Martha Graham's "Night Journey" / 'Chorus' (excerpt)

"Night Journey" (1947) is part of Graham’s Greek cycle and like "Cave of the Heart" (1946), based upon Medea, and "Clytemnestra" (1958), inspired by the Orestia, Graham’s interpretation makes the woman’s experience central. When the dance premiered in New York City, Walter Terry wrote that Graham had succeeded in “transfer[ing] the action to the area where only Jocasta’s heart and mind are real.” In her retelling of the Oedipus myth, Graham was almost certainly influenced by contemporary interest in psychology and the emerging (in America) theories of Freud and Jung, theories which explored the darker recesses of the human psyche, including erotic passion and the powerful sexual dynamics operating within the family. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Jocasta’s experience is largely unexamined. But in "Night Journey", the complex interweaving of emotions between mother and son, between mother and lover are paramount; in the central duet between Oedipus and Jocasta, passionate lovemaking is interrupted by maternal memories; the infant suckling at Jocasta’s breast, the child cradled in her arms. And Graham’s command of symbolic language is never more powerfully expressed; the rope which is the instrument of her death evokes both the marriage vows which tie Jocasta to Oedipus the King and the umbilical cord which once bound her to her son.