals, I don’t have a list of organizations to which I can refer you. (Does anyone else in this conversation have such a list?)  I can, however, recommend a marvelous film called When Arabs Danced by Jawad Rhalib that follows some Arab and Iranian dance and performance artists in their struggles to maintain and develop their practices in their native countries. I saw the film at the opening event of the 2019 International Festival of Films on Art in Montréal where one of my own films, Marmo (Marble) was also in competition. It is now available on Amazon.

2) I can relate completely to the beautiful quote from Duncan’s writing and how and why you felt that it referred to Jean’s dancing. In the many performances I saw, I believe Jean touched this profound level often. I think that Joe was also “imagining” and doing his best to encourage the modern dancers of Jean’s generation to become this type of dancer in the writings collected in The Ecstasy of Being.

3) Finally, while I wish I could blame Google for mistyping your name, I’m afraid I must take the blame for this mistake myself. I am sorry. Unlike Shakespeare, I believe that there is a LOT in a name and getting names right is an important sign of respect. Perhaps, I just intuitively sensed that you already deserve the honorific “devi”. After all, hasn’t Joe taught us that we all have a little of the god/goddess in us?

All best,
Nancy

Dear Nancy,

Another illuminating piece that answered my questions for which I am very grateful.

I will certainly watch the films you mentioned. “When Arabs Danced by Jawad Rhalib” is available on Prime Video, which I shall be watching  tonight.  On the other hand, I had no luck in locating  “Marmo” on  Amazon.   Maybe it’s sold out? It’s on my list of films to watch.   I’ll also search for research on the subject, because the topic is much too close to my heart, especially, after reading “The Ecstasy of Being”.

Quoting from Chapter 8, again: ”

• So confident am I that the soul can be awakened, can completely possess the body, that when I have taken children into my schools I have aimed above all else to bring to them a consciousness of this power within themselves, of their relationship to the universal rhythm, to evoke from them the beauty of this realization. The means to this awakening may be in part a revelation of the beauty of nature, and it may be in part that sort of music that the third group of composers gives us, that arises from and speaks to the soul.”

I am hopeful that the cultures that prohibit children and young girls from dancing, would benefit from new research and great books and fascinating films on the topic. This is the kind of “Arab Spring “, I am looking forward to—Not to muddle this beautiful topic with politics, while we are discussing the arts, but seriously, how many wars have successfully changed the culture of the place, brought freedom and dignity to the vanquished?

A cormorant dances by the lake, ‘as if no one is watching’.

In gratitude of your generous responses to us all, here in this forum.

Shaheda

Hi Nancy,

Thank you for your kind welcome, and detailed response and I was so delighted to hear your big YES! to one of my questions about using various centers at the same time and I think it is fascinating the way you say she also often layered them. I did watch the videos and will be watching more to learn more on this!

“Picnic” is such a fitting definition/description of the type of hula dance I learned as a young child and then the type of hula I saw at the “Kodak Hula Show” in Hawaii when I was 12–it was definitely for entertainment. I remember it was at a place called “The Polynesian Cultural Center.” Yet I did sense something of the sacred about it (I was in awe, so it was numinous) since we did hear about the old kings and queens and religion of the Hawaiians. That hula dance I learned when young is one of those mesmerizing memories I have held onto all my life. The sound of the music was equally as enchanting to me.  It is something I have shared with my daughter and my granddaughter with great delight. The idea of storytelling through the hands, yes, affected me very deeply from those times on and all my life. I would like here to share a poem I wrote that exemplifies this, a poem I wrote back in 1990. Another time (hopefully soon), I will share it in the other section where we can share our own work since I also wrote a brief one-page essay about the poem that describes some family background in which hands were important tools in life. Here is the poem (published sometime in the early 90s; also, lines were not originally double-spaced within stanzas, but it came out as DS on this site):
<p style=”text-align: center;”>Your Hands Like Birds</p>
Your hands like birds

so alertly perch

on branches of thought in air.

Life in your hands

buds out like leaves-to-be,

moves the minds of the fruits to fruition,

your hands set still air free.

When you talk I listen,

but mostly I watch your hands.

It also “struck”me one day in Hawaii that the flowers called “Birds of Paradise” look not only like birds but like hands when children do shadow puppets to make bird shadows or when people use the symbol for talking with their hands that look like a duck quacking! These to me are the little (or large) dashes of spice in life–I also remember seeing the musical South Pacific with my mom when I was little when the older Hawaiian woman sang “Happy Talk” to the young couple using both hands to gesture talking to try to get them to talk together. I want to thank you for everything you have mentioned to me, all the references I now have to look up and study. I do love the idea of memories and emotions being stored in the body as well as the mind and the use of dance and movement for healing. I did go to the website to view the various dances there and there are several I am particularly intrigued by in addition to those you mentioned as examples to my questions. Reading your response and watching the dance videos, I felt more questions formulating. There is something so stark about the movements in the Medusa dance, and I begin to see the various centers being used at once and this seems partially referred to in her Medusa dance and some others as her arms and legs going in different/opposite directions (and I am trying to remember now some examples of where/when Campbell spoke of opposites and then opposites finding a center (much like Jung’s theory of transcendence) and there is something that really compels me also in the Daughters video in its asymmetry yet group movement at times in unison. And yes! I would like so much to get that book from the library in New York!

Your website is beautiful.

Bliss,

Marianne Bencivengo

Dear Stephen and Shadeda,

So nice to hear from both of you again.

Shaheda, I hope you enjoyed “When Arabs Danced” if you were indeed able to watch it last night.

Unfortunately, my own film, “Marmo” is not available on Amazon Prime as yet. Also, I want to be clear that “Marmo” is not a film about the problems of artists living in countries that restrict artistic expression. In fact, you might even say it is the mirror opposite of that. It is a short experimental film about the nature of the creative process, inspired by the marble the quarries of Seravezza, Italy where I had the great good fortune to film in the summer of 2014, and the writing of Michelangelo, who often used marble from those quarries. You can see an excerpt of the film here:
https://vimeo.com/user7561544

Thank you so much for the beautiful photograph of the dancing cormorant! And as far as “muddling conversations about art with politics”, I would just like to say that while I am well aware that Joe strongly believed that politics had no place in discussion about art, Jean had some strong political positions that she supported, though not directly through her art making. For example the Native Hawaiian Renaissance movement about which I wrote in a previous post was a political, as well as, a cultural movement. Jean supported it economically, as well as with her presence at events. She was also a supporter of environmental protection and of a woman’s right to choose.

Which sort of  brings me to Stephen’s wonderful post about Medusa. I have never heard the version of the Medusa story in which she was cursed by Athena to live in an eternal state of pregnancy. I’m only familiar with the story in which she “gives birth” to Pegasus, the winged horse that represents inspiration and creativity, when Perseus decapitates her. When read symbolically, this new version of the story certainly puts a whole new spin on Athena’s curse! As an artist, I can’t imagine a worse fate than being eternally in a state of inspiration without being able to “give birth” to my creative idea.

I agree with you, Stephen, that Medusa is indeed an intriguing figure. And I do have some ideas about what Joe saw in “Temple Virgin”, the first section of Jean’s dance, “The Transformations of Medusa” that led him to believe that this three-minute study Jean performed for him during one of their Friday afternoon sharing sessions, was an image of the young Medusa. Explaining my ideas will take a little longer than I have time to write about today, but I thank you for your question and I look forward to crafting my answer for you and the JFC community. (Hopefully, this weekend)

To be continued…

Hello,

just a few questions.

what is the origin and meaning of  “The Coach With Six Insides”? Is there any allusion to a tesseract Hexagonal torus or cube ? Is there any Pythagorean connotations ? From where in Finnegans Wake is the reference of “ The Coach With Six Insides “ taken ?

is there any association between Jean Erdman And Lucinda Joyce ?

Is there any Pun intended in using the word coach ? A mentor teacher and a vehicle of conveyance? As in a stage coach ?

thank you

Hello R3,

Welcome to the conversation. Interesting questions you bring to the table.

I’m not a Joycean scholar, not even specifically pertaining to The Coach with the Six Insides.

Here is what little I can tell you:

I recall Joe mentioning in several lectures that I was fortunate enough to attend over the years that the title was taken directly from Joyce’s text. He probably quoted the section and  page number, but unfortunately, I’m not able to do that for you. I do recall his saying that the “coach” was a hearse, but I don’t remember what the significance of the number “six” is.

There is a wonderful television program at the Jerome Robbins Dance Resource Collection at the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center called “A Viewers Guide to The Coach with the Six Insides”   produced by WNET in 1966. It was an interview by Jean and Joe about her avant-garde dance/theater piece which at that point had taken the New York theater world by storm. I have watched the video tape several times. I seem to recall that the interviewer asked Joe about the title. Once the pandemic is under control enough that the library  can open, anyone can make an appointment to watch the program. The call number for your reference is MGZIA 4-7669 .

