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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Digital Library Collections
This is a PDF of a folder from our textual collections.
Collection: Counsel to the President, Office of the:
Appointee Files: Records
Folder Title: Martha Graham, Member - National Council on
the Arts
Box: CFOA 908
To see more digitized collections visit:
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/digitized-textual-material
To see all Ronald Reagan Presidential Library inventories visit:
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/white-house-inventories
Contact a reference archivist at: [email protected]
Citation Guidelines: https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/research-
support/citation-guide
National Archives Catalogue: https://catalog.archives.gov/
WITHDRAWAL SHEET
Ronald Reagan Library
Collection Name COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT: APPOINTEE FILES
Withdrawer
KDB
6/9/2013
File Folder
MARTHA GRAHAM, MEMBER - NATIONAL COUNCIL
FOIA
ON THE ARTS
F11-0004/01
Box Number
908
GEDULD
1
DOC Doc Type
Document Description
No of Doc Date Restrictions
NO
Pages
1
FORM
RE M. GRAHAM (PARTIAL)
1
8/2/1984
B6
2
LIST
RE RESPONSES TO PERSONAL DATA
1
ND
B6
STATEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE (PAGE 1,
PARTIAL)
Freedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]
B-1 National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]
B-2 Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of an agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]
B-3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA]
B-4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial information [(b)(4) of the FOIA]
B-6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]
B-7 Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement purposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]
B-8 Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of financial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]
B-9 Release would disclose geological or geophysical information concerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]
C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed of gift.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
February 1, 1985
MEMORANDUM FOR LARRY GARRETT
FROM:
DIANNA HOLLAND tot
We have received the background investigation on Martha Graham.
Would you please let me know where we stand with her personal
data statement.
Thank you.
2.6.85
DBLL:
WE ARE BUALTING RECEIPT of Ms. G'S POS-
WE unore HER TWICE - ANN called the other
day & was ADVISED "it WAD BEEN SENT "SOME TIME
DGO To THE NATL. END ON THE ACTS. WE CALLED,
THEY CAN'T FIND IT $ Ms. G'S STACF DiD NOT RETAIN
A COPY. HENCE, WE SENT HER A NEW FORM for
COMPLETION.
R
to
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
March 14, 1985
APPOINTMENT PROCESS PERSONAL INTERVIEW RECORD
DATE OF INTERVIEW:
No Interview Conducted
CANDIDATE:
Martha Graham
POSITION:
Member, National Council on the Arts
INTERVIEWER:
H. Lawrence Garrett, III
Stand
COMMENTS:
Martha Graham is the 91-year-old Artistic Director of the
Martha Graham Dance Company and School, which she founded in
1929, in New York City. Ms. Graham reports no prior Federal
Government service.
If confirmed, Ms. Graham will serve as one of 26 members of
the National Council on the Arts, appointed by the President,
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, pursuant
to the provisions of 20 U.S.C. § 955, as amended. The
statute provides that the 26 members shall be selected from
among private citizens of the United States who are widely
recognized for their broad knowledge of, or expertise in, or
their profound interest in, the arts; so as to include
practicing artists, civic cultural leaders, members of the
museum profession, and others who are professionally engaged
in the arts; and so as collectively to provide an appropriate
distribution of membership among the major art fields.
Members are appointed for staggered six-year terms. Ms.
Graham, who has been described as "the Picasso of dance"
clearly qualifies, in my opinion, for appointment to the
National Council on the Arts.
Ms. Graham was not required to file a financial disclosure
report (SF-278) in conjunction with her prospective nomination
in that members of the Council serve only part-time and are,
therefore, not required, as a matter of law, to file a
publicly-available financial disclosure report until they
actually serve in excess of 60 days.
5 U.S.C. app. § 201 (h).
Review of Ms. Graham's responses to the questions on the
Personal Data Statement reveals no information of a potentially
embarrassing or controversial nature. Based upon my review
of all of the materials submitted by Ms. Graham, I did not
conduct a personal interview in this instance.
I note, however, that the Martha Graham Center is funded in
part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Such a relation-
ship, of course, presents a potential conflict of interest
should any particular matter come before the Council wherein
Ms. Graham has a financial interest. Given the procedures
- 2 -
that are in place, both to identify potential conflicts and
to prevent a member of the Council from inadvertently
participating in a particular matter in which they have a
financial interest, I am satisfied that Ms. Graham will not
be allowed to participate in the deliberations and recom-
mendations concerning grant applications from the Martha
Graham Dance Company or the Martha Graham Center. This is
the only apparent potential conflict of interest which
evolves from her financial interests.
No matters of a potentially embarrassing or controversial
nature were revealed during my review of the materials
submitted by Ms. Graham. I would note, however, that in
1983, she was involved in somewhat of a brouhaha with the
National Endowment for the Arts when the Martha Graham Dance
Company did not receive a requested challenge grant from the
Endowment. However, in a related article in the July 19,
1984, edition of The Washington Post, it was revealed that
the National Endowment for the Arts provided a special
$250,000 grant to Ms. Graham's company for the filming of
her choreographic masterpieces. This followed the issuance
of a strong public protest by Graham, "seconded by many of
her supporters" followed by meetings between the Endowment
and Ms. Graham "in an effort to patch things up." Apparently
this matter has been put to rest, and should cause no
difficulty with Ms. Graham's nomination.
Accordingly, assuming successful completion of all other
background checks, I recommend this nomination go forward.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
March 14, 1985
APPOINTMENT PROCESS PERSONAL INTERVIEW RECORD
DATE OF INTERVIEW:
No Interview Conducted
CANDIDATE:
Martha Graham
POSITION:
Member, National Council on the Arts
INTERVIEWER:
H. Lawrence Garrett, III
Stand
COMMENTS:
Martha Graham is the 91-year-old Artistic Director of the
Martha Graham Dance Company and School, which she founded in
1929, in New York City. Ms. Graham reports no prior Federal
Government service.
If confirmed, Ms. Graham will serve as one of 26 members of
the National Council on the Arts, appointed by the President,
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, pursuant
to the provisions of 20 U.S.C. § 955, as amended. The
statute provides that the 26 members shall be selected from
among private citizens of the United States who are widely
recognized for their broad knowledge of, or expertise in, or
their profound interest in, the arts; so as to include
practicing artists, civic cultural leaders, members of the
museum profession, and others who are professionally engaged
in the arts; and so as collectively to provide an appropriate
distribution of membership among the major art fields.
Members are appointed for staggered six-year terms. Ms.
Graham, who has been described as "the Picasso of dance"
clearly qualifies, in my opinion, for appointment to the
National Council on the Arts.
Ms. Graham was not required to file a financial disclosure
report (SF-278) in conjunction with her prospective nomination
in that members of the Council serve only part-time and are,
therefore, not required, as a matter of law, to file a
publicly-available financial disclosure report until they
actually serve in excess of 60 days.
5 U.S.C. app. § 201(h).
Review of Ms. Graham's responses to the questions on the
Personal Data Statement reveals no information of a potentially
embarrassing or controversial nature. Based upon my review
of all of the materials submitted by Ms. Graham, I did not
conduct a personal interview in this instance.
I note, however, that the Martha Graham Center is funded in
part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Such a relation-
ship, of course, presents a potential conflict of interest
should any particular matter come before the Council wherein
Ms. Graham has a financial interest. Given the procedures
- 2 -
that are in place, both to identify potential conflicts and
to prevent a member of the Council from inadvertently
participating in a particular matter in which they have a
financial interest, I am satisfied that Ms. Graham will not
be allowed to participate in the deliberations and recom-
mendations concerning grant applications from the Martha
Graham Dance Company or the Martha Graham Center. This is
the only apparent potential conflict of interest which
evolves from her financial interests.
