Episodes is a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham and George Balanchine, to compositions by Anton Webern. The ballet was a co-production between the Martha Graham Dance Company and Balanchine's New York City Ballet (NYCB). Though it was conceived to be a collaboration between Graham and Balanchine, leading choreographers in modern dance and neoclassical ballet respectively, they ultimately worked separately on the ballet's two halves. Episodes I was choreographed by Graham, for dancers from her company and four NYCB members, and depicts Mary, Queen of Scots remembering the events in her life before her execution. Episodes II, by Balanchine, is completely plotless, and made for members of the NYCB and Graham dancer Paul Taylor, who originated a solo. The ballet uses all seven orchestral compositions by Webern.
Episodes premiered on May 14, 1959, at the City Center of Music and Dance. Starting in 1960, Balanchine's section is presented as a standalone piece, with Taylor's solo removed the following year. Since then, Balanchine's Episodes had been revived by both NYCB and other ballet companies, with Taylor's solo performed in a few rare instances. The complete Episodes has not been seen in full since 1959, and the Graham section had only been revived once, in 1980, with the choreography significantly revised.
Choreography and analysis The program for the premiere of Episodes described it as an 'homage by dancers to a great composer." In performances of the complete ballet, a five-minute intermission occurs between Episodes I and Episodes II. Most performances of Episodes since 1960 only include Balanchine's Episodes II. Graham dancer Ethel Winter commented on the aesthetic differences between Episodes I and Episodes II,I was listening to a couple of people talking. Somebody asked the difference between modern dance and ballet and how would someone know between the two. So the other one said, "Oh, they will be in bare feet in modern dance and they will be flexing their feet with just tights on—no costumes." Of course, Episodes was completely the opposite. Martha's company were the ones in shoes and full costumes; Balanchine's New York City Ballet [dancers] were in tights, flexing their feet and arms. Somebody must have been very confused!
Episodes I The program described Episodes I as follows, Miss Graham's section of Episodes deals with the last minutes in the life of Mary Queen of Scots. It takes place at the scaffold and the characters are men and women who might well have been in the Queen's last thoughts. Bothwell, the man she most loved, was her third husband; determined to be King, he had used her to serve his ambition and treated her, so the court said, 'like a drab'. Darnley (her second husband), Rizzio and Chastelard, all three had died because of her. The four Marys, her ladies in waiting, had been her constant companions. Elizabeth of England, whom she had never met, was her cousin and enemy, and had signed the warrant for her execution. Miss Graham's choreography is a kind of dramatic fantasia about Mary Stuart's ultimate pride, about the façade of royalty and what must have been behind it.
The two pieces of music Graham used, Passacaglia, op. 1 and Six Pieces, op. 6, are Webern's earlier works, that are more orchestrated compared to his later works. The dancers are dressed in full 16th-century costumes. The set features a black platform at the back of the stage, decorated with heraldic symbols, with a black box at the center.
In 1980, Graham significantly revised the choreography, with more focus on the two queens, and Mary's three lovers removed. The solos were also rechoreographed.
Episodes II
The program only described Episodes II, "George Balanchine's section of the ballet refers to no story." Balanchine later said that in choreographing Episodes II, he "had try to paint or design time with bodies in order to create a resemblance between the dance and what was going on in the sound." He used four of Webern's later works, written after he began exploring serialism and inspired by Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Additionally, Balanchine used Webern's Ricercata, rearrangements of the ricercars in Bach's The Musical Offering. The dancers are dressed in practice clothes, while the minimal set features four poles.
Episodes II begins with Symphony, op. 21. It is danced by two lead dancers and three other couples.| Balanchine described, "As the music starts, dryly and carefully. The boys touch the girls on the shoulder; they join hands then, pose briefly, and begin to move together. One couple leads the others but soon, just as the instrumentation shifts and develops, the other pairs react to the music differently. The dance is about the music, it is meant to look that way."
The second part, set to Five Pieces, op. 10, is a pas de deux. Author Jennifer Homans described the two dancers "in total darkness, each under a separate spotlight... Their steps were hieratic, angular, with splayed, trapped movements and tangled deadweight arms, and they were engrossed with each other but disconnected, with a musical but no narrative arc. At one point in this section, the man, as Homans described, lifts the woman "upside down on his back with her legs split like antler's horns around his head, which now seemed to emerge from her crotch."
The third part, set to Concerto, op. 24, is also a pas de deux, with four women accompanying the two dancers. Balanchine described, "The boy moves the girl as the composer moves his instrument." Allegra Kent, who originated the female role, called the section "a dance conversation," and the role "a continuation of his interest in the abstract use of the body and the man manipulating the woman."