As far as any connections between Lucia Joyce and Erdman are concerned, I don’t know of any personal connection.  At the end of  Lucia Joyce:To Dance in the Wake, (Picador, 2003) Carol Loeb Schloss’ biography about Lucia Joyce, there is a discussion of The Coach with the Six Insides and Jean’s understanding of the way movement can convey an essence of the Wake. It is possible that Schloss interviewed Erdman for the book, but given the 2003 pub date, it is much more likely that Schloss was referencing things Jean said  in A Viewer’s Guide to The Six Insides. Another great reason to watch the video if you can!

Hope this helps a little. If there are any Joycean scholars listening in on this conversation, I hope you will add  any information you have that can help answer R3’s questions.

All best,

Nancy

Dear Marianne,

So glad to read that my response stimulated so many new ideas and connections for you.

Thank you for sharing your beautiful poem. It feels like a dance to me!

Congratulations  on your close and careful watching of the excerpts of Jean’s dances on the Jean Erdman Dance website. Watching dance and then describing what you saw and felt is not easy to do. I can tell from your description how much you saw and felt!

All best,

Nancy

Dear Nancy,

Again, so many thanks for all these rich resources you mentioned, and your generosity in sharing your immense knowledge base with us on jcf.org. I watched “When Arabs Danced” and enjoyed it tremendously.  And I saw the short teaser on Marmo, and now I am caught with it. When will the full production be out, may I ask. Also, I saw the excerpts from Jean Erdman’s dance-drama The Coach with the Six Insides based on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.  “what is the past, and what is its meaning?”​  I’ll have to watch it again and again .

One more item on my bucket list now, is  the video Dance and Myth –  The world of Jean Erdman. Jean said, that the dance is “the story of what is inside us as women.”  How fortunate for you, Jean, Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Misty Copeland, Olga Smirnov  et al., and all the rest of the artists in the dance world.

Fascinating that Joe Campbell  did not visit the dance halls where the artists of his time were performing,

• “ During that time Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the students of Rudolf von Laban— most notably Mary Wigman, the leading figure of German Expressionist dance— were performing regularly. So, too, were the Americans Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, yet there is no record of Campbell having seen them, or any of the other dance artists who were revolutionizing the art form during this period. But in 1937, something happened that changed his understanding of dance altogether. At that time, Campbell was living the life he had dreamed up for himself…….  The same year he arrived, a young woman named Jean Erdman began her studies there, too.”  Jean had such a profound effect on Joe’s life, right from the time she stepped into Sarah Lawrence.

With a thousand thanks

Shaheda

Nancy,
Thank you for your response.

I shall follow up on your leads the best I can.

Robert
R³

Finally, I have the time I need to answer Stephen’s question about why I think Joe may have associated the character of Medusa with Jean’s three-minute movement study —a study that was created, as you may remember, exclusively from her curiosity about the psychological state embodied in the two-dimensional archaic movement style.

As Stephen mentioned, the image of the Medusa is intriguing. In fact, according to “Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art,” an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018-19 curated by Kiki Karoglou, it is “one of the oldest mythological images we have”. Early images of the Medusa, from the archaic period in Greece (8th century BCE to 480 BCE), often placed above doorways to keep away evil spirits, show her as a terrifying androgynous figure with a large head, bulging eyes and a vicious expression revealing many sharp teeth. When her body is part of the image, she is most frequently seen with her arms and legs bent at the elbow and knee joints to create a swastika shape. Often, even without a body, four evenly spaced, right-angled lines sprout from her terrifying visage.

The swastika, as many of you probably already know, is even older. It is used in Hinduism and Buddhism as a symbol of divinity and spirituality. It represents activity, motion —the wheel of karma. In various Hindu traditions, the right-facing, or clockwise, symbol represents solar energy, while the left-facing, or counter-clockwise, symbol represents lunar energy and is associated with Kali, the terrifying goddess of creation and destruction. By 1941 or ‘42 when Joe first saw Jean’s study, he was most likely already familiar with the symbol, his interest in Hinduism having been sparked by a chance meeting with the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti during a trans-Atlantic Ocean voyage in 1924 and subsequently renewed, or reinforced, by his meeting with the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer at about that time.

So what does all this have to do with Jean’s dance? In order to answer this question, I need to describe the dance to you in some detail, so you can imagine what Joe saw on that Friday afternoon in her studio.

The dance begins with the dancer standing, from the viewer’s perspective, on the far left side of the stage. She is facing right, in complete profile. Her right foot is slightly in front of her left. Both arms are in front of her, bent 90 degrees at the elbows to form right angles. The palms face each other. All the fingers are gently extended, in what dancers, trained in Martha Graham’s technique, call “cupped” hands. More than likely, Jean’s beautiful, long dark hair was pinned up and she may have been wearing a piece of fabric wrapped around her waist to form a long column-like skirt.  The image, though static, is full of portent — a serious, young woman at the start of a journey.

She inhales, lengthening through her whole spine, tilts forward in one piece from her left heel to the crown of her head and then shifts back to her starting position.  She repeats this short, three-beat phrase two times. BREATHE—TILT—RETURN.  BREATHE—TILT—RETURN.  On the third repeat, as she returns, her right arm extends downward beginning an arc-like pathway that ends at shoulder level behind her.  Simultaneously her right leg brushes straight back along the floor until she is in a wide stride, her weight resting on her entire left foot and the ball of her right foot. She turns her head slowly to the right as her whole body rocks from foot to foot, in an anxious, foreboding rhythm. All at once, her right wrist flexes, her eyes fix on her right palm as if it were a mirror, and her whole body tenses.

For the next two and a half minutes she is mesmerized by the image she “sees” in her palm while she simultaneous fights to pull away from it. The struggle moves her forward and back across the stage in various rhythms, with various parts of her body pulling her now this way, now that, all the while maintaining the two-dimensional archaic style.

Finally, she arrives at the center of the stage facing left, in a long lunge. Her weight is evenly divided between her right leg, which is forward and her left leg, which is extended behind her. Her right arm remains extended at shoulder level, with her wrist bent.  Her eyes, still “glued” to her right palm. Her left arm is extended behind her with her elbow bent such that her left palm, lightly cupped, hovers by the side of her left hip.

Slowly, as if acting of their own accord, her feet begin a stamping rhythmic pattern that grows in intensity as her right arm, also seemingly moving of its own accord, traces an arc-like pathway up toward the ceiling. Her torso, accommodating her intense focus on her right hand arches upward and backward. Just at the moment that her right palm and sternum face straight up, she drops into a deep crouch, her torso curves forward, her right elbow bends bringing her right palm much closer to her still mesmerized eyes.

In this low crouch, her pelvis begins shifting forward and back, as her left arm slowly moves forward. When it reaches the same level as her right, it rotates so the left palm is now facing up. Then, still slowly, her left arm crosses over her right, and she shifts her focus to the left palm. The pelvis-initiated rocking stops, the right wrist flexes backward and the right hand wilts like a limp tulip.

Fascinated by the new possibility presented by her left palm, she rises slowly to her full height. Maintaining her focus on her left palm she slowly pivots 180 degrees. Her right arm is now behind her, bent at the elbow forming a right angle with her lower arm hanging directly down, palm facing in toward her body. From the viewer’s perspective her arms are now forming half of a right-facing swastika.

She inhales as she turns her torso to face directly toward the audience and her arms reverse. As she inhales again, even more deeply, arching her spine slightly, she releases the right foot from the floor, bending the right knee 90 degrees, appearing, momentarily, to float in the now fully formed left-facing swastika.

As she exhales, bending forward at the left hip joint, the whole “wheel” of the swastika appears to revolve. With her next inhale she returns to upright.  Then, she slowly turns to face the left as her right leg and arm extend behind her. Her right arm and leg continue moving along in an arc-like motion until they arrive in front of her, while simultaneously her left arm joins her right. Both arms are now lightly extended in front of her, elbows bent, palms, now soft, facing away from her body.

She steps forward on her right foot beginning a long slow rhythmic exit in which she brushes one foot forward, then lightly touches the ball of that foot to the floor and finally transfers her weight onto it. BRUSH-TOUCH-TRANSFER. BRUSH-TOUCH-TRANSFER. She appears to be released from her fanatical fascination with the images reflected in her palms, cautiously walking ahead, sensing her unknown future through both.