No matters of a potentially embarrassing or controversial
nature were revealed during my review of the materials
submitted by Ms. Graham. I would note, however, that in
1983, she was involved in somewhat of a brouhaha with the
National Endowment for the Arts when the Martha Graham Dance
Company did not receive a requested challenge grant from the
Endowment. However, in a related article in the July 19,
1984, edition of The Washington Post, it was revealed that
the National Endowment for the Arts provided a special
$250,000 grant to Ms. Graham's company for the filming of
her choreographic masterpieces. This followed the issuance
of a strong public protest by Graham, "seconded by many of
her supporters" followed by meetings between the Endowment
and Ms. Graham "in an effort to patch things up." Apparently
this matter has been put to rest, and should cause no
difficulty with Ms. Graham's nomination.
Accordingly, assuming successful completion of all other
background checks, I recommend this nomination go forward.
To
HG
Date
8/16
Time 4:45
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
M
allan Wallace
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martha Maham Ctr
Phone
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TELEPHONED
PLEASE CALL
CALLED TO SEE YOU
WILL CALL AGAIN
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John Clark
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682-5400
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Services Mead Data Central
PAGE 22
12TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1983 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
September 3, 1983, Saturday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 1; Page 14, Column 1; Cultural Desk
LENGTH: 1064 words
HEADLINE: MARTHA GRAHAM ASSAILS U.S. ARTS UNIT
BYLINE: By JENNIFER DUNNING
BODY:
Martha Graham, in a public statement, has accused the National Endowment
for the Arts of age discrimination and bias.
Miss Graham, who is 89 years old, is a founder and one of the leading
exponents of American modern dance. She made the statement Wednesday after
learning that the Martha Graham Dance Company would not receive a requested
challenge grant from the endowment. The names of dance companies receiving the
grants will be announced on Sept. 15.
' 'My concern about this decision moves me to do something that I have never
done - to make a public statement in defense of myself and my company and an
appeal to the American public,' Miss Graham said in the statement.
''I chose to make this statement before a public announcement is made of the
choices for the grant, and before I know of such choices, 50 that it may not
seem that I am acting against any dance institution. It is also my hope that any
statement I make will not cast a cloud on the many good works the National
Endowment for the Arts has done throughout the years.'
Grants Must Be Matched
Challenge grants are awarded by the endowment in amounts of up to $1.5
million. A condition of the grant is that a recipient must raise three times the
award over a three-year period.
The Graham company had requested a $1 million grant, which it intended to
spend on four projects: filming Miss Graham's dances with commentary by the
choreographer, developing better studio facilities at the Martha Graham Dance
Center on East 63d Street, increasing a national scholarship program at the
company's school and instituting a capital campaign and a national
teacher-certification program.
Miss Graham, a winner of the $25,000 Samuel H. Scripps-American Dance
Festival Award and the $25,000 Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the
Arts, the largest cash prizes in the performing arts, said in an interview that
she and Ron Protas, the associate artistic director of the Graham company, had
been informed by the endowment that the company would not receieve a grant. She
said that they had been told that improvements could be made in the company
management and that the company did not qualify as an institution and seemed to
have an uncertain future.
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(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 3, 1983
''It is my belief that I have not been given the real reasons for this
decision against my company, Miss Graham said in her statement. ''To me, it
appears that I have been discriminated against because of my age and that there
may have been a biased decision at the Dance Panel of the National Endowment
for the Arts.
Declined to Make Public
Hugh Southern, the deputy chairman for programs at the endowment, declined to
say why the Graham company, founded in 1929, had been turned down for the grant.
'The challenge grant program is designed to address longterm institutions
and the stability of the institutions it supports, he said. ''But we haven't
announced the rejections at this point. Letters of explanation to those
companies will begin to be mailed out at the end of this week. And it should be
up to the companies to comment on the reasons we give them.
Mr. Southern said that neither Miss Graham's age nor a bias against the
Graham company had anything to do with the rejection. He said that the advancing
age of many dance company founders was only a factor in ''a general
consideration of what plans and provisions they have made for the future.
'The New York City Ballet, he said, 'planned for quite a number of years
for the future after George Balanchine was unable to function or died. I
hesitate to report on whether there is a problem there with the Martha Graham
company until the company is informed.'
Only six dance institutions of the 220 that applied received challenge grants
this year. Mr. Southern said that competition had been unusually strong because
institutions that had already received such grants were eligible for the first
time to reapply.
Considered by Three Panels
Institutions requesting such grants are audited, then considered by three
panels, whose recommendations are passed on by Frank Hodsoll, the chairman of
the endowment.
The current dance challenge grant panel includes Mary Hinkson, a former
Graham dancer; Edward Villella, director of the Eglevsky Ballet; Ian Horvath,
director of the Cleveland Ballet; the choreographer Murray Louis; Tina Ramirez,
director of Ballet Hispanico; the choreographer Gus Solomons Jr.; Kent Stowell,
director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and representatives of state arts
councils and private and corporate foundations.
Among the companies reported to have received challenge grants this year were
the New York City Ballet and the Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor modern dance
companies.
'Four years ago we received a challenge grant of $250,000, and we made the
match easily, Mr. Protas said. He said that the program grants that the Graham
troupe has regularly received from the endowment and is expected to receive this
year, in the amount of $155,000, were used to maintain the company year to year.
The challenge grant would have allowed us to implement our plans for the
future,' Mr. Protas said. ''It would have opened up funds previously
LEXIS NEXIS LEXIS NEXIS
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PAGE
24
(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 3, 1983
unavailable to us and served as a catalyst for raising money in the private
sector.
'The question is what they regard as an institution, said Miss Graham, who
has been invited to a state dinner at the White House on Oct. 4 for Karl
Carstens, the President of West Germany. ''I believe that they are afraid that
when I die - I don't have a long life span - nothing will continue. I have every
reason to believe that it will. The dances are in the custody of two people I
trust and have trained for the future: Linda Hodes and Ron Protas.
Miss Graham and Mr. Protas said that when she was ill recently, the company
had been run smoothly by administrators who include several former, longtime
Graham dancers, among them Miss Hodes, the associate artistic director of the
company.
Mr. Protas said that although the company did not have a New York season last
year, it had toured nationally and internationally and planned to perform in New
York this year. He said that the company had just hired a director of
development and that talks were under way for the creation of a Graham Institute
at the University of California at Los Angeles.
GRAPHIC: photo of Martha Graham
SUBJECT: DANCING; DISCRIMINATION
ORGANIZATION: GRAHAM, MARTHA, DANCE COMPANY; ARTS, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE
NAME: GRAHAM, MARTHA; DUNNING, JENNIFER
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PAGE
19
11TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1983 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
September 16, 1983, Friday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section C; Page 3, Column 4; Weekend Desk
LENGTH: 850 words
HEADLINE: CITY ARTS GROUPS GIVEN $8.3 MILLION
BYLINE: By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
BODY:
Cultural groups in New York City received $8.3 million in challenge grants
yesterday from the National Endowment for the Arts, more than three times
the $2.3 million given last year.
Thirty-five grants totaling $20.9 million were presented nationwide. Arts
groups in the city received about 40 percent of the endowment's grant funds this
year, up from about 20 percent of the total in 1982.
The $20.9 million in challenge grants is nearly twice last year's total of
$11.4 million. But it is $5 million below the grants given under the Carter
Administration in 1980, before President Reagan began cutting the endowment's
budget.
This year, however, the Administration increased the money for challenge
grants - which require recipients to raise three dollars in private funds for
every Federal dollar contributed - by transferring money from other grant
programs that do not require private fund raising, according to Frank Hodsoll,
the chairman of the endowment.
Hispanic Heritage Week
Mr. Hodsoll announced both the challenge grants and similar advancement
grants, which are intended for small and developing arts groups, at Plaza de la
Raza, a Hispanic cultural center in Los Angeles that received a $650,000
challenge grant.
