Abstract
In this chapter, I examine Martha Graham’s Chronicle (1936), its history and performances, and present-day reconstructions of the work. I explore associations between current events and Graham ’s search for ways to wield choreography and movement as political statements. I show how transmission , as an embodied experience, governs power in a dance work created/performed in the past and researched, reconstructed, restaged, and/or reimagined in the present. Using in-depth interviews, archival research, and performance practice, and from my vantage point as a former Graham company dancer and régisseur, I propose that Graham ’s own collaborations during a work’s conception/creation/performance offer a model for how current scholars might approach restaging, reconstructing, and reimagining her master works. The Graham legacy, through transmission and collaboration, remains an exciting site for knowledge about both the past and present of dance history in the making.
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Interviews/Communications
Terese Capucilli—personal communication/email. January 24, 2017.
Deborah Goodman—personal communication/email. November 22, 2016.
Ellen Graff—personal communication/email. February 10, 2017.
Lone Kjaer Larsen—personal communication/email. November 21, 2016.
———. personal communication/email. March 11, 2017.
Miki Orihara—personal communication/email. May 10, 2015.
———. personal communication/email. November 21, 2016.
Alessandra Prosperi—personal communication/email. March 14, 2017.
Yuriko—interview with the author. New York, December 2, 2016.
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Jones, K. (2017). Transmission as Process and Power in Graham’s Chronicle (1936). In: Main, L. (eds) Transmissions in Dance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64873-6_6
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