{"id":523,"date":"2020-11-05T15:18:45","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T20:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/emmonsbeverly\/?p=523"},"modified":"2020-11-16T13:59:27","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T18:59:27","slug":"523-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/emmonsbeverly\/523-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Graham said to me\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was being interviewed by Martha Graham and Ron Protas in 1982, for the job of modernizing the lighting for the entire Graham Repertory. The lighting design for her company had been done by Jean Rosenthal from the beginnings of the company in 1936 to Jean\u2019s death in 1969. I had seen programs of the Graham Dance Company many times from the seasons at the American Dance Festival and in B\u2019way theatres. Jean\u2019s Look was an essential part of the experience. I asked Ms. Graham (in her 90\u2019s) if she wanted to know anything about me, but she assured me, No, I had been recommended and she was sure I was fine. Then she said, \u201c<strong>I don\u2019t <\/strong><strong>want to hear any more about Jean Rosenthal: you are an artist and you are now, <\/strong><strong>make this right for now.<\/strong>\u201d I immediately understood that she had encouraged Jean, in the 1940s, to call herself a Lighting Designer (the first woman in the world to so identify). Martha Graham had been empowering women her entire life and I could feel how it was so. I couldn\u2019t imagine rethinking Jean\u2019s cool Blue and Lavender stage pictures, but the lighting in the \u201860s was still using old equipment and was dimmer than we have come to expect of stage lighting. Luckily her documentation was complete and the xeroxes had been saved by Maxine Glorsky*. I analyzed her choices of angles of light and filled more of the stage; I carefully matched her old Brigham colors to the current ones, and I referred to her old cue sheets to make cues happen in the same places in the dances and use the same colors and angles to make the looks. There were 10 dances in that season at City Center. I was concerned that it looked right. I invited Jean Rosenthal\u2019s surviving colleagues, Nannan Porche and Mickey Kinsella to a performance, explaining that I had tried to capture the right look but that they were the only people left who could remember and if they were unhappy to give me notes. They gave me an A and dinner in the Russian Tea Room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was being interviewed by Martha Graham and Ron Protas in 1982, for the job of modernizing the lighting for the entire Graham Repertory. The lighting design for her company had been done by Jean Rosenthal from the beginnings of the company in 1936 to Jean\u2019s death in 1969. I had seen programs of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-highlight"],"metadata":{"_edit_last":["223"],"_wpac_members_redirect_to":[""],"_wpac_show_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_show_excerpt_in_search":["0"],"_wpac_nonmembers_redirect_to":[""],"ase_chapter_enable_timeline":["off"],"ase_map_component_start_point":["a:2:{s:3:\"lat\";d:29.76;s:3:\"lng\";d:-95.38;}"],"_edit_lock":["1605553150:223"]},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Martha Graham said to me\u2026 - Beverly Emmons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/performingartslegacy.org\/emmonsbeverly\/523-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martha Graham said to me\u2026 - Beverly Emmons\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was being interviewed by Martha Graham and Ron Protas in 1982, for the job of modernizing the lighting for the entire Graham Repertory. 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