The announcement coincided with the declaration of Hispanic Heritage Week by
President Reagan. Mr. Hodsoll served as a White House aide to President Reagan
before the President appointed him to the top post in the endowment.
The Administration's increased support for the challenge grants, with their
fund-raising provisions, reflects the President's policy of encouraging private
philanthropy to replace Federal aid in various programs. The past success of the
challenge grants, the President said in a prepared statement yesterday, ' ' shows
the volunteer spirit of Americans everywhere is alive and well and that the arts
are important to all of us.''
The 13 grant recipients in New York range from the Metropolitan Opera, which
received $1.5 million, the largest grant in the nation, to the Boys Choir of
Harlem, which got $250,000, and the Dance Theater Workshop, which received
$130,000.
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20
(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 16, 1983
'We Started From Zero'
'We are small fish compared to the biggies, said Walter Turnbull, the
director of the choir. ''We started from zero 10 years ago and this is the first
time we're really provided for.'
Nine arts groups in New York City received at least $40,000 each in
advancement grants. A total of 29 groups nationwide got $1.6 million in the
program. The advancement grants also require $3 in private support for each
Federal dollar.
Since its inception in 1977, the challenge grant program has brought private
contributions of about $9 for every $1 in Federal funds, endowment officials
said. Twenty-five of the 35 grant recipients this year - and 10 of the 13 in the
city - were given grants for the second time because of their past success at
private fund raising.
More than 200 arts groups requested a total of $129 in challenge grants, the
highest level ever. Among the groups turned down was the Martha Graham Dance
Company. Miss Graham, who is 89 years old, has complained that the endowment
engaged in age discrimination in denying the grant. Mr. Hodsoll has declined to
discuss the endowment's decisions. Earlier this week, he said, ' 'What we do with
people who don't get grants is write them a letter of explanation and that is
between us and them.
The following arts groups in New York City received challenge grants:
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, $400,000, for an endowment.
Arts Connection, $400,000 for an endowment.
Boys Choir of Harlem, $250,000, for a cash reserve and operating expenses.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, $600,000, for a cash reserve and payment of a
deficit.
Cunningham Dance Foundation, $275,000, for adding to cash reserve, forming an
understudy group and adding a third week to the repertory season.
Dance Theater Workshop, $130,000, for establishing a cash reserve, purchasing
a lighting system and co-producing four American dance companies.
Metropolitan Opera, $1.5 million, for part of a $100 million endowment
campaign.
Museum of Modern Art, $1 million, for part of a $75 million endowment
campaign.
New York City Ballet, $1 million, for augmenting a cash reserve and
experimenting with new choreography and technology.
New York Philharmonic, $1 million, for augmenting an endowment.
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(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 16, 1983
New York Shakespeare Festival, $1 million, for augmenting an endowment. 92d
Street Y, $500,000, for augmenting an endowment.
Paul Taylor Dance Foundation, $250,000, for establishing an endowment and
augmenting a cash reserve.
Among the other grants were $150,000 to the International Museum of
Photography in Rochester and $750,000 to the Newark Musem in Newark.
Advancement grants ranging from $40,000 to $85,000 were given to the
following groups in New York City: Ecco Press, Persea Books, SUN Press, Asian
Cine-Vision Inc., Film Art Fund Inc./Anthropology Film Archive, AMAS Repertory
Theater, Music Theater Group/Lenox Arts Center, Creative Time Inc. and Franklin
Furnace Archive Inc.
GRAPHIC: photo of Alvin Ailey
SUBJECT: CULTURE
ORGANIZATION: ARTS, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE
NAME: FREEDMAN, SAMUEL 6
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK CITY; UNITED STATES (1983 PART 1)
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15
10TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1983 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
September 18, 1983, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 2; Page 12, Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk
LENGTH: 1738 words
HEADLINE: DANCE VIEW;
MARTHA GRAHAM PROTESTS
BYLINE: By Anna Kisselgoff
BODY:
The rare artist who can change the course of an entire art form and actually
create a new one is an exception to the norm. In most countries, that genius
would be granted the conditions most conducive to furtherance of his or her
creativity and the preservation of that art. He or she would, in effect, gain
the support of a grateful nation.
Now America's Picasso of the dance has - thanks to her own Government -
fallen into a bureaucratic crack. A month ago, Martha Graham was informed by
officials of the National Endowment for the Arts that her dance company
would not receive the challenge grant from the Endowment for which it had
applied. No one questioned artistic merit, she was assured. It was rather, she
was told, that the application did not hold up strongly enough in this
competitive program designed specifically to further long-term institutional
growth and stability.
This is not an explanation that Miss Graham, a most active choreographer and
director at the age of 89, has accepted. Instead, in an unusual public statement
''in defense of myself and my company and an appeal to the American public,'
she charged that she was discriminated against because of her age and that there
may have been a bias against her organization on the dance panel that reviewed
her application at the Endowment.
The official announcement of the challenge grant recipients was scheduled for
this weekend. Miss Graham made her statement several weeks earlier so that she
would not appear to be acting against any other dance company that did receive a
grant. Since then it has become known that those slated to receive the dance
grants are the New York City Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Paul Taylor
Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop.
The outrageousness of Miss Graham's absence from this list is - or should be
- apparent to all. With the exception of the City Ballet - even here the point
is arguable - none of these groups would be doing what they are today without
Miss Graham's having paved the way first. They have all drawn from the idiom and
technique she invented and they work within the philosophy that dance must be
contemporary - a concept she was foremost in promoting.
Moreover this omission raises much larger issues that go beyond Miss Graham's
case alone. In the increasing trend toward institutionalization - a trend
imposed by funding bodies on the assumption that it insures permanence - there
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(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 18, 1983
is a danger that a uniform structural mold will actually work against the art
forms the Endowment was designed to support.
Several points have to be made. The first 15 that as modern dance's leaders
grow older, modern dance itself seems in danger of being doomed to less funding
than ballet. Every modern-dance company has traditionally been created around
its own charismatic creative leader. The unvoiced assumption is that these
companies will not continue past their leaders' life span. When the leader goes,
so goes the company - unless, it is suggested, the company adopts certain
institutional structures. Yet these are opera-house structures inimical to the
very nature of modern dance as a form of individual expression.
The second point is that the Endowment itself might benefit from reviewing
its challenge guidelines in order to better accommodate the special nature of
the groups it serves. The challenge program is designed to support long-term
stability, not specific projects in one discipline. These are supported by the
Endowment's discipline programs such as that for dance, which is giving $155,000
to the Graham company this year for its regular operations.
The point is that as an inter-disciplinary program, the Challenge program
takes as its institutional models groups whose history is totally different from
most of American dance. These are definitions that better fit a museum or
symphony orchestra. As Frank Hodsoll, the Endowment's chairman, recognized in an
interview last week, these definitions favor organizations that are repositories
of art rather than those that are creative.
These are also models that come from the corporate world. Are they as valid
as they seem? The New York City Ballet was held up by Hugh Southern, the
Endowment's deputy chairman for programs, as a group that had planned for its
future beyond the lifetime of its co- founder, George Balanchine. Yet the
history of all private ballet companies - including an American company created
by a board, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo - is that they all expire.
There is one less general point that stems, nonetheless, from Miss Graham's
experience. As the leading pioneer of modern dance in the 1930's, she was
consistently under pressure to ''institutionalize" herself and teach dance in a
college gymn department. The ludicrousness of this situation for an artist of
her magnitude is obvious.
Before the specifics of the challenge proposal are considered, here is what
Miss Graham said, in part, in her 'public appeal.
''It is my belief that I have not been given the real reasons for this
decision against my company. To me it appears that I have been discriminated
against because of my age and that there may have been a biased decision at the
Dance Panel of the NEA.
''I feel that I must speak out against this discrimination not only for
myself but for all those who have been touched by discrimination in any form.
That my company should be excluded from much-needed help at this key moment in
time, when I wish to film and record properly my works and technique, troubles
me deeply. So many projects in our challenge grant application vital to our
present and future must now be considered and delayed, if not given up
completely.