As must be obvious to most of you by now, I believe the main reason Joe told Jean she should name her dance “Gorgoneon” was because of her use of the swastika form. But it wasn’t only that. Jean’s use of space and her ever-changing body organization patterns in constantly evolving dynamic rhythms were all part of why the image of the Medusa was awakened in Joe’s encyclopedic storehouse of mythological imagery as he watched Jean’s dance. What I find truly amazing about this is that, as I have said before, Jean created this movement study without a single thought of a mythological character.  She followed only her emotional curiosity, along with her kinesthetic sensations and knowledge of aesthetic principles to structure this very severe, precise movement portrait.

According to Jean, she responded to Joe’s suggestion with just one word, “Why?”

And again, as Jean related the story, Joe said, “Because it’s about Medusa”.

Jean never went into detail after that, saying only that she and Joe talked about the Medusa story for some time, after which she decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum to look at its magnificent collection of Greek vases.  They served as inspiration to her to expand the dance into three sections that created an abstract image of the transformation of Medusa from a young devoted priestess of Athena into the monstrous gorgon who turned people into stone with her glance. The first section, the one I have just described, she called “Temple Virgin”. How and why she developed the second section which she called “Lady of the Wild Things” and the third which she called “Queen of Gorgons” into an abstract image of what she called “the embodiment of evil”, I will leave for another discussion.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted to tell you that you can soon see a video of a live performance of the complete dance on-line! The American Dance Guild, of which Jean was a founding member, is hosting a free on-line dance festival called “10 Years Over 10 Weeks”. Jean’s work will be represented by a performance of “The Transformations of Medusa”, staged by me on the great Graham dancer, Christine Daikin as part of the celebration of Jean’s 100th birthday in 2016. You can view the dance as often as you wish from November 23 through November 29 for FREE at:

http://vimeo.com/americandanceguild

Happy watching! I look forward to reading your responses after you see it.

All best,
Nancy

Nancy ,

It is amazing how much dialog and narrative can be attributed and encoded in dance . It is a silent encyclopedia of movement and story telling …

Thank you for sharing your knowledge passion and Bliss ! It is contagious.

I agree.  In dance, as in life, actions speak louder than words!

Nancy ,

yes !!!

Action speaks louder than words. But in dance is there the concept of the zone , the still point within from where all movement Flows ? Flow state … I often think of dance as the whirlwind . The whirlwind that dances across the plains bringing destruction with its action … bringing Dorothy to Oz … the whirlwind of creation before Elijah … The Dance is the periphery boarder of the Whirlwind vortex … The Dancer is the unmoving axis Around which all turns and pivots …

If action speaks louder than words then stillness speaks louder than action … and all action and dance should flow from this stillness with conscious mythic intent … The Dance is the drama of tragedy and comedy choreographed to The movement And music of the spheres …

“I got chills they’re multiplying” –

“Now I’ve had the time of my life No, I never felt like this before Yes I swear it’s the truth”

”Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I’d have to miss the dance ”

R³

Hi All,

So wonderful to read all your thoughts and experiences!

As to R3’s last post, I can’t speak for ALL dancers, but certainly among the many, many dancers I know, I can say that many of us have experienced a sense of being in “the zone”, a state where we are no longer dancing the dance, but the dance is dancing us. We always hope, we will enter such a state during performance, but it doesn’t happen every time, just as it doesn’t happen every time for an athlete, or a meditator. You do your practice. You practice your craft. You work hard, but you can’t make that flow state happen.

I think that’s what, George Balanchine the great Georgian-American ballet choreographer of the 20thcentury was referring to when he said, “ First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you’re very lucky and have said your prayers.”  (Balanchine was notoriously prolific and hardworking, as well as being a practicing Georgian-Orthodox Christian.)

And I think this quote from Balanchine also relates to one of Stephen’s many wonderful questions that opened this discussion.  A professional dancer (and even some amateur dancers) practice many hours everyday — at first to learn their craft and then to hone it. A ballet or modern/contemporary dancer who is fortunate enough to be a member of a company will take a one and a half to two hour class six days a week, followed by five to six hours of rehearsal, depending on his/her roles in a particular season. A day like this is often followed by a performance. The schedule is different depending on the season of the year and the roles the dancer is assigned, but morning class is a necessary ritual for all professional dancers. It is through this consistent communion with the endless rhythmic combinations and fluctuations of body, space, time and dynamics that the dancer prepares him or herself to be a vessel for that flow state where something bigger, deeper, more rarefied than “self’ with a small “s” can pass through him or her.

Now about stillness…I absolutely agree with R3 that stillness is the other half of motion. They are like two halves of a coin, heads and tails, yin and yang.  Motion arises from stillness and then resolves back into stillness once again. Dance is a constantly changing  flux between stillness and stir.

We are all familiar with this constant change. In the morning we rise, in the day we move from action to action and in the evening, “if we are very lucky”, we return easily to sleep once again. Plants and trees push up from the earth in the spring, run riot all summer and through the autumn and return to a quiet stillness once again each winter. This dance between motion and stillness is in us and all around us. Examples of it can be found from the micro to the macrocosmic.

I believe that being able to sense this basic alternation is the essence of dance training. Being able to embody stillness, feel the urge to move arise within us, give that urge its full expression and then feel all the stages as it subsides back into stillness again sounds so simple. In fact, it is simple —simple, but also complex.

Try it yourself. Chose a place to begin either lying, sitting, kneeling or standing. Stay in whatever position you have chosen, feeling the part, or parts, of your body that are supporting your weight. You may notice subtle shifts of your weight from the simple act of bringing your awareness to it. That’s fine. Consider these first small shifts of weight the first “phrase” of your motion/stillness dance. Continue moving whenever you feel the urge to move and coming to stillness whenever you feel the urge to be still. Allow yourself to be still as long as you want. Allow yourself to move as long as, and in any way, that you want.  Stop when you feel your dance is complete. Before returning to your everyday activities, take a moment to feel what just happened. You can even take some time to record your experience in a journal, or share it with us on this site.  I’d love to hear about it.

Thank you very much Nancy. ” I believe that being able to sense this basic alternation is the essence of dance training. Being able to embody stillness, feel the urge to move arise within us, give that urge its full expression and then feel all the stages as it subsides back into stillness again sounds so simple. In fact, it is simple —simple, but also complex.” I’ll tryin the basic alternation, in a spot of my choice, and definitely report back.

Nancy,

Thank you for all you’ve shared . I was wondering if you know of any avant garde  experimental dance troupe performances that explore the fusion of Cymatics Mandalas tonality & music modality in their choreography ? Possibly with a Birdseye camera (drone) view in mind ? Like the old big production Hollywood films with overhead camera angles so we could appreciated the forms being created on stage . Aquatic three dimensional exploration ? Marching band choreography? I’m interested in Cymatics frequency pitch tone and string theory or M theory  ? Might be fun to explore with a flash mob ? Happening Art ?

R³

Hi All,

Great to read all your latest posts. Thanks to all of you for your kind words about mine and about my work. I’m deeply moved by your expressions of gratitude and by the curiosity and enthusiasm my words here seemed to have inspired.

To respond to your individual questions:

1) R3 — I’m slightly familiar with cymatics (i.e. I’ve seen a few videos on-line showing sound patterns becoming visible through sand or water), but I’m not familiar with any dance companies, or choreographers, that use this phenomenon as the basis for performance or film works. Looks like there is an open space for you to try your hand at it!

2) Shaheda — Looking forward to reading your “report” about your motion/stillness movement exploration. I didn’t mention it, but I suggest that you, or anyone who tries it, perform the “movement score” in silence rather than to music. (A movement score, like a musical score, is simply a sequence —in this case the sequence of the alternation of stillness and motion based on your own urge to be either still or in motion.) It is my experience that music, while powerful and beautiful, is not helpful in this exploration. You may become aware of sound during your exploration and it certainly is possible that sound will influence your desire to be still or to move, but the rhythms and/or melodies of music tend to overpower and direct one’s personal desire for motion or stillness and it is your own personal flux of motion and stillness, your own organic sense of phrasing that you are looking to experience here.

3) Stephen — I’m happy to continue participating in this very “lively”, “playful” conversation on an informal basis. I too am missing the experience of live performance. I’m looking forward to reading your response to the performance of “The Transformations of Medusa” streaming November 23 – 29. I hope others will watch and share their responses, too. I was just checking the link again and I think this one might be a more direct route: American Dance Guild Performance Festival

All best,
Nancy

Hello,

Found it if any are interested !!!

It’s on page 359, line 24.

You have jest (a ham) beamed listening through (a ham pig)

his haulted excerpt from John Whiston’s fiveaxled production.

The Coach With The Six Insides^ from the Tales of Yore of the

times gone by before there was a hofdking or a hoovthing or a

pinginapoke in Oreland, all sould. Goes Tory by Eerie Whigs is

To Become Tintinued in Pearsons Nightly in the Lets All Wake

Brickfaced In Lucan. Lhirondella, jaunty Ihirondella! With tirra

lirra rondinelles, atantivy we go !

