Strindberg, Ibsen, the Greeks

To go to the ballet or modern dance nowadays is to be projected into many worlds: to look backwards into ancient Greece through the mind-eye of Martha Graham, spokesman for the new American dance: to look forward into an imaginary future through the personality-less abstractions of Georges Balanchine; or to glance amusedly around one at the topsy-turvy contemporary world “hoed down” in jazz terms by Jerome Robbins. Whereas the ballet used to be synonymous with fantasy—or, as Doris Humphrey has called it, an adolescent dream world—the dance now expresses twentieth-century views on history, astronomy, psychology, philosophy and even, occasionally, politics.

This past season, it was psychological drama that inspired the Swedish choreographer Birgit Cullberg’s balletic translations of Strindberg and Ibsen for the American Ballet Theatre, and Greek tragedy that found philosophical interpretation in the dances of Martha Graham.

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About the Author

Ernestine Stodelle

To go to the ballet or modern dance nowadays is to be projected into many worlds: to look backwards into ancient Greece through the mind-eye of Martha Graham, spokesman for the new American dance: to look forward into an imaginary future through the personality-less abstractions of Georges Balanchine; or to glance amusedly around one at the topsy-turvy contemporary world “hoed down” in jazz terms by Jerome Robbins. Whereas the ballet used to be synonymous with fantasy—or, as Doris Humphrey has called it, an adolescent dream world—the dance now expresses twentieth-century views on history, astronomy, psychology, philosophy and even, occasionally, politics.

This past season, it was psychological drama that inspired the Swedish choreographer Birgit Cullberg’s balletic translations of Strindberg and Ibsen for the American Ballet Theatre, and Greek tragedy that found philosophical interpretation in the dances of Martha Graham.