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(c) 1983 The New York Times, September 18, 1983
''I believe that as an active practicing artist I am within my rights to make
this request and while I do not give up hope and will go on, this decision has
been a great blow to me personally and to the future of my company to which I
have committed myself.
The crucial phrase is ''this key moment in time when I wish to film and
record properly my works and technique. This is a reference to the main thrust
of the Graham proposal submitted to the challenge program.
It is all very fine to build institutional structures. But a strong board and
an endowment are useless if these structures have no artistic content. Ballet
companies, as we have seen, are particularly vulnerable when they face a dearth
of choreographers. They are, however, sanctioned as museums.
The Martha Graham Dance Company without her choreography is a contradiction
in terms, a gallery that is empty. It is, in fact, to insure the maintenance of
this repertory as close as possible to Miss Graham's specifications, that she
asked to fund this primary project as part of her company's future. As usual,
she is way ahead of the herd. The method she proposes has not been attempted.
Each work will be filmed in three versions. One will show the full theatrical
production. Another will show the dancers in tights, with Miss Graham's voice
explaining the dramatic pulse, and quality of each movement (as opposed to just
steps). Another film will dissect the technique required, filming the dancer in
the choreography from four angles.
If there are any questions as to what will happen to Miss Graham's company
without her - if her age is indeed a factor, as is doubt about those who will
run her troupe - then certainly a refusal to fund this project while she is
active is to guarantee that repertory a more easy disappearance.
The filming was not the Graham company's sole request to the challenge
program. In January, it engaged Carl W. Shaver and Co., a consulting firm, to
draw up a five-year plan as required by the Endowment. Ironically, Mr. Shaver
was instrumental in establishing the challenge program in 1977 when he was
consulted by the late Nancy Hanks, then Endowment chairman. In its application,
the Graham organization asked for help for establishing a capital campaign,
expanding studio and school facilities, increasing a national scholarship
program and instituting a teacher-certification program in Graham technique. The
request was for $1 million.
This was the first year the challenge program was open to those who had
already received a challenge grant. Competition for the grants, which go to
institutions in many fields, was thus more severe. Slightly under $21 million
was awarded to 35 groups, six of which were in dance.
The rejection of Martha Graham is difficult to justify. The Graham company
matched its previous $250,000 challenge grant in 1979 on the required 3 to 1
basis. And as Mr. Southern declared, the company has never misused an Endowment
grant: 'There never has been a suggestion of any misuse and I can say
absolutely that is not an issue, he said.
In view of recipients who have been in a shaky financial position in recent
years - the Joffrey 15 the prime example - it is difficult to see the validity
of comparable questions about the Graham company's fundraising capacity. The
challenge program favors those who ask for money to augment or establish cash
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reserve programs and endowments, as did the six dance groups who were awarded
grants.
Yet like the Graham company, some also submitted proposals under the
allowable category of ''major artistic initiative. Some received money to
extend a season or experiment with videotape. Dance Theater Workshop has
received money as part of its challenge grant to present four American companies
at France's Avignon Festival. The Joffrey, with a new, second home in Los
Angeles, received its grant as a California organization.
If the Graham application was mismatched with Challenge program concerns, the
Endowment, as it once used to do, should have aided the Graham company to
rewrite its proposal. It can make amends; Miss Hanks once reversed a panel's
rejection of Miss Graham.
It seems rather presumptuous for any government panel to decide at what age
an artist will cease creativity. Moreover, anyone can be hit by a truck, as they
say. Miss Graham produced one of her best works, ' 'Acts of Light,' two years
ago at the age of 87. She deserves the support to continue creating and an
assurance that her work will have a chance of living into the future. Like
everybody, she has to sign application forms. The whole point is that Martha
Graham is not everybody.
GRAPHIC: photo of ballet dancers
SUBJECT: Terms not available
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9TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1983 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
September 30, 1983, Friday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section A; Page 30, Column 4; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 459 words
HEADLINE: GRAHAM'S CHALLENGE TO THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT
BODY:
To the Editor:
Of course Martha Graham's dance company deserves a challenge grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A.). She makes an eloquent case (Arts
and Leisure article Sept. 18). AS Director of Program Development and
Coordination at the N.E.A. I had principal staff responsibility for the
development of challenge grants between 1974 and 1977. I have continued to
follow N.E.A. programs and policies during the five years that I have been
director of the American Association of Museums.
I submit, however, that the Martha Graham Dance Company and all other
not-for-profit performing arts institutions and museums that are a part of the
N.E.A.'s constituency need something more: namely, a sustained commitment and
increased support to allow them to improve the quality of what they do,
specifically to make art and preserve our cultural heritage for future
generations.
The fundamental premise of the Challenge Grant Program was that there would
be a strong base of support and leadership for cultural institutions through the
discipline programs, namely dance, museums, music, opera/musical theater and
theater. Over the last several years this has been severely eroded.
Because of the recession and the negative impact the cuts in the N.E.A. funds
have had on encouraging private support, cultural institutions are being forced
to take drastic measures just to maintain operation.
What is needed most is a renewed commitment to supporting their basic needs
through innovative and aggressive leadership, and increased support for the
N.E.A. discipline programs. At the same time the N.E.A. needs to be more
flexible in allowing institutions to achieve the principal goal of challenge
grants - substantially increased levels of on-going support - rather than
emphasizing endowments and cash reserves. Under the leadership of
Representative Sidney Yates, the House Appropriations Committee approved a
budget that would provide the N.E.A. with increased funding. At its recommended
level of $165 million, the N.E.A. plans call for some strengthening of the
programs. The Senate would hold the N.E.A. to the current level of support,
rejecting, however, as did the House, the Administration's proposal to further
reduce N.E.A. appropriations. The final outcome is unclear but it appears there
will be some increase for the N.E.A. next fiscal year.
Even more encouraging is the call of the House committee for the N.E.A. to
submit a five-year plan. While one cannot expect that Administration officials
will support a request for increased funding, it will give the agency an
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opportunity to reassert a leadership role in helping to improve the quality of
cultural institutions.
LAWRENCE L. REGER, Washington, Sept. 21, 1983
GRAPHIC: Drawing
TYPE: LETTER TO THE EDITOR
SUBJECT: DANCING; FEDERAL AID (US)
ORGANIZATION: GRAHAM, MARTHA, DANCE COMPANY; ARTS AND HUMANITIES, NATIONAL
FOUNDATION ON THE
NAME: REGER, LAWRENCE L
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8TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1983 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
December 7, 1983, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section C; Page 25, Column 5; Cultural Desk
LENGTH: 439 words
HEADLINE: MARTHA GRAHAM'S YEAR
BYLINE: By JENNIFER DUNNING
BODY:
MARTHA GRAHAM will choreograph ''Rite of Spring,' which will receive its
world premiere in her company's season at the New York State Theater in February
and March.
The three-week season, the company's first here since June 1982, and Miss
Graham's new work were announced by Miss Graham at a news conference yesterday
at the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance on East 63d Street. It will
be one of a number of events in a yearlong celebration of Miss Graham's 90th
birthday on May 11.
''I started work on 'Rite of Spring' with reluctance and fear, Miss Graham
said. She had danced the role of the Chosen One in a 1930 revival of the ballet
set, as her dance will be, to the Stravinsky score. ''The music is overwhelming.
And I still have great fear. But I had to let that fear go.''
She said the scenario will not follow that of the original ballet,
choreographed by Nijinsky. ''She dances herself to death,' Miss Graham said of
the Chosen One. ''There's usually a death in any dance I do. That is the rite of
spring.
The celebration will begin with a gala in Paris on Jan. 23. The Martha
Graham Dance Company will perform at the Paris Opera, the first American dance
troupe ever to appear on that stage. The company will also perform there on Jan.
