Limelight · Ballet

Clytemnestra (1958)

Choreography by Martha Graham

Clytemnestra is a full-length (90-minute) dance-theatre work made by Martha Graham, premiered April 1, 1958 at the Adelphi Theatre in New York, with an original score by Halim El-Dabh and sets by Isamu Noguchi. It is the fourth in Graham's sequence of Greek-myth works, following Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, and Night Journey, and it takes its story from Aeschylus' Oresteia, tracing the events that lead Clytemnestra to kill her husband Agamemnon on his return from Troy.

What is danced

The source article does not describe Graham's actual movement vocabulary — no gesture, phrase, or technique is named — so no specific choreographic claim can be drawn from it directly. What the article does supply is the theatrical apparatus the choreography works with: Noguchi's set divides the stage into a white throne, gate-like stones, hanging golden ropes, and (from the third act) Clytemnestra's bed, and two crossed spears are moved through the piece to mark the death-sites of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, while a red cloth serves both as Clytemnestra's wing-like garment and as a carpet laid for Agamemnon's homecoming. These are staging and prop functions rather than steps, but they indicate a work built around a small number of fixed emblematic sites and object-driven business rather than a conventional narrative through-line.

Context

The ballet extends Graham's mid-1950s project of re-reading Greek tragedy through a female protagonist's interior experience, a cycle that already included Cave of the Heart (Medea), Errand into the Maze, and Night Journey. Clytemnestra widens that project to a full evening-length scale and folds in the parallel tragedies of Helen, Electra, and Cassandra around its central figure, making the piece one of the more ambitious dramatic structures of Graham's output.

How to watch it

Watch for how the four fixed set elements — throne, gate stones, hanging ropes, and the bed introduced only in the third act — function as recurring dramatic stations rather than changing scenery. Track the crossed spears as they relocate to mark where Agamemnon and Iphigenia die, and note the red cloth's double life as a garment on Clytemnestra's body and as the carpet Agamemnon walks on returning home — the same object doing opposing symbolic work.

Credits

  • composer: Halim El-Dabh

Questions

What myth does Clytemnestra dramatize?
It is drawn from Aeschylus' Oresteia and covers the events leading to Clytemnestra's murder of her husband Agamemnon after his return from the Trojan War, while also touching the stories of Helen, Electra, and Cassandra.
Who designed the set and composed the music?
Isamu Noguchi designed the set and Halim El-Dabh composed the score, which grew out of an earlier 15-minute piece Graham had commissioned and then set aside before it was reworked into the ballet's music.
How is the set used across the piece?
Noguchi's design creates four fixed sites — a throne, gate-like stones, hanging golden ropes, and a bed added in the third act — plus mobile props, notably two crossed spears marking death-sites and a red cloth used both as a garment and as a carpet.
Where does Clytemnestra fit among Graham's other Greek-myth works?
It followed Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, and Night Journey as the next installment in Graham's series of choreography drawn from Greek mythology, and is markedly longer and more structurally ambitious than the others.
This entry was written from “Clytemnestra (dance)” on English Wikipedia (revision 1292419559), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The link points at the exact revision this text was written from, so it shows the words we actually used rather than whatever the article says today. Credits and premiere data come from Wikidata (CC0), cited per field.
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