Attention! Stand at!! Ease!!!

lion
–359.19+
song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Afro-American spiritual)
–359.19+
lock him up
–359.19+
song Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road
–359.20+

–359.21+
{{Synopsis: II.3.6.D: [359.21-360.22]: a radio announcement — a musical interlude is about to start}}
–359.22+
just been listening to
–359.22+
ahem!
–359.22+
radio ham (amateur)
–359.23+
John Whiston: 18th century London publisher and bookseller
–359.23+
John Whiston founded Red Maid School
–359.23+
John Whitton: 18th century coachbuilder, Dominick Street, Dublin, famous for building the Dublin “State Coach” (colloquially known as “Gingerbread”) used in civic processions
–359.23+
five-act

Axel Count Fersen (1755-1810): Swedish gentleman at the French court, who drove Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in his own coach on their flight from Paris on the night of 20/6/1791 [.27]

–359.24+
Carlyle: The French Revolution IV.III: describes the coach in which Louis XVI escaped from Paris as having ‘six Insides’ (i.e. six inside passengers, being the King and Queen, their two children, the children’s governess, and the King’s sister Elizabeth)
–359.25+

Also just found and ordered this. I do enjoy tesseract associations. Should be lots of fun !!!

Eternal Geomater: The Sexual Universe of Finnegans Wake

Margaret C. Solomon

Southern Illinois University Press, 1969 – Sex in literature – 164 pages

1 Review

Finnegans Wake has been the target of peripheral investigation for more than forty years, starting with early studies of this novel as a “work in progress.” Just now, however, are studies beginning to appear in which the book’s basic plot and theme are closely examined. Of these new studies, there is no doubt that Margaret C. Solomon’s close examination of the sexual universe created here by Joyce will prove especially illumi­nating to both scholars and general readers.

In closely reasoned and richly detailed chapters in the three major parts of her book Mrs. Solomon examines indi­vidually the enigmatic figures, reveals the meanings of the passages or chapters which they have made hitherto obscure, and weaves them together to form a distinct pattern of sexual analogies. In Part 3, perhaps the most significant for future students of Joyce, the author, supported by the discoveries of the first two parts, examines the number-symbolism that obviously and enigmatically pervades the Wake. Her final chapter, “The Coach with the Sex Insides,” which brings to a climax her brilliant description of Joyce’s sexual universe, examines the dreamer, Yawn, and the image of the bridal ship of Tristan and Isolde and reveals man-as-universe in the shape of a tesseract, a geometrical figure realizable only in a four-dimensional continuum.

Hello,

This is for All the Dancers and Seamstresses out there … Dancing and joining the fabric of Life … I think,the wardrobe is important to the dance, the skin on the snake , the scale on the Beast !!! The Hora of Spring !!!

all honor and respect … May you enjoy your Journey !!!

Thank You

R³

Thank you so much R3 for all that you’ve found about The Coach!!! So wonderful that you don’t have to go  to New York to see the  Channel 4  “Viewer’s Guide ” anymore!

In what edition (pub date) did you find the quote with the title?

Nancy,

I reached out to James Joyce Facebook pages with this.

Hello,
I’m look for any information on where The Dancer Jean Erdman wife of Joseph Campbell got the inspiration for “The Coach With Six Insides” in Finnegans Wake ?

Thank You !

Olaf Errwigge Replied . It’s on page 359, line 24.

from there I used Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury (Fweet), an online resource . Lots of fun .

Still searching for additional annotation commentary or insight ? Any input would be greatly appreciated !!!

I still Like the the entendre of the Coach as the teacher … Jean Erdman herself … also the Coach as a tesseract a four dimensional cube comprised of six unfinished pyramids pointing inward … the cube of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 … “Black box AI systems for automated decision making, often based on machine learning over big data, map a user’s features into a class predicting the behavioural traits of individuals, such as credit risk, health status, etc., without exposing the reasons why.”

lots of fun to free associate !!!

I do find it interesting the “The Coach With Six Insides” isn’t indexed in “A Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake” though a tesseract is.

The tesseract does give a multidimensional Merkaba quality to da Vinci’s “The Vitruvian Man“ , don’t you think ???

Robert R Reister

R³

Hi Robert,

Afraid I can’t add any additional commentary or insight about the title. I never heard Jean or Joe mention anything about the multiple meanings of the word “coach” in their choice of the title.

But I imagine that the reason that  “The Coach” isn’t indexed in A Skelton’s Key to Finnegan’s Wake has something to do with the fact that the book was published in 1944 and Jean didn’t create her dance play until 1962.

Happy tesseracting,

Nancy

Hi Nancy,

Yes the dates do present a problem but I would think with later amended editions something could be added . Seems like a natural question to me ? From a Joseph Campbell Jean Erdman dance perspective . The Coach With Six Insides” has always been in the Wake and every aspect of the Wake has had much written about it. That it caught Ms. Erdman’s attention I would think means that it also caught Mr. Campbell’s . I’m sure they had some personal discussions about it .

it is something I enjoy searching the answer for .

Thank you for all your Inside insight & Coaching on the subject. You have conveyed much clarity.

Happy Tesseracting to you also !!! They do dance in multidimensional space !!! Makes you wonder about what those cubist were trying to convey , doesn’t it ? Cubism was an interesting art Movement that danced and was center stage for a moment … Do you like Picasso ? Deconstruction and reverse engineering are integral to the artistic and educational process … Lots of fun to utilize …

R³

Robert

I found this. It has useful information .

On the surface the “Six Insides” would Be the Six character roles  portrayed in the production credits.

LEONARD FREY
Mr. Frey turned from a promising career as a painter to become an actor. Before he entered the theatre. he had won painting scholarships at the Brooklyn Museum. the Skohegan School of Art. and Cooper Union. A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse, he most recently played the taciturn Indian Yellow Feather in “Little Mary Sunshine,” a role which he surveyed for the past two seasons. He will soon be seen in “Night Terror,” a motion picture which was shot in location in New York.
GAll.. RYAN
Miss Ryan began her professional career by organizing a theatre company, The Omnibus Players. For two seasons thereafter she acted in the company which lived and traveled in an old school bus, bringing Shakespeare and Moliere to many towns throughout the country. Immediately after her graduation from Skidmore College she appeared at the Corning Summer Theatre. Most recently she was seen at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. in Giraudoux’s “The Mad Woman of Chaillot,” and under the direction of Alan Schneider in Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle.”
TEIJI ITO Composer
Mr. Ito was the recipient of the 1960-61 Obie award for the best music for theatre, based on his scores for the Helen Menken productions of three modem one-act Japanese plays at the Player’s Theatre, a cafe-theatre pro- duction of “King Ubu” and the Living Theatre’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘1n the Jungle of Cities.” New Yorkers have also heard his musical scores for “20 Poems” by e. e. cummings which was choreographed by Jean Erdman. His credits include the music for the production of “Caucasian Chalk Circle” presented at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C., directed by Alan Schneider, and the score for “Mavea” which was filmed in Tahiti and shown at the Venice Film Festival.
MILTON HOWARTH Designer of Slide Projections
Mr. Howarth most recently designed the sets for the Vancouver Inter- national Festival of Arts production of Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle.” Graduated from Carnegie Tech Drama School, he is now the stage designer for the Long Beach State College Theatre Department in California.
THE COACH WITH THE SIX INSIDES
a comedy inspired by
Jaynes Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”
with
jean Erdman
Anita Dangler Leonard Frey
Van Dexter Gail Ryan
PRESENTED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN COLLEGES ARTS PROGRAM,
THE INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN STUDIES, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII THEATRE
NO PHOTOGRAPHS MAY BE TAKEN NOR RECORDINGS MADE DURING THE PERFORMANCES
APRIL 10, 11, 12, 1964 ,
University of Hawaii / John Fitzgerald Kennedy Theatre