25. Rudolf Nureyev, the head of the Paris Opera Ballet, will appear as a guest
artist in Miss Graham's recent work, 'Phaedra's Dream. The ballet will
receive its New York premiere during the three-week season at the State Theater
that begins on Feb. 28.
The creation of a Martha Graham Institute at the University of California
at Los Angeles was also announced, as well as plans for an institute in
Florence. The documentation of Miss Graham's work on film will be undertaken in
Los Angeles, and Miss Graham's technique will be taught there and in Florence.
Pan American World Airways will underwrite the cost of flying the company and
its sets and costumes to Paris. ' ' And we offer continuing support to the company
on its return,' Peter C. Sheahan said, representing C. Edward Acker, the
chairman of Pan American. He described Miss Graham and her dancers as
brilliant ambassadors of American culture and international understanding.
Miss Graham declined to comment on the fact that the company had been denied
a National Endowment for the Arts challenge grant this year. ''We are in a
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dialogue with the endowment now,'' Ron Protas, associate artistic director of
the troupe, said. ''It is an optimistic one. We are hopeful.
The conference ended with a performance by the Graham dancers of the closing
section of her ''Acts of Light.
SUBJECT: DANCING
ORGANIZATION: GRAHAM, MARTHA, DANCE COMPANY
NAME: DUNNING, JENNIFER
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6TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1984 The Washington Post
April 8, 1984, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: Show; H1
LENGTH: 2518 words
HEADLINE: The Spring. Of Martha Graham
BYLINE: By Alan M. Kriegsman
KEYWORD: GRAHAM
BODY:
IT ISN'T everyone who celebrates the approach of a 90th birthday--even
presuming one gets that far in reasonable health--by choreographing "The Rite of
Spring. For Martha Graham, who'll be 90 on May 11, such an action seems at
once extraordinary and the most natural thing in the world. But then, breaking
precedents--expanding the limits of the possible--is what Graham has always been
about.
After a recent performance of "The Rite," Graham took a curtain call, as is
her custom, with her company. Standing there in the light, in one of those
shimmeringly metallic Halston gowns, she presented as radiant, as forceful a
vision as she always has on stage. No one was using the word "charisma" when
Graham made her first independent appearance in 1926, but all were struck by it
then, and even before, in her days with the Denishawn troupe and as a soloist
with the Greenwich Village Follies.
The day after, in her East Side apartment, Graham spoke of her work and her
life, sitting casually on a fawn-colored divan with seven or eight throw
pillows, surrounded by oriental artworks large and small. Up close, her
youthfulness is even more startling--the deep-set eyes glowing, the skin taut
and pink over the famous ridges of cheekbone, the voice velvety, melodic.
On the subject of age, Graham is frankly ambivalent, accepting it as an
inevitability, but reluctant to yield an inch to its debilitations (painful
arthritis, for many years now, has come with the territory). "I can remember,"
she says, "when I was 4 years old and was taken to the country to visit my
great-grandmother, who was 96. I remember my complete puzzlement, how anybody
could actually be 96. There she was, impeccably dressed in her black taffeta
with buttons down the front, still quilting away.
"As for me, I have had a time of it, remembering my age, and submitting to
it. Yes, it has certain advantages. But there are all those boring times when
you just cannot do what you want to do. I watch the dancers every day, and see
the glory of their beings, and I don't admit that I'm not jealous. I am
jealous.
Graham's version of "The Rite" marking her first use of music by Igor
Stravinsky, in a production with costumes by Halston, who commissioned the
work--had its premiere Feb. 28 at the start of the Graham company's three-week
engagement at Lincoln Center's New York State Theater. The dance, for two
soloists (the Chosen One and the Shaman) and an ensemble of 18, is an
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astonishing opus not only by virtue of who composed it and when, but for the
vigor of its creative impulse and the serene authority of its craftsmanship.
It's Graham's most ambitious endeavor since the three-movement "Acts of Light,"
which was given its world premiere at the Kennedy Center in 1981, and probably
her most vivid choreography since the evening-length "Clytemnestra" of 1958.
"The Rite," in other words-both for Graham as an artist and in its dance
content--is a tribute to the renewal of life. Her victory over time is the
making of a work like "The Rite of Spring."
In general outline, Graham's dance follows the original Stravinsky-Nicholas
Roerich scenario of 1913--it's a primeval ceremony of propitiation, in which a
young woman is sacrificed to the lord of fertility to ensure a spring harvest;
Graham has changed the locale and atmosphere, however, from that of pagan Russia
to her beloved American Southwest. The set for the production was designed by
Ron Protas, the associate artistic director of Graham's company and a close
friend. It's an abstracted sacrificial mound and a striking, gallows-like
structure that Protas modeled after a southwestern plant nicknamed a "devil's
claw."
"At first," Graham relates, "I wanted Georgia O'Keeffe to let us use two of
her paintings for the production. After a long period, though, she sent a letter
saying that though she felt extremely honored by the request, she just wouldn't
want the paintings viewed outside their original placement. That left us 10 days
before our opening, and Ron had to create the set in that time." In fact, the
set has much of the stark austerity of O'Keeffe's art.
Though the Chosen One is a woman, in Graham's "Rite" as in Nijinsky's
original choreography and most other versions since, Graham didn't intend a
commentary on women as victims. "The Chosen One could be a man or a woman, as I
see it. We don't cut up our victims any more, but the idea of sacrifice to bring
about rejuvenation is still very much a part of life today. It connects for me
with words once spoken by Robert Edmond Jones, who was lecturing a class of
acting students I was teaching. He hesitated, he said, to speak to aspiring
actors because there was always one among them who was doomed. Doomed to be an
artist, that is.
"I've always felt that if you become an artist, you are the Chosen One. It's
a force that possesses you; it's an exciting and wonderful life, but it's filled
with terror, and there's no way, once you accept it, you can escape its
sacrificial demands."
Graham's depiction of the ritual has a powerfully erotic side--an element
that's seldom missing from her dances. The Shaman, after plucking the Chosen One
from the shoulders of her male companion in one of the ballet's most indelible
images, assaults her in an unmistakably sexual manner, for all its stylization.
"I think all ritual," Graham says, "has some element of sexuality in it--in
any church, any belief. That's partly the power of religion over people, our
attraction to it. I feel it in the theater, too. I'm dancing Graham gave up
performing after 1969, when she was 75, but she speaks of it in the present
tense, as of something that hasn't ceased to be part of her reality not for
3,000 people, but for one person out there who'll feel with me what I'm trying
to express. I didn't set out, in 'Rite,' to exploit sexuality, but I've always
given recognition to the beauty of the body, the glory of it.
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"I dread the misuse of the body. A5 a dancer, you take that body and you
train it, almost like a little animal--you discipline it, care for it, feed it,
and you adore it. It's a symbol of your life--it is your life."
As a corollary, Graham thinks of sex as the very piquancy of the life
force--even in her dances that approach "pure" movement pieces ("Diversion of
Angels," for example), there are always transactions between the sexes.
"I don't understand abstraction," she says. "Orange juice is the abstraction
of an orange. If you look up the word 'zest' in the dictionary, you'll find that
it originally referred to orange peel. That's what sexuality means to me--it's
the zest, the spice of life, the appetite for life."
Choreographing "The Rite" was also the completion of a curious circle for
Graham. In 1930, she had danced the role of the Chosen One in the American stage
premiere of the Stravinsky masterpiece, with Leopold Stokowski (who'd introduced
the musical score to this country the previous decade) conducting the
Philadelphia Orchestra and choreography by Leonide Massine. Massine was one of
Serge Diaghilev's former ballet masters, and the project did not go well between
him and Graham, whose own work had been striking off in directions antithetical
to classical ballet.
