Book Review: ‘Errand Into the Maze,’ by Deborah Jowitt

Jowitt excels at describing, minutely, the work — restoring to readers the novelty of Graham’s now-ingrained concepts; her conviction and distinct style. Of “Celebration,” a 1934 piece for 14 women, she writes: “Wearing identical dresses in deep blue and black, they jumped and jumped and jumped and jumped (a hundred times, one of them was sure), with only a brief seated section to power them up again.”

The choreographer’s collaborations were top-notch: the sculptor Isamu Noguchi; the composer Samuel Barber; and the designer Halston. Learning how she drew inspiration from so many disparate cultures (Greek, Indigenous, biblical) — with occasional gross insensitivity — one begins to realize that the term “modern dance,” like “classical music,” is if not a misnomer, then a massive oversimplification.

Critics could be “uncomprehending and denunciatory”; the public, “baffled but moved in some way they do not understand.” But Graham early on achieved one of the clearest marks of success: She was parodied. (By Fanny Brice, no less. And who can forget Robin Williams’s rapid-fire tour of American dance forms in “The Birdcage”?) Should she have gotten a piece of the Pulitzer that the composer Aaron Copland picked up for their ballet, “Appalachian Spring”? You bet your bottom Barbie.

About the messy life between performances, Jowitt is comparatively mild. Graham, as has been written about plenty, had relationships with much younger men that could cloud her staunch professionalism. Her alcoholism tiptoes into these pages on little cat feet (by the way, Graham’s own were tiny: size 5B), beginning with a bout of drinking after Horst died in 1964; her infamous temper is minimized, characterized as “cloudbursts” and “purgative.” You will not here find Graham boogieing at Studio 54 or pinching and slapping teenage dance students. Nor, on the other hand, read about the time Helen Keller visited the studio.

A definitive biography of this woman who lived until 96 and spoke in epigrams, undulations and billowing fabric might be impossible to contain between one set of covers, but “Errand Into the Maze” is a distinguished biography: its description rich, its author’s rigor unquestionable.

ERRAND INTO THE MAZE: The Life and Works of Martha Graham | By Deborah Jowitt | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 480 pp. | $35

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