rg Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 In advance of its upcoming season at NYC's Joyce Theater, the Martha Graham Dance Company held a little 86th anniversary celebration of Graham's 1931 dance, PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, last night, Feb. 2, at it's Martha Graham Studio Theater. The 2-hour or so event was part of the Graham Studio Series's presentations called GRAHAM/DECONSTRUCTED. The attached photo shows the 'birthday' cake iced with a facsimile of Ed Moeller's 1931 photo of Graham in the dance's central role. Primitive Mysteries was first shown on Feb. 2 of '31 at NYC's Craig Theatre. A scan of the program pages from that date is now part of the Primitive Mysteries entry on the Martha Graham app along with an number of historic photos and video clips related to the dance's beginnings and history over the past 86 years. Also part of this theme on the app is a posting of 7 page essay by Neil Baldwin, "Primitive Mysteries, Reviving a Modern Masterpiece." Baldwin is working on a new biographical study of Graham, entitled: MARTHA GRAHAM: WHEN DANCE BECAME MODERN (under contract with Alfred A. Knopf). Part of the presentation was a "trimmed" version of a 2008 play written by one-time Graham dancer Jean Colonomos: "The Third From the Left." In the reading of Colonomos's work, by 5 current MGDC dancers, among other anecdotes related about Primitive Mysteries as it was being revived in 1964 was the nickname sometimes bandied about calling the iconic Graham work Primitive Miseries. It seems that a similar presentation to that via the Martha Graham app can be found via this link: marthagraham.org/googlearts Link to comment
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