"It wasn't a conventional ballet," Grahams recalls. "No one was on toe. But I
fought it all the way. In one section my feet were bound, in the manner of
ancient Russia, and I had to wear a long blond wig. I don't remember one
movement, one step of the choreography. The fact is, after that experience I
shut the score out of my mind for 50 years. It was Ron Protas who persuaded me
to approach the music again."
Graham says in the actual choreographic process she didn't use the music, at
first, anyway.
"I sketched out the phrasing and much of the movement without the music, and
then bit by bit, put the two together. But that score must have been very strong
in my veins, because the choreography and the music marched side by side-the
intensity, the breathing, was the same.
"This doesn't mean, by the way, that I 'disregarded' the music ever. 1
learned total respect for music long ago from Louis Horst the pianist-composer
who was Graham's musical mentor and associate for many years He'd never let me
do anything else, like washing dishes or sewing, if there was any music on the
radio or the phonograph--I had to sit absolutely still and listen."
Martha Graham was born in Allegheny, Pa., in 1894, where her father was a
psychiatrist (termed an "alienist" in those days). She has always prided herself
on being a direct descendant of Miles Standish on her mother's side.
The family moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., when she was in her teens, and it
was there that she contracted her passion for dance, after seeing Ruth St. Denis
in performance. She entered the school, then the company, run by St. Denis and
Ted Shawn, and met Horst, who was the Denishawn musical director.
By 1923 she was ready to beat a path of her own; she left Denishawn, danced
with the Follies, spent a couple of years on the faculty at the Eastman School
of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and finally launched her career in New York. She
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opened a dance studio, made dances and gave performances, first with a trio of
women, then a larger female ensemble that came to be known as "the Group." It
wasn't until 1938 that she enlisted her first male dancer, the ballet-trained
Erick Hawkins, who later became, for a brief period, the one marriage partner of
her life.
All the while, Graham was forging and refining the technique--based on
muscular contraction and release--that was to underlie her revolutionary, often
controversial, esthetics. Classical ballet had emphasized fluidity and airy
flight, with the women's toe shoes fostering an illusion of escape from gravity.
For Graham, gravity wasn't an enemy but an ally--she and her dancers went
barefoot, fell to the ground, embraced it as Mother Earth, in a movement idiom
noted for its angularity and percussive attack.
Graham's goal, diverging entirely from the fairy tales and romances of
mainstream ballet, was to chart "the inner landscape" of the human spirit, with
all its hidden recesses of desire and anguish.
Though her earliest dances were indebted to the exotic mold of her Denishawn
background, she was soon tackling new themes--social protest in dances like
"Revolt" and "Immigrant"; the distillation of a feeling, in "Lamentation";
tribal ritual, in "Primitive Mysteries" and "El Penitente"; the American
pioneering tradition, in "Frontier" and "Appalachian Spring"; tragic-heroic
portraits of women, in "Letter to the World" (Emily Dickinson), "Deaths and
Entrances" (the Bronte sisters), and "Seraphic Dialogue" (Joan of Arc); and,
starting in the mid-'40s, the series of dance psychodramas reinterpreting Greek
mythology, ranging from "Cave of the Heart" (Medea) and "Night Journey" (Jocasta
and Oedipus) through "Clytemnestra" and last year's "Phaedra's Dream.'
Through her more than 170 dance works, her own performances worldwide and
those of her company, her school, the choreographic rebels she spawned (dancers
like Hawkins, Anna Sokolow, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor, who broke away to
pursue new creative directions) and her frequent collaborations with
others--composers such as Barber, Hindemith, Menotti, Copland and Schuman,
artists such as Marisol and Isamu Noguchi--Graham has had an influence on
theater arts in this country and abroad that's incalculable. She's been
imitated, satirized and lionized.
She was already famous enough in 1932 to be asked to be among the celebrities
to perform for the opening of Radio City Music Hall. In 1947, Graham became
"Miss Hush," the third "mystery guest," after Jack Dempsey and Clara Bow, on the
popular new radio quiz program "Truth or Consequences." Among her honors are the
Aspen Humanities Award in 1965 (Graham was the first woman to be so honored);
the presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 (Graham was the first dancer to
receive it); the Kennedy Center Honors in 1979; and in 1981, the newly
established $25, Samuel H. Scripps Award for lifetime achievement in modern
dance, of which she was the first recipient.
Yet the struggle, in economic as well as other terms, goes on even today for
this living legend. On Graham's living room wall hangs a large, splendidly
colorful canvas by Alexander Calder, who was one of her collaborators in the
mid-'30s. About 20 years ago, Graham says, "He Calder wanted to give me a
painting to sell, so that I could help keep the company going with the proceeds.
But I love the painting so much I've never been able to sell it."
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It's an illustration of the Graham priorities, which haven't made the going
any easier--art first, all else second. Not that Graham has no interest in
money. "I used to keep the books on the Denishawn tours I did," she'll tell you,
"traveling on the Pantages circuit with a chimpanzee and cockatoos. And don't
forget, I lived in Santa Barbara, where the philosophy was, buy now, pay later.
I have a great respect for money and its power. But I will not be enchained by
it--in hard times, I always bought a dress I couldn't afford, and I've always
kept my charge accounts."
This attitude has helped her face a crunch brought on by the recent rejection
of her application for a "challenge grant" (apart from $155,000 in regular
support her company received this year) from the National Endowment for the
Arts. The turn-down occasioned something of a furor in dance circles, and
Graham was upset enough to publicly charge NEA with discrimination because of
age, and possible artistic bias. The situation has since calmed down
appreciably--Graham has dropped her protest, choosing to reapply instead; NEA
chairman Frank Hodsoll was her recent guest at dinner and backstage during a
"Rite of Spring" performance. Finances weren't discussed, but relations were
cordial, and Graham is now looking hopefully toward next year's allotments.
In the meantime, using her Santa Barbara credo, Graham is proceeding with
plans that were to be funded by the grant "as if I had the money"--plans that
include a much-needed filming project to document and preserve Graham's
choreography, utilizing typically innovative procedures. The films, when made,
will be kept in an archive at a proposed Martha Graham Institute that UCLA
intends to open next year.
For now, Graham's demanding activity continues unabated. During performances,
she is either backstage egging the dancers on or seated in the house making
corrections in a notebook. She continues to work sporadically on a book of
reminiscences, and she's also hatching, mentally at least, a new dance piece. "I
don't know what it is, I simply know there will be one," she says. "There'll
come a point when for weeks I'll be brooding over it, searching, and being
unhappy because it's not coming. I'm partly Irish, you know, and I can talk
myself into a fine mood."
And so, the inseparability of her life and her work is Graham's destiny. AS
she puts it, "I can't conceive of a time when I would not be working."
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, Martha Graham photo (c) 1984, HIRO; Picture 2, Scene from
"The Rite of Spring'; by Martha Swope
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5TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1984 The Washington Post
July 19, 1984, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: Style; D9
LENGTH: 677 words
HEADLINE: Graham Gets Grant To Film Dances
BYLINE: By Alan M. Kriegsman
KEYWORD: MARTHA
BODY:
Martha Graham --America's celebrated pioneer of modern dance, still going
strong at age 90 -- came to town yesterday to accept a special $250,000 grant
from the National Endowment for the Arts for the filming of her
choreographic masterpieces. Graham called the grant "enormously important," not
only for herself, but for the future of all American dancers.
The occasion had something of a conciliatory note to it. The new grant, to be
matched on a one-to-one basis over the coming year, came on the heels of a
controversy over the Endowment's turndown last year of the Graham company's
request for a $1 million "challenge grant," part of which would have funded the
filming project. Graham had issued a strong public protest, seconded by many of
her supporters, and since then the Endowment has had meetings with Graham and
others in an effort to patch things up.
Everything was harmonious at yesterday's press conference at the Endowment's
headquarters in the Old Post Office, where Endowment chairman Frank Hodsoll
announced the grant. Noting that Graham had been Justly described as "the
Picasso of dance," Hodsoll said he hoped the money would assist in the
preservation for posterity of Graham's repertory, a treasure in which "the
taxpayers, the public at large, have a large and real interest."
