Astro-Vignette: Martha Graham and Heretic
A little bit of dance history, and astrology.
It is April 14th, 1929. You’re in New York, and at 8:30 pm, you’re going to a dance performance. It’s choreographed by a name you’ve heard cropping up more and more in advertisements - Martha Graham. Standing on the street corner, you raise your arm and hail a taxi. “Booth theater” you tell the driver, closing the door behind you. He drives off, delivering you to your destination.
A few weeks ago, I saw a dance production hosted by the Martha Graham dance company. I’ve had an interest in dance since I was young. I’m not a professional dancer by any means, but dance is my preferred mode of expression. I find it’s the most fun exercise, and I’m not afraid to look like an idiot. If you have a body, you can dance, and it doesn’t matter what it looks like. Maybe it’s just your arms, or just your legs, or it’s both. Moving is fun. And I love watching a good modern piece.
The performance started with Graham’s first ever modern dance piece that was performed in Booth Theater in 1929.1 The dance would come to be known by the name Heretic, but on the program it is listed under A Faith. Audiences found the performance “vulgar” and “shocking”. By our standards today, it’s quite tame, if a bit weird. The audiences in the 1920’s, though, were accustomed to ballet and other traditional dances. These were dance practices that had rules and familiarity - modern shook up the dance world. In an interview given by Graham in 1985, she called her early style “stark and simple”2.
I’d recommend watching the performance before reading the rest of the article, though it is entirely optional. Link to Heretic.
One year after Heretic would be performed, Pluto would be discovered. Pluto points to our death and rebirth cycles that we engage in throughout life. Pluto can mark turning points in ones life, where we are faced with a situation that forces us to make a decision - sometimes feeling like life or death. Modern dance represents that which is primal and instinctual, like gut feelings associated with life and death. Often, modern dance tackles themes like sexual assault, deep traumas, and the broad category of personal struggle. The invention of modern is one of the many reflections of the discovery of Pluto.
Pluto marked the beginning of modernity as we know it in our cultural context today. It’s rather synchronistic that a new dance technique known as modern would appear around the same time of its discovery.
I found a scan of a program from the first performance of Heretic in 1929 (I’ve linked in it in the article notes). Fortunately, it includes the time of the performance, allowing us to be able to cast a chart for the performance. We also have a birth time for Martha Graham3. When placed on top of each other, the synastry chart is as follows:
What can we see in this synastry? The dance’s MC and Neptune landing directly on Martha’s IC provokes for me words like innovative, instinctive, imaginative - especially with it being opposite her Mars. I think that placement speaks to the importance of this performance, and how it would set the tone for the rest of her career. She was someone who broke the barriers of the dance world, re-imagined them, then built new barriers all her own. She would go on to perfect her own dance technique, which is still used by dancers worldwide4.
In the 2nd house, we have Pluto conjunct Mars with the Moon co-present. In a review I found from the 1929 performance, the reviewer described Heretic as having “hair-raising intensity”5, which, I couldn’t come up with a better phrasing for Mars conjunct Pluto. The planet of movement, action, and sport combined with the planet of the deep, primal, and the provocative. Heretic was not a dance for the prude.
The moon’s co-presence is felt in the drama of the dance. The dramatic piano, the slow rise of the dancers in black - that is Mars and Pluto twisting and gnarling around each other. The moon reflects this energy in the collective feeling - like being in an uncomfortable room. Flinch-y. Martha, in her gown white like the moon, attempts to be soft in between the uncomfortable stillness.
What makes Martha Graham so inspiring for dance was her deep understanding of art, creativity, and the human form. She was eccentric, weird, and owned these aspects of herself. She was not in competition with anyone except herself; she held constant pressure on the boundaries of dance.6
“You have to have that terrific fear, the ancestral footstep walking behind you.” - Martha Graham, New York Times, 1985
Martha spoke much of what art was, and what made an artist. The tight Jupiter-Pluto-Neptune conjunction in Gemini presents in her intensity and specificity of her dances. She could slip easily into the primal nature of things, and this primal force shown in her dance pieces. Having the ruler of the chart located in the 12th house, topics that concerned the dark and the unconventional came easily to her.
Gemini is ruled by Mercury, planet of the messenger and communication. Mercury is also the trickster; it has some essence of the unconventional in its communication. In the previously mentioned interview, Graham spoke on the intersection of communication and dance.
“To me, the body says what words cannot … A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the two first arts … dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication … it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people.” - Martha Graham, New York Times, 1985
Communication happens through many channels. To borrow a term from linguistic anthropology, dance falls into the category of “multi-modal” communication. Gesture, facial expression, body language. Dance becomes the language of the body; it is inherently body language.
Graham communicated the unconventional. She not only defined a technique of dance that would revolutionized the art, she left a lasting legacy that would continue to inspire dancers for decades. To date, the Martha Graham Dance Company is the longest running dance company in the United States7. I’m not sure anyone in 1929 would have been able to predict the lasting power of her vision. When she broke and re-built the barriers, they stayed that way - perhaps she has her exalted Libra Saturn to thank for that.
What I find inspiring about Graham personally was her dedication to her craft, and the unrelenting artistic spring that seemed to reside within her. She was an innovator, eccentric thinker, and all around weirdo. Her dances have inspired hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and changed the world of dance forever. Graham is, undoubtedly, one of the greats.
It's not curiosity we're after, it's the revelation of beauty. - Martha Graham
Notes:
The stellium in her 1H inspired this sentiment. The planets are closely conjunct - like a stack of books on top of her body. She was compelled to feel through her body.