Going Deep into Lamentation

This entire amazing experience was set into motion several months ago when Peter Sparling said to me in one of what we jokingly call our weekly GYROTONIC®/Therapy sessions, “ I have a proposition for you”. Intrigued, I would have never guessed what would follow. “What if you were to learn Lamentation and perform it for your 2026 season?”. My answer was, of course, "YES!"

For some background, Lamentation is a solo work, choreographed and performed by Martha Graham in 1930. This seminal piece, less than four minutes in duration, performed inside a tube of stretch wool jersey, mostly seated on a bench, with it’s modernist, cubist abstraction, went deeper into the expression of pure human emotion than audiences had seen to that point and forever reshaped the aesthetic of modern and, later in the lineage, contemporary dance. Powerful still to our 2020’s eyes and sensibilities, it’s important to keep in mind how striking this would have been to viewers at the time, having never seen anything quite like it. It would be as impactful as Picasso moving from his Blue and Rose Period works into the abstractions of his African Inspired and Cubist Periods. Anything that looks familiar to us from Lamentation when we see it now comes from it having shaped the vocabulary and emotional expression of all modern dance that followed. Even works by choreographers who’s vision was to remove emotion from the movement, such as Merce Cunningham (a former Graham dancer), were to some extent doing so in response to the aesthetics set by this work. In the simplest of terms, it’s a really big deal.

2026 is the centennial of the Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest working modern dance company in the United States. I began studying Graham technique in college at the University of Michigan Dance Department, primarily with Peter Sparling, but also with Linda Spriggs, and then continued taking Peter’s Saturday morning Graham classes after college at Dance Gallery here in Ann Arbor. Since those days I’ve only had a chance to take a handful of Graham classes and, while I never felt “good at Graham” in those days (It’s not the sort of technique that I think even many of those very proficient at the rigorous movement style ever feel “good” at) I now feel like it’s one of the most comfortable, familiar movement vocabularies to me. A few years back I dropped in on a Graham class at the Joel Hall studio in Chicago and, even though it might have been 15 years since my last Graham class, when the floorwork warm-up started it was as if someone pushed my “go” button and the entire class just flowed naturally out of me, without even my thinking about it. Still, there’s a difference between enjoying the familiar patterning of a technique class and taking on the performance of one of the most artistically and historically significant creative works of the 20th century.

Because Lamentation is traditionally a female role, Peter had never danced it himself, which meant he wouldn’t be able to teach it to me. (In fact it was only last year that Lloyd Knight became the first male dancer to perform the piece). So I’d have to go to New York to learn it from someone at the Graham Studios. In preparation for learning the work I spoke with as many former Graham dancers who had danced it as I could, getting their impressions and performance tips, from “‘The Woman’ will be different each time you perform it”, to “Don’t wash your hair and wear lots of hairspray to keep the fabric on your head”.

It was Peter who coordinated with Joyce Herring, arranging for her to teach me the work.

Dates were coordinated, I booked my flights, arranged with family in New York to stay the week, and I was off!  I decided that I should keep a little journal of the experience, and I’ll share some of that here with you now.

The Weekend Before:

My husband I and came out early to have a little weekend away before I start learning Lamentaion. In these past few mornings in New York, awaiting the beginning of five days of rehearsals with Joyce Herring, I’ve awakened to the strains of the piece’s score playing through my mind. Joyce arranged a couple of days before my departing for New York for a link to her 1980s performance at the White House to be sent for me to study and reference. Previously, I had been working from various videos I found on YouTube, choosing them not necessarily for the artistry or precision of the performances, but for the clarity and full frame shots of the videography. So I was familiar with the overall structure of the work before I received the video, but Joyce’s performance is, in the original sense of the word, “awesome”, as in truly inspiring awe. Watching her performance was like seeing the work for the first time all over again. I’m so honored to be able to learn this work from her, who learned it from Martha herself. “As close to the horse’s mouth as you can get”, Peter had said.

