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January 15, 2025

On January 4, 2025, the Martha Graham Dance Company, with sponsorship by the Society for Classical Studies, which was holding its annual meeting in Philadelphia along with the Archaeological Institute of America, performed two Greek-themed dances: a duet, Errand into the Maze (1947), loosely based on the Ariadne, Theseus, and Minotaur myth; and Cave of the Heart (1946), based on the story of Medea, for a sold-out audience at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. Graham’s twentieth-century reception of these myths provides a woman-centered focus, with a woman, not a man, encountering the Minotaur in one dance, and with Medea as the amazing, powerful force in the other. Part of the impact of these dances is that they resonate both with antiquity and with the ever-changing moment of today.

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A woman in a long, white dress stands on a dark stage with her hands crossed over her pelvis. A nude man with arms raised stands behind her, a long bone tucked across his shoulders and held between his elbows.
1. SoYoung An and Antonio Leone in Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze (1947). Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.
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A woman in black with gold embroidery stands on the stage, her hands on her hips and one leg outstretched to the side. Long gold wires extend from all over her body.
2. Xin Ying as Medea and Anne Souder as the Chorus upstage left in Martha Graham’s Cave of the Heart (1946). Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.

This event was planned by the SCS Committee on Classics in the Community as a way to honor the work of Martha Graham, whose company is in the midst of a three-year celebration leading up to the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1926. The performance was also aimed at introducing attendees at the joint AIA/SCS annual meeting, as well as the wider Philadelphia public, to Graham’s significant role as an interpreter of Greek myth. The event was organized by Nina Papathanasopoulou, PhD, Public Engagement Coordinator for SCS and a Classics professor at College Year in Athens, and James Ker, chair of the SCS Committee on Classics in the Community and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Introductory remarks by Ker and Papathanasopoulou, as well as by Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, provided helpful information about the origin of the performance, Graham’s Greek myth-themed dances, and the two dances to be performed. After the performance, Papathanasopoulou conducted a talkback with Eilber and two of the performers, Lloyd Knight and Xin Ying, whose comments were met with great interest and enthusiasm by the audience. The audience members, many of whom were unfamiliar with Graham’s Greek-related work, were enthralled. The applause and the buzz about the performance back at the conference hotel later provided evidence of the success of the event.

The full performance program, which provides detailed information about the Graham Company and its members as well as the evening’s event, can be found here. Two already published SCS Blog posts by Ker and Papathanasopoulou and by Papathanasopoulou provide further background on the origins and planning of the event and the two dances performed. I include here a group of photographs from the performance, where you can see Ker introducing the event, Papathanasopoulou leading the talkback, and the dancers performing in both dances.

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A man with gray hair and glasses wearing a dark suit stands on a stage in front of a microphone reading off note cards. A red curtain is behind him and a spotlight shines on him.
3. Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Chair of the Classics in the Community Committee, James Ker. Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.
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Four people sit in black folding chairs on a stage. The woman on the end speaks into a microphone.
4. Professor of Classical Studies at College Year in Athens and Public Engagement Coordinator of the SCS, Nina Papathanasopoulou with Janet Eilber, Lloyd Knight and Xin Ying during the talkback. Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.
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A nude man stands on stage with his right leg raised at the hip and his knee bent 90 degrees. His arms are raised and extended, with a long bone held between them at the elbows. Behind him stands a woman in a long white dress covering her face with one hand.
5. SoYoung An and Antonio Leone in Martha Graham’s Errand into the Maze (1947). Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.
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Four dancers pose on stage, one lying down, one sitting, one standing, and one kneeling. They look into the audience.
6. Lloyd Knight as Jason, Laurel Dalley Smith as the Princess, Anne Souder as the Chorus and Xin Ying as Medea in Martha Graham’s Cave of the Heart (1946). Photo by Anne Lantian Jing, University of Pennsylvania.

An academic panel, Dance and Myth: The Reception of the Greeks by Martha Graham, co-organized by Ronnie Ancona, Professor Emerita of Classics at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and Papathanasopoulou, showcased five papers by a range of scholars on Graham’s engagement with Greek myth. The speakers included the two co-organizers, Ancona and Papathanasopoulou, plus Victoria Hodges, Amanda Kubic, and Victoria Phillips. (The hyperlinks lead to their paper abstracts.) Following the panel presentations, Papathanasopoulou facilitated a discussion with Eilber and Martha Graham Company dancers Knight and Anne Souder. Pictured here are the five panelists and the audience and the discussion with Papathanasopoulou.

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A speaker stands at a podium on a small stage while a seated audience looks on. Behind her are four panelists sitting at a table.
7. The five panelists during the academic panel “Dance and Myth: The Reception of the Greeks by Martha Graham.” Photo by Ana María Núñez, University of Pennsylvania.
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A woman in a blue blouse stands at a podium. Next to her, three panelists sit behind a long table.
8. From left to right: Lloyd Knight, Anne Souder, Janet Eilber, and Nina Papathanasopoulou. Photo by Ana María Núñez, University of Pennsylvania.

While the panel and the performance were each stand-alone events, those who attended both benefitted from exposure to both scholarly work and performance devoted to Graham’s engagement with Greek myth. Particularly engaging in the panel Q&A, as well as in the performance talkback, were the dancers’ comments on how they prepared for their roles, how they needed to find in themselves things that connect to those roles in order to perform them effectively, and how they kept who they were separate from the roles they played. Their openness in sharing their professional practices allowed the audiences to learn how much work goes into performing a role and what goes on behind the scenes before we see the dancers perform on stage. Eilber has devoted a lot of attention, as Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, to educating audiences about Graham and her dances and she, happily for us, invites her dancers to be part of that process.

For those who were excited by the performance and would like further information about the Martha Graham Dance Company and their schedule of performances, see this link to their website. Those who found the sets designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi engaging may want to visit the Noguchi Museum in New York City, which Noguchi himself created to display his own work. A current exhibit, Against Time: The Noguchi Museum 40th Anniversary Reinstallation, includes some of Noguchi’s dance sets, including the Spider Dress from Cave of the Heart. The exhibit is on view through September 14, 2025.

This double feature of academic panel and performance brought new scholarship on Martha Graham’s reception of Greek myth together with practitioners of dance to show the wide interdisciplinary reach of what we study in our field and the broad and continually expanding range of its interpreters.


Authors

Ronnie Ancona is Professor Emerita of Classics at Hunter College and The Graduate Center (CUNY). Her interests include Latin poetry, women in antiquity, Classics pedagogy, and Classical Reception studies. She coedited New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World (OUP 2021), cowrote the 2023 Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation, a joint SCS/ACL project, and coedits the OUP series “Women in Antiquity.” She has served as SCS Vice President for Education, President of CAAS, and Editor of The Classical Outlook. Her current book project, under contract with Bloomsbury, focuses on Martha Graham’s Greek myth-based dances and her collaboration with Isamu Noguchi. Contact: rancona@hunter.cuny.edu.