Variations, op. 30 is a solo that was originated by Graham dancer Paul Taylor, and excluded from most stagings of the ballet. The solo is danced barefoot, and has three sections. The first two feature the same choreography, albeit danced to different music and with different intentions. Author Richard Buckle commented, "The white-clad dancer was called upon to clutch himself, wrap himself up and tie himself into such perverse knots that his number seemed almost a defiant demonstration by Balanchine that he could be as crazy as any 'modern' choreographer or dancer in existence." Taylor described, "Each phrase is densely packed with complicated moves – knotted arrangements that, spatially, all stay in one small spot. Very few of them come from the traditional ballet vocabulary, and when they do, are usually reshaped into flex-footed versions or inverted." Balanchine gave Taylor the imagery of a fly in a glass of milk, and Taylor in turn thought of a fly stuck in a "deadly vortex of its own making... an epigram about self-ordained patterns and death."
The ballet ends with the Ricercata, danced by two principals and a corps de ballet of thirteen women. Author Nancy Reynolds commented, "In contrapuntal manner, each dance movement – by a block of the ensemble or the soloists – is an equal component of the whole stage picture at any single moment. Most movements are brief, often using only one part of the body at a time. The groups move fugally, in imitation (more or less freely) of the restatements of the musical object." Dance historian Angela Kane believed that Balanchine's choice of music for the closing section "was to highlight distinctions between past and present, both in terms of musical lineage from Bach's baroque style to Webern's progressive serialism, and also between Graham's historical 'fantasia' and Balanchine wanting to move forward choreographically."
Development Background and conception
Balanchine worked primarily in neoclassical ballet, and co-founded the New York City Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein in 1948. Meanwhile, Graham was a modern dance choreographer, and usually worked with her own company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and had created the Graham technique. Kirstein, also the general director of NYCB, often criticized modern dance, including a 1934 article in The New Republic, in which he attacked Graham. Despite his continued dislike of modern dance, he acknowledge in 1937 that he "was unequipped for her simplicity and self-blinded by her genuinely primitive expression." A collaboration between Balanchine and Graham was first pitched by painter Pavel Tchelitchew in December 1935. He suggested to the two choreographers and Kirstein that they collaborate on "an evening's spectacle involving three archetypes: Don Juan, Don Quixote, Hamlet," while Graham would be the corresponding "feminine archetype." The idea never came to fruition.
In the 1950s, Balanchine began listening to music by Anton Webern, after being introduced to his works by Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine spoke about Webern's worksWebern's orchestral music fills the air like molecules; it is written for atmosphere. The first time I heard it, I knew it could be danced to. It seemed to me like Mozart and Stravinsky, music that can be danced to because it leaves the mind free to see the dancing. In listening to composers like Beethoven and Brahms, every listener has his own ideas, paints his own picture of what the music represents. How can I, a choreographer, try to squeeze a dancing body into a picture that already exists in someone's mind? It simply won't work. But it will with Webern.
He had two ideas of using Webern's music for a ballet that were abandoned, before deciding to use all seven of Webern's orchestral compositions, which last under an hour together. Kirstein then suggested having Graham contribute on the choreography. Graham was approached about the ballet by Kirstein in January 1959, and he spoke about "key characters of feminine distinction" for her to dance. He thought about an interpretation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which Kirstein believed to carry the "essence of Martha's spirit." Graham, unable to respond to this but still interested in the collaboration, suggested Mary, Queen of Scots instead. Graham dancer Linda Hodes recalled that Graham was hesitant about accepting the commission, but believed it was due to Graham's rejection of ballet traditions. The title, Episodes, came from Tchelitchew's pitch.
Though the ballet is conceived as a collaboration, the two choreographers mostly worked on their parts separately. Graham said, "Collaboration was really not the term." Graham was set to choreograph the long opening and closing of the ballet, with Balanchine choreographing the rest. However, this plan "did not work out practically of theatrically," according to Graham. The two choreographed the two halves of the ballet instead, Episodes I by Graham and Episodes II by Balanchine. Initially, Graham was to choreograph on her dancers then teach the ballet to NYCB dancers. However, after Balanchine attended a Graham rehearsal, they clashed over what she had choreographed, with many instances of dancers on their knees and floorwork. It was then decided that the two choreographers would primarily work with their respective companies, while at Kirstein's suggestion, incorporate each other's dancers in their halves.
The project was officially announced in late March, as part of NYCB's spring season that year. Cecil Beaton was first announced to be the designer of Graham's costumes, but NYCB costumer Karinska ultimately "designed and executed" costumes for the entire ballet, as credited in the program. David Hays designed the set and lighting. The legal contract for the co-production, signed less than a month before the premiere, stated Ballet Society owned "all rights to the use of the title" and exclusive rights to Graham's choreography for three years.