THE COACH WITH THE SIX INSIDES
PRODUCTION CREDITS
The roles, as played, are as follows: ‘ JEAN ERDMAN ________________________:_____________________________________________Anna Livia Plurabelle
ANITA DANGLER ——————————————————————Wi£e and Charwoman GAIL RYAN ——————————————————————————–Daughter – lseult LEoNARD FREY ————————————————————————–Elder S o n – Shaun VAN DEXTER ————————————————————————Younger Son – Shem
ACT I
f
Music by Teiji Ito Assisted by Jose Ricci Costumes by Gail Ito Slide Projection Designs by Milton Howarth
Written and Staged by Miss Erdman
Musicians: Teiji Ito, Jose Ricci, Shotaro Kawazoe
Michael Prince: Assistant to the Director and understudy for the Elder Son and the Younger Son
Carol V. Hoover: Lighting Designer and Stage Manager
Past Present (Harry’ Me)
Time:
The Fall, Wake and Reappearance of a Certain Party
••• on the story of ”The Coach With the Six Insides”:
The time is night; the scene, the interior of a Dublin Tavernkeeper’s dreaming mind. The characters are members of the dreamer’s family and a certain number of his tavern customers, both transient and regular; chiefly, his two sons, at various ages, past, present, and future; his daughter, his wi£e, and the charwoman – all of whom tend both to coalesce and to suggest various others, human, animal, and supernatural, actual and legendary, who, at one time or another, have caught his fancy. The dreamer has just lost an election, due to rumors spreading from an undefined event one night in Phoenix Park, which involved, apparently, a couple of nursemaids, a police- man, and a sort of tramp (perhaps poet) with a pipe; and in his remorseful dream this unhappy fault becomes confused with Adam’s fall and the resultant condition humaine. The women thus are aspects of the one Eve: temptress and mother of this sinning (and thus, living) world; and the dreamer is the Creator, invisible yet everywhere, himself ultimately respon- sible for, and secretly enjoying, the whole disgraceful mess.
The name, “The Coach With the Six Insides,” was the title of a television play seen on the screen of the tavern bar a few hours before the dream. Its vaudeville acts, song and dance numbers, jokes and political references, contribute a theatrical form to the nightmare.
It all seems to mean something – as does a dream, as does the world. But what? Or what did the letter say that was posted in this ruined envelope? Who wrote it, and to whom? The dreamer’s initials, H.C.E., suggest “Here
ACT II
Future Present (Marry Me)
Time:
Chips Off the Old Block
ACT III
Time:
His Gadabout in Her Day
Future Past (Bury Me)
Kay Carney:
Assistant Stage Manager and understudy for the Daughter and Wi£e
PROGRAM NOTES

\
Comes Everybody,” and his wife’s initials, A.L.P. (the German word Alp means “nightmare”) suggest “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” which is James Joyce’s name for the River Liffey flowing through Dublin to the sea while the city sleeps – in the way of the river of time and change, which is flowing through us all as Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. It is in this larger, mythic dimension that the characters of Joyces Dublin family are in play within us all in an enigmatic festival of dream, from which we all one day are to wake.
• • • on the language of “Finnegans Wake”:
The language of “Finnegans Wake,” like the imagery of a dream, is a distorted medium, telling many tales at once while playfully hiding its main point – which we somehow seem to know though we cannot bring it quite to mind. The book goes down with us into a land of sleep, where everything -as in Ariel’s song- undergoes a curious change.
Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made,
These are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his bell,
Hark! Now I hear t h e m – ding-dong bell.
The Tempest, Shakespeare
-‘
The rhythmical structure of the language carries the burden of commu-
nication. Words, memories; and thoughts ride upon it as flotsam on a tide; echoes of childhood and of ~ld causes telling not so much of themselves as of the Here-we-are-again Gaities of the ever-living song that carries all of us along. And wltere sleep joins death, there is life still, tolling in the knell. We dance with it in wonder and delight.
Joseph Campbell
WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST JEAN ERDMAN
Miss Erdman comes to the legitimate theatre from a distinguished career in the concert dance. The first Broadway showings of her own choreography were in festival seasons of the New Dance Group at New York Times Hall and The Mansfield Theatre; and the year of her first full company concert, presented at Hunter Playhouse, she received the Dance Magazine Award for the best new work of the season. New York theatregoers most recently saw her at the Circle-in-the-Square in 1960, when she presented a new work based on “20 Poems” by e.e. cummings. Having developed her own school

and concert company in New York City, Miss Erdman has produced her new works there annually, has toured the United States extensively with her company, and in 1955 was the first American artist-emissary to tour the Orient after World War II. She has been artist in residence with her com- pany for seven years at the University of Colorado, three at the University of British Columbia, and was last summer at the University of Hawaii. Her interest in relating dance to theatre was furthered by her choreography for Jean Paul Sartre’s “Les Mouches” at the Vassar Experimental Theatre and Jean Giraudoux’s “The Enchanted” at the Lyceum Theatre in New York. The composer Alan Hovhaness collaborated with her in the production of William Saroyan’s ballet play, “Otherman-Or The Beginning of a New Nation,” at Bard College, where, from 1954-1957, she was head of the Dance Department. Born in Honolulu, Miss Erdman has been interested all her life in the synthesis of drama, dance, and music that’s characteristic of all Oriental theatre; and in the dream-world atmosphere of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” she has found the material for the creation of such an art as contemporary expression. The possibility of realizing this conception was afforded by a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and furthered by individual contributions made to the Arts Program of the Association of American Colleges, under whose auspices this production is being presented. Her husband, Joseph Campbell, author of “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” and “The Masks of God,” bears the responsibility for having intro- duced her to the magic of James Joyce’s language during his years of labor on “The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.”
ANITA DANGLER
Miss Dangler recently £ompleted an extensive national tour of the Circle- in-the-Square’s production-of “Under Milk Wood” after appearing in the Dylan Thomas•hit for many months in New York. Last seen on Broadway in the original production of “The Hostage,” she toured with the play for one season coast-to-coast and in Canada. She previously played on Broadway in “An Mfair of Honor.” Miss Dangler has appeared in a concert reading of “Murder in the Cathedral” at the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., and is frequently seen on television’s Camera Three, Play of the Week, and DuPont Show of the Week.
VAN DEXTER
Mr. Dexter inaugurated his stage career with the Cosmopolitan Opera Company in Philadelphia, appearing in such light operas as “The Desert Song,” ‘Vagabond King,” and “The Merry Widow.” A student of panto- mimists Lionel Shepard, Juki Arkin, Decroux and Mata and Hari, he has appeared in a silent film short, “Going Up,” as well as several other panto- mime films. Mr. Dexter was featured in a national tour of the Broadway hit “Stalag 17” with Shelley Berman and has recently been seen on a number of television shows, including a “Car 54, Where Are You?” segment opposite
,Molly Picon.

Dear Nancy,

Thank you for all the rich material on Jean, Joe, mythology, and the dance world. There is so much that I had missed, and now I am just catching up with all your above Q&A, and enjoying them immensely.

On my dance steps, trying to sense the moment between the silence and the movement, I practiced a few “Samba” steps. A few samba steps and a few salsa steps are all that I know. I noticed that I am not in balance, my left is very weak, that is, the communication from my brain to my left foot takes longer, or is not smooth, as if something is broken, whereas, on the right side, the movement and the signal from the brain are rather smooth, and automatic.  Very basic, I think, yet it’s the basic steps that are very important. I can link this imbalance to a car-accident long long time ago. This connection came through as I observed the interval between the steps. Still working on these steps in the evening. (Smile smile)

I am wondering if India still gives birth to artists like  Lakshmi Shanmukham and her mother  Balasaraswati. Both known as the ‘living exponent of the Bharata Natyam style”?

Thank you for dancing with us.

With much love

Shaheda

Hello,

I enjoy this video “Stuck inside these four walls. Stuck inside forever”. Does touch on the allusion of the cube , also illustrates the word as metaphor motif … lots of Fun …

Hello,

It is amazing all the tangents the mind can muster and elicit with the use of metaphor allusion poetic entendre.

I just received and read Eternal Geomater The Sexual Universe of Finnegans Wake. By Margaret C. Solomon. Its chapter “The Coach with the Sex Insides” is illuminating. Of course as everything Joycean it leads to more questions than answers.

Lots of Fun !!! It does discuss the tesseract allusion. So we can all rest. It is a path that has already been taken by others. A place where the eddy and flow of the River of Life has and does Still Dance !!!💃🏻 Opa !!!

Do you think the space behind our eyes 👀 and between our ears 👂 is a Cube ? Is a Sphere ? Square ? Circular ? Is a stage ? Is a Dance floor ? If a floor then what is the ceiling ?

i think I am still in need of some Coaching on the State of being and dancing the dance of life …

Finnegans Wake is a Wake left by a Cubed Coach sailing into the Sun upon the rover River Liffey , it is a Wake left by a comets tale as big as a kite crashing into the Luna future … Dancing upon the frozen lake of the Moon , from where we harvest Cubes to cool the drink that quench our thirst …

I Thirst … HCE

Thank you

Jedance  ….  The Dance  ….  of the Jedi

R³

Dear Shaheda,

Thank you so much for “playing” along with my motion/stillness exploration. Kudos for your courage to share your experience with the group.

I’m so glad that you discovered something through this that you can explore further.  It’s wonderful that you could relate what you discovered to an earlier event in your life. I, and an ever-growing number of philosophers, artists, psychiatrists, neurologists, psychologists and body-mind practitioners firmly believe that the body stores every experience, joyful as well as traumatic, deep in its tissues and organs. It never forgets, even if the mind tries all sorts of tricks to deny the truth the body knows.

