Martha Hill and the Making of American Dance
by Janet Mansfield Soares
Wesleyan University Press, 2009
A Review
I was in the middle of the book, revisiting the icons of my youth, when we had the news of the death of Merce Cunningham. This gave me pause—“all of these folks I am relishing are dead”— what does it all mean? I returned to the book with a more scholarly attitude.
Ms. Soares presents the premise that Martha Hill was responsible for consolidating the diverse dance styles of the thirties into what has become known as American modern dance. And indeed she did.
By going into great detail about the founding of the Bennington School, year by year, telling us who was there, who made pieces that were performed there, in what venue, and how each was received, we begin to appreciate the insight and the judgment such a project required. As the disparate images of dance were brought together, they slowly began to be viewed as discrete and worthy, and distinct from the ancestry of European dance. In addition, Hill’s early work at New York University brought dance into established academia, and her vision of conservatory was fulfilled at Julliard.
Although I sometimes felt assaulted by the overwhelming historical detail, I found relief in personal details that served to reveal the dance icons of mid-20th century as real people. I enjoyed the sojourns into the social encounters, the birthday parties, who said what to whom, and clips of wisdom from one creator or another.
Most of all this work presents Martha Hill as the engine that supplied American modern dancers visibility so that audiences, critics, and fellow artists could see for themselves that these dancers were artists and as such, deserving a place in the hierarchy of dance. In the course of doing so, Ms. Soares gives us concise descriptions of the various techniques that produced much of the modern dance we see today and that is performed here and abroad.
Somewhere in this volume are definitions of European dance and American dance, credited to Martha, stating, that European dance is about space and American dance is about body. Of course, like any apocryphal statement, this is limiting and I am obliged to ask where this leaves Nikolais who put body in space and Cunningham who dealt largely in “time.” Such pronouncements do not discredit the book but serve to demonstrate that it is not only factual but thought provoking.
This volume is a definitive record of Martha Hill as a person, full of her connections to all the figures of 20th Century dance in America. The photographs give us views of life then, and the personal sagas make real the icons of that age. We come to appreciate the dedication of the woman who helped to bring American dance from the fringes of art into the mainstream.
—Ruth Grauert, August 2009