In praising Graham he quoted from a letter of congratulation to her from
President Reagan on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of her company; it
read, in part, "Your creation of a completely new dance vocabulary and system of
training
set the course of modern dance for the entire century."
As outlined by Hodsoll, the grant will have five major purposes:
*The production of "layered films" (or videos) of three Graham works, "Errand
Into the Maze," "Cave of the Heart" and this year's "Rite of Spring," the
layering to consist of filming each dance in performance, in rehearsal, and in
technical outline.
*The development of voice-over commentary by Graham, indicating technical and
interpretive details, for existing films of 10 other works, including
"Appalachian Spring," "Night Journey" and "Primitive Mysteries."
*The addition of Louis Horst's original music to a silent film of Graham
dancing her "Frontier" solo of 1935.
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*A year-long film record of Graham teaching and coaching her company.
*The development of a collection of oral histories and interviews with others
who have worked with or been influenced by Graham.
Graham said the three works selected for the "layered" filming were chosen
because "they seemed the most accessible to the camera," adding that she was
most interested in "the camera's ability to bring us close to the dancers, and
to touch people."
The completed films, according to Ron Protas, assistant artistic director of
the Graham company, will be housed at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary
Dance in New York. Copies will be given to the Endowment and to the Martha
Graham Institute at UCLA. Protas said the performance films would be made
"generally available," and that access to the others, primarily for teaching
purposes, would be at Graham's discretion.
Protas also said the Graham company had submitted applications to the
Endowment for its dance grants "in all areas" (grants are given for
choreography, company support, and in the case of challenge grants, for
"institutional stability") for the coming fiscal year. Since 1966, the
Endowment's first year of operation, the agency has given a total of nearly $2
million to the Graham troupe, including the new special grant and a $185,000
company grant for the 1984-85 season.
In her remarks accepting the grant, Graham recalled, "Of course, I've had my
share of catcalls, whistles and boos, too" in earlier years, but that she'd
resolved to persevere "for as long as I have a public, an audience. We all have
dreams, but dreams mean nothing without your doing it." She said the new grant
would give courage to other dance artists who want to go on "no matter what the
cost -- and it does cost, not only in money, but in travail."
GRAPHIC: Picture, Graham and Hodsoll. By Yo Nagaya --- The Washington Post
LEXIS NEXIS LEXIS NEXIS
Services of Mead Data Central
PAGE
2
4TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1984 The New York Times Company;
The New York Times
July 19, 1984, Thursday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section C; Page 13, Column 4; Cultural Desk
LENGTH: 773 words
HEADLINE: $250,000 FILM GRANT TO MISS GRAHAM
BYLINE: By JENNIFER DUNNING
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 18
BODY:
The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Martha Graham
Dance Company a $250,000 grant for the filming and preservation of Miss Graham's
choreography. The grant is the largest such award to be given a dance company by
the endowment.
The grant, which must be matched on a one-to-one basis over one year, will
allow the Graham company to begin a five-part project that involves the filming
of dances, adding voiceovers to existing films, and developing a collection of
oral histories and interviews with people who have worked with the
choreographer.
' 'The recording of dances is important, not only as a record, Miss Graham
said today. Speaking of dance as ' ' the first language, she talked of ruined
cities and monuments in history: 'Not to have known them is a loss - where so
many people's dreams were enacted, and some cast down.
Under the grant, the company will film 'Errand into the Maze, Cave of
the Heart' and 'Rite of Spring,' three works Miss Graham chose for their
accessibility and suitability for filming. Each work will be filmed in
performance with costumes and sets, in rehearsal, and in a format allowing for
the dissection of the Graham technique used in each dance.
'Not Just a Presentation'
'How much we will learn of the passion of dance I don't know, Miss Graham
said of the film project. 'But this will not just be a presentation.
The company will also add music to a silent film of Miss Graham dancing
'Frontier, will do a yearlong film record of Miss Graham teaching and
coaching, and will make voiceover commentary for 10 existing films.
The existing films, which were made from the 1920's through the 1970's, are
of the following dances: Primitive Mysteries, Seraphic Dialogues,
Diversion of Angels, Lamentation, Frontier, Letter to the World,
Night Journey, Appalachian Spring, Dark Meadow' and Herodiade.
Several are danced by Miss Graham. The films will be available to the public, at
the Graham Centers in New York City and the University of California at Los
Angeles, on the approval of Miss Graham and Ron Protas, her associate artistic
director.
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3
(c) 1984 The New York Times, July 19, 1984
The grant was announced in a news conference today in the endowment's offices
at the Nancy Hanks Center. The speakers were Miss Graham, Frank Hodsoll,
chairman of the endowment; Nigel Redden, director of the endowment's dance
program; Kent Stowell, director of its dance panel; Mr. Protas and Roger
Stevens, a former endowment chairman.
'83 Request Was Spurned
Last August, the endowment rejected the company's request for a $1 million
challenge grant. Miss Graham, who is 90 years old, a founder and one of the
leading exponents of American modern dance, then released a statement accusing
the endowment of age discrimination and bias, which was denied by spokesmen for
the Federal arts agency.
The company received $185,046 from the endowment this year for its regular
operations, and has reapplied for a challenge grant next year. Six dance
institutions were awarded challenge grants out of the 220 that applied. They
were the New York City Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American
Dance Theater, the Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor Dance Companies, and Dance
Theater Workshop.
''That my company should be excluded from much-needed help at this key moment
in time, when I wish to film and record properly my works and technique,
troubles me greatly,'' Miss Graham said in her statement last summer. The
company had hoped to insure the maintenance of the Graham repertory in a state
as close as possible to Miss Graham's specifications.
Mr. Hodsoll said today that the film project had not come under the normal
guidelines for challenge grants, but had later been discussed by officials of
the endowment and the Graham company and approved by the dance panel. The grant
comes from the dance program's special project fund. ''It seemed a very
important thing to have happened,' Mr. Hodsoll said.
After the news conference, he presented Miss Graham with a bouquet of pink
roses, and, bowing to her, said that ''being associated with people like you is
what makes our job worthwhile.
The endowment has given $50,000 to the Dance Collection of the New York
Public Library for tapes and films, and has supported other archival projects in
dance. But most endowment preservation grants have been awarded to museums and
film institutions. The American Film Institute was one of the earliest
recipients of such a grant. Another recipient was the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, which received $2 million for conservation and renovation, in 1976.
GRAPHIC: Photo of Martha Graham at news conference with Frank Hodsoll
SUBJECT: Terms not available
LEXIS NEXIS LEXIS NEXIS
"
DATE 5/7/84
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
TO: Jane Dannenhauer
WEFICE
M.B. Oglesby
AUG 8 1984
Katja Bullock
FROM: Claire O'Donnell , Presidential Personnel, Room 139, Ex: 6760
Please start appropriate clearances for the following prospective
appointees for Presidential Boards and Commissions.
Joseph Epstein
Lloyd Richards
Helen Frankenthaler
Max Roach
Martha Graham
games Wood
Nargaret Hillis
Ray Kingston
Tallot Mac Carthy
Carlos Mosley
facab Neusner
Who are under serious consideration for appointment as Members,
National Council on the arts (PAS)
Deputy Director, Barbara McQuown Ext. 6440
Senior Staff 1/25/84
President 7/27/84
Announcement
Full Field/Name Check
Appt. Memo
WITHDRAWAL SHEET
Ronald Reagan Library
Collection Name
Withdrawer
COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT: APPOINTEE FILES
KDB 6/9/2013
File Folder
FOIA
MARTHA GRAHAM, MEMBER - NATIONAL COUNCIL ON
F11-0004/01
THE ARTS
GEDULD
Box Number
908
1
DOC Document Type
No of Doc Date Restric-
NO Document Description
pages
tions
1
FORM
1
8/2/1984 B6
RE M. GRAHAM (PARTIAL)
Freedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]
B-1 National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]
B-2 Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of an agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]
B-3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA]
B-4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial information [(b)(4) of the FOIA]
B-6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]
B-7 Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement purposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]
B-8 Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of financial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]
B-9 Release would disclose geological or geophysical information concerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]
C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed of gift.