In fact, we believe that our bodies are communicating through movement, all the time. Like myth, movement communicates symbolically. We need only to learn the language of movement to understand the life-enhancing stories it is whispering to, or sometimes shouting at us.

Walking, running, skipping, hopping, turning, shifting, tilting, balancing, falling, rolling, wiggling, gesturing and on and on. This list of body action verbs is endless. I’m sure everyone in this conversation can add hundreds more words to the list.

All of these actions that we do, without even thinking about them, are the basis of the organized patterns of movement that we call “dance”.  For example, in the simplest possible description, both samba and salsa are composed of a series of shifts, forward and back, or side-to-side, combined with gestures of hips and shoulders. These basic body actions and their variations of time, space and dynamics are also the basis of a uniquely personal, subtle and complex language of movement that each of us develops over the years— a language that communicates to others because we all have bodies and we all live in the same field of space, time and gravity.

This notion of a uniquely personal movement language that communicates to others brings me back to one of the questions that Stephen posed in his opening post of this conversation. What did Jean have to do to prepare herself to “select, create and choreograph a specific role — to breathe life into a dance and character that never existed before?”  She, like every creative choreographer, had to explore the very essence of the language of movement —to find the unique movement palette for each dance creation from among myriad possibilities of movement choices.

Using excerpts from their own writing, Joe describes beautifully movement exploration journeys of both Isadora Duncan and Mary Wigman, two of the great female progenitors of modern dance, in Part 2 of The Ecstasy of Being. Jean describes some of her own journeys in the three part video archive Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman.  There is no short cut for these journeys. They are body-aching, soul-searching work and the dances, the “boons” each artist brings back from his or her journeys, are as Jean said  “gifts that the artist then shares with the community.”

Despite the enormous effort required and the relatively little chance for material reward, I know there are at least hundreds, if not thousands of young men and women all over the world today who are courageously exploring the language of movement, each in his or her own way, with all the passion and commitment of our great dance ancestors; Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Jean Erdman and Balasaraswati just to name a few. We need only to watch a video, or better yet, attend a performance and open our bodies, minds and spirits to the expressions they create for our lives to be forever enriched by their gifts.

All best,
Nancy

P.S. Will respond to R3’s many posts soon. Loved the Band on the Run video.  Gotta “run”out now to take advantage of early voting in New York!

Nancy,

Yes

The vote is the wheel within wheels that convey the Coach the Chariot the Merkaba of State forward in time and space , a dropping of a pseudopod a foot in the Dance of progress and evolution to the tune of The Battle Hymn Of The Republic and Yankee Doodle Dandy …

May you Dance from the Heart … May you move All with your work

R³

Hello,

just for full disclosure streams 0f consciousness and brain storming. Let us also remember that Coach has a hierarchical Pyramidal class distinction in the travel 🧳 industry.

“Economy class, also called third class, “Coach” class, steerage, or to distinguish it from the slightly more expensive premium economy class, standard economy class or budget economy class, is the lowest travel class of seating in air travel, rail travel, and sometimes ferry or maritime travel.”

Which for me does bring visions of the movie Titanic to mind and the Diamond of Love that sank from the pinnacle of the hierarchy to the very depths of the base. Now there’s a pyramid worthy of being within the tesseract of  “The Coach With Six Inside”. The ship the Ark of civilization of humanity. Those mythic titans and giants just keep coming back only to sink again … Just like mythic Atlantis … Just like ole Tim Finnegan !!! Just like Jack Dawson …

“Dawson is a baptismal name meaning ‘the son of David’, a very old personal name. This name is of Anglo-Saxon descent spreading to the Celtic countries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales in early times and is found in many mediaeval manuscripts throughout these countries.“ and of course David danced before the Ark … Which was a cube a Coach used to convey the Lord …

R³

Hello,

One more tidbit for those whom enjoy the rabbit hole !!!

Excerpt from program I posted above : “The Coach With the Six Insides,” was the title of a television play seen on the screen of the tavern bar a few hours before the dream. Its vaudeville acts, song and dance numbers, jokes and political references, contribute a theatrical form to the nightmare.“

Is this television a stage prop in Jean Erdman’s production of “The Coach With Six Insides” ?

A television is a cube Coach that conveys the world to us from the outside in then from the inside out … I do so enjoy watching Dance Musicals on it !!!

http://peterchrisp.blogspot.com/2015/03/television-in-finnegans-wake.html

R Cubed

Hello,

I think one of the things I enjoy most about theatrical dance and myth is how it personifies the primal forces and dichotomy of nature , anthropomorphizes it into the duality of masculine and feminine . To imbue nature and the Cosmos with these personifications can be breath taking . It can lead an individual to a sense and center of awe and wonder before the mysterium tremendum et fascinans . It can lead an individual to the heights of aesthetic arrest and epiphany where the key and lock fit and the Cosmos opens up as a Cosmic Dance … All possible interpretations collapse into the vision of the dance of pairs of opposites before the monad … all the myths coalesce and diffuse into and from the monomyth in One epic Dreamtime Dance .,,

R³

Dear Stephen,

Nice to hear your voice in this discussion, as always. Especially gratifying to hear that my latest post stimulated a whole new way of thinking about viewing dance for you.

One of the easiest ways to observe how different dancers bring their unique “voices” to their interpretations of a particular work is by watching a few of the many, many different performances of “The Dying Swan” you can find on the Internet. This short solo was choreographed by Michael Fokine in 1905 for the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova and became a signature piece that she performed around the world. Ever since then, performing it has become an important landmark in a ballet dancer’s career, the way performing Hamlet is for an actor, or playing “Syrinx” is for a flutist.

You can find actual footage of Pavlova dancing it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s__C1s-ohQ

Here is a YouTube video with three different performances by three other great Russian ballerinas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_LHgXxz9VE

I’m sure once you begin your search, you will find performances of this solo by contemporary ballerinas in major ballet companies all over the world.  During the early months of the pandemic, the America ballerina Misty Copland helped produce a “Zoom-style” video of it danced by  quarantined ballerinas from all over the world. It is a bit harder to compare and contrast the performances because you only see little bits of each dancer doing the piece, but it certainly illustrates the point about individual “voice” and it’s just fun to watch. It’s called “Swans for Relief.” You can see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LokXl1V3G-0

Finally, you might be interested in taking a look at a version of the dance created by the African American “jookin” dancer who goes by the moniker Lil Buck. This is a completely different version of the dance, but it has a similar intention.  It certainly illustrates how body type, training, gender, and the era in which a work is created, not to mention temperament and personal “voice”, effect interpretation and in this case, actual choreography. You can see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZumgHLSW10

If you want to go farther down this particular “rabbit hole” you can do similar searches about the following dances by choreographers that Joe discusses in The Ecstasy of Being:

“Mother Etude” (c. 1923) by Isadora Duncan
“Revolutionary Etude” (c. 1923) by Isadora Duncan
“Witch Dance”/“Hexentanz” (1926) by Mary Wigman
“Lamentation” (1930)  by Martha Graham
“Appalachian Spring” (1944) by Martha Graham

Duncan didn’t believe that the nascent technology of film could capture the quality of her work, so sadly, we don’t have any films of her dancing, but you can find many different and wonderful interpretations of both “Mother Etude” and “Revolutionary Etude”  by more contemporary Duncan dancers on line.

Fortunately, there are at least fragments of film of Wigman in “Witch Dance” also known by its German name, “Hexentanz”.  They were part of the wonderful 2013 MOMA exhibit  “Inventing Abstraction”.  You can find some of them on line. Many contemporary dancers have recreated the work from Labanotation, the written script for dance created by Wigman’s mentor, Rudolph Laban, You can also find some of these performances posted on line.

“Lamentation” is a short, iconic solo choreographed by Martha Graham. Like “The Dying Swan”, learning and performing it has become a landmark step for legions of Graham dancers. Recently, some ballet dancers have even performed this modern dance classic. You can find many versions of it on-line. Finally, a wonderful film of Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” produced by Nathan Kroll in 1959 is available in four parts, on line.  The film itself is a classic of dance film. You can compare a portion of that film, starring Graham, with an excerpt of the dance staged more recently on the Opera National de Paris by watching the following two films:

“Appalachian Spring” excerpt/Paris Opera Ballet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlKGw7B35vk

Appalachian Spring/ Nathan Kroll version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91y-NEdTj-g

(The excerpt performed by Paris Opera Ballet begins at 6:31. The excerpt continues in Part 4 of the Kroll version, which should come up automatically when you are watching.)

