American Document

In the opening scene, the company struts and cakewalks, a dance also known as the walk-around. They bow to one other and to the audience, gathering in a semi-circle at the rear of the stage in conventional minstrel show fashion. Once all of the performers are present, the Interlocutor introduces the action.[8] "Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening. This is a theater. The place is here in the United States of America. The time is now-tonight."[4]

Each of the subsequent episodes is introduced by the Interlocutor; each concludes with a walk-around that ends in an empty stage.

The first episode begins with the Interlocutor asking, "An American-What is an American?" The End Figures enter, running diagonally across the stage accompanied by a drum roll. They cross three times, then stop as the Interlocutor recites from the Declaration of Independence. As he speaks, the chorus members enter singly, slowly walking to positions in a line downstage. After a Dance of Declaration, featuring the chorus leader and male principal, all performers leave the stage.

The second episode celebrates the country's Native American heritage. As the Interlocutor crosses from stage right to left, he asks, "America-What is America?" The sequence features a solemn solo, Native Figure, for the female principal accompanied by texts from Fergusson and Graham. An all-female ensemble then performs Lament to the Land with spoken words excerpted from a letter by Red Jacket mourning the native peoples' loss of country.

The scene's narration begins in similar fashion to the first episode with the Interlocutor querying, "An American-What is an American?" The focus of the sequence is a duet for the principals, ostensibly meant to show the conflict between the Puritan wish to lead "a simple life or an angry life of denial."[4] While the narration weaves the sensual Song of Songs with a fiery sermon from Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards, the choreography tells a tale of unrepressed passion.

The fourth episode begins as a dance for the entire ensemble and concludes in a duet for the principals. The section begins with the Interlocutor onstage alone, "The United States of America-What is it?" The spoken word excerpts are taken from the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and Graham's own writings. As described in the program notes, the ensemble dance and duet are "ecstatic." The company ends the episode with outstretched arms and upturned faces.[4]

The fifth episode, originally named the After Piece, later renamed Hold Your Hold!, brings the audience up to the present day. From 1938 through 1944, the Interlocutor introduced the piece by proclaiming the current year. Three women, speaking as "three million women" intone a "lament for the living." One man, a surrogate for "one million men," voices his hopes and fears. A Dance of Invocation brings the performance to a climax as the Interlocutor speaks, "America! Name me the word that is courage. America! Name me the word that is justice. America! Name me the word that is power. America! Name me the word that is freedom. America! Name me the word that is faith. Here is that word - Democracy!" The company exits with the exception of the Principals, who stand on opposite sides of the stage as the Interlocutor recites the famous words from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." The company enters in a final walk-around. The Interlocutor bids the audience goodnight.[4]

Graham overhauled American Document in 1989 with almost all new choreography, revised narration and minimization of the minstrel show aspect.[2] The world premiere of the work featured two guest artists, Mikhail Baryshnikov, as the male principal, and Cecilia Peck, as the Interlocutor. Baryshnikov danced the Native Figure solo, a dance Graham made for herself, in the Occupation episode. The new American Document also included men in the previously all-female chorus.[3] New narrative passages included quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy.

In 2010, director Anne Bogart and playwright Charles L. Mee reinvented American Document for 21st century audiences. Though not one of Martha Graham's dances, the work is closely tied to the original and poses the same question, "What is an American?" Bogart and Mee's American Document was staged for six SITI Company actors and ten Graham dancers. The dance/theater piece incorporated text from such sources as the free verse of Walt Whitman, the spontaneous prose of Jack Kerouac and the blog posts of American soldiers stationed in Iraq.[10]

Reviews of the 1989 version, for the most part, were not favorable. The dance was called "disassociated", "pretentious" "gibberish" in which the words did not illuminate the choreography and vice versa.[15][16] One critic with a more positive impression described the piece as "an extreme distillation of her original distillation" that maintained the integrity of her subject matter, "an affirmation of belief in freedom and democracy." [2]

Critics noted the American Document of 2010 was more provocative than the original, demanding "what it means to be American in an age of foreign wars that kill innocent people, government-sponsored torture, immigrant bashing and the ongoing challenge posed by feminism."[17]