Rehearsals Begin:

Rehearsals start today, Monday, and my husband and I came out on Friday to have a little weekend away before the I start working in the studio. He then ended up stranded here by the massive snowstorm that hit us yesterday morning, but my aunt kindly took the both of us in for a cozy Sunday snow day. The Graham School is closed today due to the snow, and the company is on their centennial tour, so we’ll have the place quiet to ourselves.

One of the mornings when I awoke with the music playing through my mind, I was struck by an understanding I hadn’t thought through before seeing Joyce’s performance of the piece. I had previously thought of the work as one moment of grief. Maybe this is obvious to others, or maybe Joyce will say it’s not correct, but I started to think of Lamentation in more nuanced layers of development, a slow, plodding, evolution. Initially the new grief that hits you hard, wrenching the guts, the type of grief when you might let out an animalistic howl if you opened your mouth. The movement is all from deep in the belly, pulling the exterior body into contortions, as if without thought, only pure instinctual, primal reaction. This was always the most clear to me in viewing the work. But then, in the last minute of this short work, the woman stands and gestures outward beside her, as if looking to the outside world -for solace, maybe? To see if her grief is seen? In hope? And from this point it feels to me that the grief rises from her belly and now is coming from her heart, and into her mind. This is the grief we carry with us as we attempt to move forward. She looks out across the horizon, but with an almost mask-like face. She may reenter that outside world soon, but she has not emerged from pain and loss. And in the last moments we see that, through she might push against it, the literal shroud of her grief continues to encase her.

Joyce entered the studio carrying the iconic tube of purple fabric. We started by pulling out the bench and placing it close to the mirror, where we set up my laptop and pulled up the video of her performance. The first few moments of the piece are by far the most difficult to learn, despite being probably the most simple movements in the work. We began working through methodically, movement by movement, angle by angle. One challenge in learning this work, which is to some extent true of learning any dance work, is that there are very clear landmarks that must be clearly attained, but in memorizing the sequence, hitting one shape and then the next, it’s easily divorced from it’s emotional impetus and the psychological inner-scape that should pull the performer from one moment through into the next. I had watched the video carefully and generally knew the framework of the sequence, but so much happens within the fabric that is difficult to read from the outside, especially in a video recording from the 1980s.

A generous and patient teacher, Joyce gave me as much as she could verbally, and with gestures of her body in a standing position. She told me she’d recently injured some ribs and wasn’t moving as comfortably and as well as she’d like, before taking the tube from me, climbing in, and giving a gorgeous, fully expressed demonstration of a section of movement. I was clearly awed and she said “ well, it’s better on the video”.

We were able to work through about two thirds of the work in our first rehearsal. Working within the tube is more challenging than one might imagine. I’ve worked with fabric a lot, but this is different. That evening my arms were already sore from constant pulling of the fabric into tension. It’s also intensive on the back, as you’re always pulling the fabric taut with the opposition of your spine.

While detailed and specific with corrections, Joyce is also a kind teacher, saying “great”, “wonderful”, “that’s right”, and “great job”, which are honestly not words I was accustomed to hearing in Graham technique classes.

I had originally planned to take a ballet class at Steps after rehearsal, but since my husband was stranded with me in New York, waiting for flights to Detroit to start getting out again, we instead went for a nice lunch and a stroll around the snowy city before heading back to my Aunt’s apartment. He was able to get out on the late flight that evening.

On the second day I got to the studio early, and was able to warm up and review the material. It felt like it was definitely coming together better after sleeping on it for a night and then revisiting it on my own. When Joyce arrived she had me show her what we had done the day before, and then we began adding on, working through to the end of the piece. Then I went through the entire piece while Joyce took notes. We ended up being a day ahead in learning the work, leaving more time to develop the performance quality, get more details layered in, and to clean up timing and precision. An unforeseen issue that arose was that I started to get fabric burn on one elbow, not unlike one can get from doing aerial silks. I’m glad that I packed mostly long sleeved leotards.

After rehearsal that day I dropped in on a Gaga class at Gibney. It was good to explore some of the release and variation of exertions and qualities after a second day of pulling myself and the fabric into tautness.