Happy watching,
Nancy

Nancy,

Thank you for the Dying Swan references and videos . Such beautiful conveyance of grace in the narrative of movement. I enjoy the association to Tennyson’s poem. For me there is a connection using some mental gymnastics to the Led Zeppelin record label Swan Song which leads to the myth of Icarus Daedalus & “by a commodius vicus of recirculation back” to James Joyce . Oh the streams of consciousness the River Liffey and ALP the pinnacle of the highest order of conversation. I would think a connection to Leda could also be drawn ? And the mythic symbolism of the Swan ? The Swan does figure in symbolism of alchemy. Which is a archetypical narrative that does complement the Dance of The Dying Swan. The Dance does articulate the personification of the consciousness of entropy … the dissipation evaporation of the disciplined ordered movement of life’s animation. Death 💀 doth make disciples of All Life … Life is born with the seed of death in its loins …

lil Buck interpretation is mesmerizing!!! I wonder what the old guard , “let them eat cake crowd“,  has to say ?

R³

Nancy,

Thank you for your Appalachian Spring selection. For me it leads to visions of Billy Ray & Molly Cyrus. Those icons of post modern Appalachia affected by the advent of the TV and the influence it projected on all segments of society culture and civilization. Amazing what a little cube of disruptive technology and vision can do. Tele vision is a Coach that can transport anywhere … Who was that Cyrus The Great ??? Boogidy !

I do like the double entendre implicit in spring, a source of life giving water and a season of new life birth renewal metempsychosis …

HCE

R³

Dear Fellow Dance & Myth Enthusiasts,

Sorry to have been unable to comment on your responses to my last post. It has been an unbelievably busy and stressful time for me, as I imagine it has been for many of you, too. I was delighted to see that some of you had the time to watch the video links I shared about individual style in dance interpretation and that they inspired new thoughts and connections for you.

Robert’s comment about enjoying theatrical dances that deal with myth by “personifying the primal forces and dichotomy of nature, anthropomorphizing it into the duality of masculine and feminine” reminded me of Jean’s 1950 dance “Solstice”.  Superficially, the dance is a created myth in which the Sun Lion, and the Moon Bull battle for the love/dominance of the Bride of Spring.  But for Jean, these two antagonistic animal figures meeting at the solstice, represented the psychic forces of an inner struggle she said occurred   “at the time of heart’s renewal”.

Jean relates the origin story of this dance in Part 2 of the video archive series, Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman. It all began in a conversation with Joe in which he proposed the idea that anything could be used as the basis for a dance. As an example, Joe offered the infinity symbol and the two began playfully sketching all the variations of patterns inherent in the horizontal figure-of-eight. At the same time, Jean happened to be reading a book about ancient solstice celebrations and so figure-of-eight floor patterns, as well as, cross-lateral figure-of-eight movements within the body became the basis of her choreography for this creative image of The Great Round.

For me, the dance and the story of its origin are wonderful examples of why Jean was lauded by New York Times chief dance critic Anna Kisselgoff as one of the choreographers of her generation responsible for “the more abstract direction that marks modern dance to this day”— a distinction for which I think both Jean and Joe would both be quite pleased!

So, I’m taking this opportunity to remind you that you can see an example of how Jean combined abstraction and archetypal, mythic content in dance in “The Transformations of Medusa” as part of the American Dance Guild’s “10 Years Over 10 Weeks Festival”. Free and unlimited access to the videotaped live performance begins November 23 and continues through November 29. The link to the festival is listed in one of my previous posts, but you can also find the festival easily by “googling”: American Dance Guild 2020 Festival.

I look forward to reading your responses to it!

All best,
Nancy

Nancy,

Thank you for your reply.

I enjoy the infinity lemniscate associations with a möbius and dance. Fun to toy with the strings of M theory , the moment of the movement of stringed instruments, the mythic music, and dance, of the spheres … The imbibing from a Klein bottle at a square dance the distilled wine, Brandy. Dosey doe your partner !!! Promenade the River Dance from swerve of shore to bend of bay … through the logical coherent cohesive multidimensional movement of Spirit through song and Dance like Mr. Bojangles … stepping from a Coach with six insides onto the shore of eternity … To dance to a Pythagorean tune of rational Beauty proportion and form … inspired by Gilgamesh Utnapishtim Noah Deucalion David Vitruvian Protagoras Johnny Castle & Baby …

R³

Hello,
I found this emotionally touching and wanted to share here.
Swan Lake.

Dear Dance Enthusiasts,

Glad, as always, to read your responses to my last post.

I am familiar with that emotionally moving YouTube that Robert included in his response. As you can imagine, it made its way around the dance world very quickly. I think it is a brilliant demonstration of what Jean used to call “the level, antecedent to words” on which both dance and music communicate.

Very glad to be the “lifter of the veil” about dance for Stephen. I hope that this conversation may have done some of that “lifting” for others, as well. I respectfully decline the box office commission, but will gladly accept a toast at your pre or post-performance dinner.

Wishing everyone many happy travels down serendipitous rabbit holes,
Nancy

Hello,

Yes

watched dance and reread #4074.

Wow !!!

The dance movements and narratives they elicit and enact are fascinating. They are the inspiration focal point for so many streams of consciousness and mythic musing within my mind. From the one dimension foci I am. I perceive her first as the two dimensional aspect she personifies on out to the three dimensions she moves in then the multidimensional aspect of the narrative in dance. So much to muse on !!! The repertoire of movements  has a fluid cascading effect on my internal dialog. So much fun to let the mind meander and be inspired by the dancer. Love the hand as mirror cup allusion. All that we grasp individually personally corporately historically cosmically archetypically etc. is a reflection from within a cup a Chalice. Tarot suit of cups symbolism. For me also brings to mind musing of the stigmata and the Hamsa with all their associations of symbolic meanings. Gazing  and stepping through the mirror. Alice !!!  Medusa and her snakes brings to mind the alimentary nature of our being reality and nature herself. The mirror that is used to slay her. The undulation of conveyance. I sense Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant wielding a golden sword emanating from the stage .

Thank you

R³

Dear Dance Enthusiasts,

So glad you had time to watch the performance of The Transformations of Medusa over the holiday weekend.

It is absolutely true, as Stephen noted, that the swastika motif that first appears at that critical moment of release in “Section One, Temple Virgin” is repeated and developed in the later sections of the dance. In “Section Two, Lady of the Wild Things”, it appears fleetingly as the character struggles with, or against, her fate. By “Section Three Queen of Gorgons” the swastika motif is ever-present, marking the complete fulfillment of Medusa’s transformation from a devoted young priestess to the eternally raging Queen of Gorgons.

I find it fascinating that Stephen mentioned seeing/feeling the dancer as physically larger in Section Three. This is not something Jean talked about when she taught the dance to me and I don’t recall any critical writing about Jean’s performances that mentions it, but when I performed the piece critics did mentioned that, so now I’m wondering if it is endemic to the movement, or if it is something that I “found” in it and am passing on as I teach it to others. I really have to think about that!

As to the relationship between the music and the dance… as far as I know, Jean created the entire dance without discussing it with Horst, although he was well aware of her work. Horst was Martha Graham’s musical director. As a female member of Graham’s company, Jean was required to take his dance composition classes in which he used the musical structures of pre-classic European dances such as the galliard and the pavane to teach form in contemporary dance making. At the same time, he was also a strong advocate for using contemporary music to accompany contemporary dance.

Jean began The Transformations of Medusa as an exploration of the, unfortunately named, “primitive” style that she had been introduced to in one of Horst’s classes. As Jean related the story, when the dance was complete, she showed it to Horst who was known for his harsh critical comments.  To her surprise, he was unusually complimentary about it. When she asked him to suggest a composer for it, he reportedly replied, “Louis Horst will do it.”

When creating movement without music, Jean worked with what she called a “fundamental pulse” — a kind of heartbeat for the movement. “Section One Temple Virgin” retains the same fundamental pulse throughout. The two movement themes of “Section Two, Lady of the Wild Things” have two different fundamental pulses that alternate throughout the section. “Section Three Queen of Gorgons” maintains the same fundamental pulse throughout. Jean was musically trained and could easily count the number of pulses in each section to give Horst the structure of her dance to which he then created the music, literally reversing the process she had learned from him.

It’s been a real pleasure to participate in this conversation with you. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have and that like me, you too feel this is a perfect time to bring it to a close.

Wishing you all a happy holiday season and many pleasures as you continue your journeys through the world of myth and dance,

Nancy

Hello,

Just received this art as a Christmas greeting from a friend. Title Winter Solstice. Brings to mind an inversion of the Dying Swan Dance . The flight of the spirit from the death of winter. A resurrection of The Flight Of The Wild Gander … perhaps with nod to The Snow Queen of Hans Christian Andersen.

Merry Christmas !!!

R³ 

Thank you R3.

Yes, many possible interpretations, but certainly  swans/birds full of energy.