Prepared by: Nancy Perot
Date:
8/2/84
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
WHITE
HANCE
FULL NAME:
SUBJECT
WIRDE
Martha Graham
AUG 8 1984
POSITION:
Member, National Council on the Arts
(PAS, 6 Year Term)
VICE:
Eric Leinsdorf
HOME ADDRESS:
HOME #:
450 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10021
212/371-3102
VOTING DOMICILE:
Above
BIRTH DATE:
PLACE OF BIRTH:
S.S.#:
May 11, 1894
Pittsburgh, PA
b6
PARTY:
RACE:
SEX:
Independent
Caucasian
Female
CAREER SUMMARY:
ETHNIC:
See attached
None
CURRENT POSITION AND ADDRESS:
OFFICE #:
Founder & Director, Martha Graham Dance Company 212/832-9166
316 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10021
FAMILY: SPOUSE:
Divorced
CHILDREN:
None
SENIOR STAFF APPROVED:
7/27/84
SUPPORT:
PDS form sent:
yes
no X
Classified:
yes X
no
AUG 8 1984
GRAHAM. MARTHA. dancer. choreographer: b. Pitts.. May 1!
1894. studied with Ruth St. Denis. LL.D., Mills Coll., Brandeis L
Smith Coll. Harvard. 1966. also numerous others Soloist. Denishawn
Co., 1920. Greenwich Village Follies. 1923. faculty Eastman Sen
1925. debut as choreographer-cancer 48th SL Theatre. N.Y.C., 1920
for act artishe d.- Martha Graham Dance Co Martna Granan
Sch Contemporary Dance Guggenheim feliow 1932 choreographe
150 MORES including Appaiachian Spring. Letter to the Wor.
Diviemnestry Trag. Patterns. Fronuer. Phaedra. Witch of Endo:
! oriege of Eagles 967 A Time of Snow. 1968. Plain of Pra.e:
1908 asc: of the House of Sleep. 1968. Archaic Hours. 1969
Mendicants of Evening. 19-3 Myth of a Voyage 1973. Holy Jungie
1974. Dream. 1974. Chronque 1974. Luctie: 1975 Scaries Letter.
1975. Adorations. 1975. Point of Crossing 1975. with music
composed by Aaron Copiand. Pau. Hindemith Carios Chavez
Samuel Barber. Gian-Cario Menotu William Schuman. others: gues:
soiois: leading US orchs in solos Judith Trumpr of S: loan.
Guggenheim fellow. ign tours with Martha Graham Dance Co., 1950.
54 55-56. 60 62-63. 67. 68. some under suspices U.S Dep: State.
U.S tours. 196c. 70. sponsored by Nat Endowment for Arts
Recipien: Aspen award. 1965. Creative Arts award Branders L 1968.
Distinguished Service to Arts award Nat Inst Arts and Letters 1970.
Hande: medallion City of N.Y., 1970 N.Y. State Council on Arts
sward. 1973 Preed: Medal of Freedom. 1976 Kenned. Center
Achievement Honor. 1979 others Author Notebooks of Marths
Graham. 1973 Office 316 E 63d St New York NY 10021'
WITHDRAWAL SHEET
Ronald Reagan Library
Collection Name
Withdrawer
COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT: APPOINTEE FILES
KDB 6/9/2013
File Folder
FOIA
MARTHA GRAHAM, MEMBER - NATIONAL COUNCIL ON
F11-0004/01
THE ARTS
GEDULD
Box Number
908
1
DOC Document Type
No of Doc Date Restric-
NO Document Description
pages
tions
2
LIST
1
ND
B6
RE RESPONSES TO PERSONAL DATA
STATEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE (PAGE 1,
PARTIAL)
Freedom of Information Act - [5 U.S.C. 552(b)]
B-1 National security classified information [(b)(1) of the FOIA]
B-2 Release would disclose internal personnel rules and practices of an agency [(b)(2) of the FOIA]
B-3 Release would violate a Federal statute [(b)(3) of the FOIA]
B-4 Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential or financial information [(b)(4) of the FOIA]
B-6 Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy [(b)(6) of the FOIA]
B-7 Release would disclose information compiled for law enforcement purposes [(b)(7) of the FOIA]
B-8 Release would disclose information concerning the regulation of financial institutions [(b)(8) of the FOIA]
B-9 Release would disclose geological or geophysical information concerning wells [(b)(9) of the FOIA]
C. Closed in accordance with restrictions contained in donor's deed of gift.
MARTHA GRAHAM
PERSONAL DATA STATEMENT
1. Martha Austin Graham
1894
66
2. May 11, 1984; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
3. Artistic Director, Martha Graham Dance Company and School; 316 East
63 Street, New York, New York, 10021, (212) 832-9166.
4. 450 East 63 Street, New York, New York, 10021, (212) 371-3102.
5. Allen Wallace; Home: (212) 873-1451, Office: (212) 832-9166.
6. Comnock School for Girls, no degree, Denishawn, no degree.
7. Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc.*
8. None.
9. None.
10. None.
11. None.
12. The Martha Graham Center is funded in part by the National Endowment
for the Arts.
13. None.
14. Medical coverage.
15. (1) No; (2) No; (3) No.
16. No.
17. No.
18. No.
19. Many years ago a female student brought suit against me claiming she
suffered personal injury in my dance class. The judge ruled in her
favored, but reduced the settlement. This occured in the late 1940's
or early 1950's.
MARTHA GRAHAM
PERSONAL DATA STATEMENT
PAGE 2
20. No.
21. No.
22. No.
23. No.
24. No.
25. No.
26. No.
27. None.
*****
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
February 1, 1985
MEMORANDUM FOR LARRY GARRETT
FROM:
DIANNA HOLLAND At
We have received the background investigation on Martha Graham.
Would you please let me know where we stand with her personal
data statement.
Thank you.
2.6.85
DOLL:
WE ARE BUALTING RECEIPT of Ms. G'S Pes-
WE unore HER TWICE - ANN called the other
day & was ADVISED "it WAD BEEN SENT "SOME TIME
AGO To THE NATL. END ON THE ACTS. WE CALLED,
THEY CAN'T FIND IT $ Ms. G'S STAFF DiD NOT RETAIN
A COPY. HENCE, WE SENT HER A NEW FORM for
COMPLETION.
R
$0
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
November 7, 1984
Dear Ms. Graham:
On August 9, 1984, we sent you a Personal Data Statement,
which must be completed and returned before we can continue
processing your prospective appointment as a Member of the
National Council on the Arts.
As we have not yet received your form, I ask that you
complete and return it to me as soon as possible. If you
have any questions as to how to proceed, or if you have not
received the form, please contact me at (202) 456-6257.
Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
H. Lawrence Garrett, TIT
Associate Counsel to the
President
Ms. Martha Graham
450 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10021
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
August 9, 1984
Dear Ms. Graham:
Congratulations on your prospective appointment as a Member,
National Council on the Arts. In conjunction with your pro-
spective appointment, I would ask you to complete the
enclosed form and return it to me at your earliest
convenience.
With regard to the Personal Data Statement (PDS), you may
respond in memorandum form, addressed to Mr. Fielding; the
questions need not be repeated. Should you have any
questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. My office
telephone number is 202/456-6257.
I have also enclosed memoranda outlining how the conflict of
interest laws apply to one in your position.
Again, my congratulations.
Sincerely,
H. Bawrence Garrett, III
Associate Counsel to the
President
Ms. Martha Graham
450 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10021