On the third day, again I got to the studio early to work on some of the details we’d gotten into the day before and to study the video for timing- the last part of the score is tricky to navigate. I played around with how to manipulate the fabric with more precision. I kept finding that either I didn’t have enough fabric to stay covered and give myself room to move within it, or I had too much fabric and it would go slack or entirely cover my face so I must have looked like I was trying to wrestle my way out of a potato sack. Each movement of the fabric not only sets it up for where you’re going to go next, but also facilitates something that needs to happen several moves out, so one always has to be entirely in the moment, while also strategizing for the future arrangement of the fabric. Again, this dance is much harder than it appears, which I expected going into it, but one never fully understands until immersed in the process -and in a large amount of wool jersey. At least it’s easy to stay warm between runs, as you’re literally wrapped in a blanket.

After rehearsal I went to a Simonson Technique class at Gibney, and the flowing contemporary sequencing was restorative after a day of pulling against the fabric.

During our rehearsals Joyce would detail on me the exact placement of my foot on the floor, the precise angle of the leg or rotation of the torso. “Remember, you’re a piece of modern, abstract art- the lines must be clear” she said. Also, because the dance is performed covered in the fabric, the quintessential Graham movement, the contraction, must be performed deeper and more fully so it can be read through the cloth. A contraction, while it sounds and appears very muscular in effort, is actually more of an emptying or hollowing out of the belly. It does take strength, but too much muscular exertion would block the movement. At moments I was hollowing out my abdominal cavity so deeply that my obliques felt as if they might spasm in on themselves. Again, as a piece that is performed almost entirely seated on a bench, it is far more physically challenging than it appears.

On disadvantage was that, due to the centennial celebrations, performances of Lamentation are happening around the world, meaning all the tubes were loaned out or out on tour, and the wardrobe person was on tour with the company, meaning no tubes were available other than the one Joyce had used in that very 1980’s White House video. And while it was a great honor to be able to rehearse in that actual tube, I’m a good bit taller and so the tube was too short for me. The fabric is already challenging enough to manage, but even more so when it was sliding too far up my legs or, if I pulled it down further to start, sliding too easily off my head. It also had developed several holes over years of use, which I had to navigate to avoid getting my fingers stuck. During one run my pinky finger got wrapped up in a split in the fabric, but otherwise the timing was going really well so I didn’t want to stop, so I did the rest of the run with my little finger bending off at an unnatural and uncomfortable angle. But at all times I was aware of how fortunate I was to be having this experience, and wouldn’t have traded a moment of it for anything.

On the fourth day we were meeting later in the day for our rehearsal, which gave me a chance to drop in on a Graham class at Peridance that morning. The class was so centering and made me again wish that I had access to regular Graham classes in Ann Arbor, which we haven’t had since Dance Gallery closed so many years ago now.

On the final day of our rehearsal week, we ran through the piece a few more times. Joyce had me then do the entire piece sitting directly on the floor with my legs in a wide V position, so I could feel the precise distribution of the weight on my sit bones and more clearly relate the movements to the principles of the Graham floor work warm up. Since I’d be continuing to rehearse without her, this would be my reference for clarity in my positioning and angles. And then we rehearsed the bow and were done. She apologized for my not having the appropriate tube to work in all week and I said it was an honor to have learned the work in her tube.

By the end of my week in New York a tube was located across the country for me, and should be arriving any day now. Meanwhile, I’ve been rehearsing without a tube. I made one out of stretch lycra, but it’s far too slippery- it seems only to work with the correct weight wool jersey. My husband and a friend of ours are going to construct a bench for me, which must be made to exact specifications. Until that’s built I’m practicing on my GYROTONIC® bench.

So, I know the choreography and now it’s a matter of exploring the work on my own, integrating all of the corrections, precision, and detail with an authentic emotional expression that I must find through immersing myself in the movement. All of the mechanical aspects of the work must be second nature so that in performance my only task is to fully embody the meaning of the piece. Joyce said “ Whenever you rehearse it, perform it”, meaning don’t just run through the shapes and the sequencing, but be in the full expression of it each time. So I still have much work to do before I perform Lamentation on stage for the first time in June at Dancing in Summer, The Festival. It continues to be a challenging, but uniquely inspiring experience that I’ll carry with me forever.