Seasons Greetings,

Nancy

Nancy,

Your a genius an anthropomorphic personification of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as view from the artistic mind of a contemplative Devine feminine Hamsa (bird) !!! She dances away from the stillness of a Bose-Einstein condensate in flights of fancy !!! Pedals of the lotus in flight seeking Union with incarnation … Once more … the frozen mirrored lake the shattered scattered Lake is fractured by her rising horns … sending reflections in all directions …

Happy New Year !!!

R³

Robert R Reister

There is so much here expressed through detail and personal experiences of everyone above participating in this conversation of Jean Erdman and dance…not even sure where to begin! And let me add all above beautifully expressed.
Before commenting on Nancy Allison’s fascinating and inspiring posts on Jean Erdman…just have to give a nod to “The Ecstasy of Being.”

I was thrilled to receive the book the other day and delved right into the middle to see “what would appear or stand out.” A drawing of Krishna and Radha (apropos and syncretic as had recently particularly in a Zoom celebration of George Harrison’s life)

I have yet to read front to back but found myself eagerly turning pages and reading long passages, wherever book opened. The existence of this book is thrilling to me…so must thank Nancy for her part in this!
As a dancer even seeing glimpses of Joe Campbell’s comments on dance in Reflections for Living were tantalizing and even more so the revelation of his love and muse Jean!
So between the book and the enlightening posts above…and stories revealed…I love this!

What a wonderful and joyous experience of life journey Nancy! Will have to read your informing and inspiring post again! Since there is so much depth expressed in many facets on this post…thought might come in from the whimsical side…what I learned:-)
It seems Joe Campbell was a bit of a stickler at times. The “organizing of Jean’s schedule? Heh heh. Well this at least explains to me why Joe once said Jean was the one “who drove the car!”
And it seems Joseph Campbell was a bit opinionated about ballet! But I think it an honest prejudice in love of his wife’s particular form and call of dance! There are many shades and history to ballet from outside in and inside out…stories and myths not just formed upon the stage but also behind the scenes. Both in joy and sorrow and beauty and bliss.
But even glancing and diving in and out of ecstasy of Being…the soul of the modern or contemporary dance…was the stronger call for Jean…and in chance of meeting her Joe.
I have been lucky to have experience in different forms of dance…and to have taken classes in the summer of early teen years at Alvin Ailey. (Would love to know if Jean had ever made reference to Ailey? Especially since they incorporate both Graham and Horton in their training as well as Dunham and classical ballet. Another friend of mine was in a summer program there, but I was thrilled to take some classes in Horton and Graham (nothing fancy probably Graham 2…) as well as ballet. Even more thrilling seeing Ailey dancers in performance like Desmond Richardson… or choreography of Judith Jamison…Ailey was the closest I came besides the odd PBS special or video in Fine Arts class of Martha Graham. And I’m a tap dancer well with the necessary ballet training. I want to see videos of Jean in movement. Even in the photo in Ecstasy of Being where she has one knee bent and foot flexed off the floor can tell she commands a presence and energy. Must have been awe inspiring to see Jean in performance!
It seems to me until recent times where now Misty Copeland has found a spot in ballet without the traditional “aesthetic” “ballet shape,” but her own beautiful form…that modern or contemporary allowed “more,” into its field…and based on their movements, relation to the space and dimension around them as well as imagination and exercise of psyche to “create” dances, movements or even staged stories.
And breath. And when the idea moved the dance or when the dance and form was birthed from the music or sound.
Jean’s journey is very interesting especially the birth or call to dance in Hawaii. And participating in the Hula. I was also curious since she and her family were aware of the Hawaiian kings and queens…if there was ever a reference to Queen Lukolani? Sp?
I know she was deposed long before Jean’s birth but that queen still remains a strong cultural legend even among the non native Hawaiians living there.
So many other thoughts come up related to this post, it is hard not to be lost traveling road by road deeper into the forest.
I think one very important note here and in Ecstasy of Being is that both Jean and Joe had the opportunity to experience more than a glimpse of the Near and Far East first hand. Experiences were not limited to the studio or tomes alone. And how Jean was received (in the East) with acclaim and acceptance is very beautiful…showing how The Dance became the language of communication and there was no conflict. It feels as though there should be more of those transcendent moments now alas! Other cultures in present times with some exceptions are more protective of their traditions…
The other thought was on Jean doing a whole improvisation my memory! That is quite the feat!
I enjoy improv or free form dance just as much as the other forms…
But as for memory the only place I went crazy was keeping up the choreography or remembering the choreography of a dance I’d performed 11 years before.
Had quite the rep numbers (at least in various styles of tap…heh heh…classical/street/ballet/jazz/character etc. “Tap Tapestry,” one woman show. But forgive me thinking of Jean reminds one of one’s own call into The Land of Dance…
And last the question of the body-mind which several participants brought up in discussion in relation to being able to remember steps and movements…
Have always thought this related to How a dance is learned…the Left Brain works in the learning process in sequence as well as application of technique but the body-mind begins to “want to dance,” when the movements come from a deeper place…and sometimes this is intricately woven into the music…the muscle memory unconsciously responds to certain notes or even lyrics as the case might be.
The dance belongs to something larger than the analytical mind alone, it becomes ingrained rhythms, body movements even expression a flow happens and in the deepest state reaches a sense of bliss of being in the moment. But have also found the left brain to play role of trickster during rehearsal and less opportune times…it distracts with non-sequential thoughts “did I forget to mail that letter…where am I in the dance? Oh dear the flow might be lost.

But the brilliance of the body-mind beyond the self is that The Muscle memory can Take Over and do exactly
the proper move Even overriding the Trickster of Doubt.
But to imagine Jean “reading” and remembering that entire Improv…is mind blowing. Am sure would have wanted to ask her too many questions. If that improv was an example of a Need to Express what was “felt” in music or movement in the moment? There are so many layers in the world of dance from each form…to choreographers and stagers…to dancers who become the expressive paint in the canvas of someone else’s dream…or those who are brought to the call of adventure like Jean through Graham and later becoming the One who beckons others and allows them to seek expression and drama using shape, breath movement, meditation, imagination and at last transformation into art expressing all the Forms of Ecstasy of Being. Thank you.

Lost my password but luckily was able to finally see Nancy Allison and this lovely presentation of dance and choreography! Posted a comment below the video will repost here.

Thank you for the link Stephen! Sorry I was late to the live presentation/performance:-(

But am glad still available for viewing. Posted the link on social media too. 🙂

My post in midst of watching. And yes I did finish watching all of it through to the celebratory realization awakening from the Dante-like state in the techno club.

Nancy I’m sorry I’m late to this but am loving it!❤️ Just beautiful! dance started on the Earth…dancing on the Earth…long before stages. That same memory lingers yet for those dancers who risk a step even in the aisles of grocery store or when a live band plays in a park…in the sunshine the call to dance is eternal. Or even seeing Gene Kelly dancing in the rain…a celebration symbolically not on a stage. So now I’ll continue watching

Thank you Stephen for inviting us to watch Nancy’s brilliant piece and thank you sunbug for posting the video here. Nancy, your film brings out a very important concept, which is that our landscape shapes our view of the world, and our interaction with the world is shaped by our personal experiences.  The dance in Italy is sensitive and moving like the marble around the dancer and the techno dance is another world of  expression — both creative and so different. As a person in the audience, my reaction to the sensitive dance, coupled with even more sensitive words is much more intense than my reaction to the group dance in Tiblisi.

As sunbug said, “those dancers who risk a step even in the aisles of grocery store or when a live band plays in a park…in the sunshine the call to dance is eternal. ” Yes sunbug — the beauty of a dance is reflected in a child’s innocent reaction to music. I have noted that children that are emotionally strong react beautifully to dance nd music around them, and children that  become overly anxious and  inhibited, are unable to dance — as if they are losing the connection to the eternal. Just my sense.

Thank you Nancy.

Shaahayda

Just want to share this preview clip of a collaboration between Jock Soto (former principal dancer of New York City Ballet) Albuquerque Ballet and Robert Mirabal. Had no idea this had happened.

This type of collaboration which combines so many elements including storytelling and different dance forms blended into that…seems to me to be something that Jean Erdman (and Joe) would have loved.
Yes it’s ballet but there is a modern element in there too.
Jock Soto himself is Dineh and Puerto Rican grew up on the Navajo reservation. This is the kind of story I love! May have to repost in another forum! Man I missed this!
(Jock Soto is nice at least in the brief moment my Mom and I met him when I was taking class at David Howard’s Dance Center. But enough on me …here they are! THIS is the kind of transcendence in art which crosses all boundaries! Love it!!

Watch “Sacred Journeys II: The Live Stage Recording Trailer | Balloon Fiesta Park Drive-In” on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/547787570?ref=em-share