For Martha Graham fans... Mary Hinkson, Matt's close friend and associate, and a famous Graham "prima ballarina" herself , is my aunt. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/freetodance/biographies/hinkson.html
I remember many happy times with Matt. She was very beautiful. Concerning a recent thread on the relation of music and dance, I heard on a recent television show on Aaron Copeland that Copeland didn't name "Appalachian Spring". He named the music "For Martha". Martha Graham named it "Appalachian Spring." "Aunt" Matt had a primary role in "Appalachian Spring". Charles ^^^^^ Matt Turney, Longtime Dancer With Martha Graham, Dies at 84 Published: December 29, 2009 Matt Turney, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, died on Dec. 20 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She was 84 and lived in Poughkeepsie. The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said Mary Hinkson, a longtime friend and colleague. Ms. Turney created roles in major Graham works including “Seraphic Dialogue” (in which she danced the Martyr, “Clytemnestra” (Cassandra), “Embattled Garden” (Lilith) and “Part Real — Part Dream.” But the role that perhaps best captured her distinctive quality was the Pioneer Woman in the 1944 Graham classic “Appalachian Spring.” Tall, serene and lyrical, Ms. Turney did not fit the stereotype of the Graham performer. The company’s repertory brimmed with larger-than-life, heroic characters, both earthily anguished and celestially exalted. But Ms. Turney had a gift for stillness, a rare and largely unacknowledged quality in dance, which enabled her to fill the stage with quiet eloquence without moving a muscle, as she did in “Appalachian Spring.” Ms. Turney was a luminous still center in the dramatically charged Graham company, which she joined in 1951 and left in 1972. Looking back on her career, Don McDonagh, the author of a 1973 Graham biography, described Ms. Turney in a recent conversation as “a fluidly statuesque dancer of confident dignity.” But, Mr. McDonagh added, she was also a technically skilled dancer who knew how to use her technique intelligently. “Her strong, subtle technique was subsumed knowingly and efficiently into the service of every role she undertook,” he said. That knowing quality meant that Ms. Turney was able for the most part to separate herself from the all-enveloping mystique of dancing for Graham. Yet the experience was life-shifting and enduring. “Martha’s stage was ritual, completely literal ritual for me ... the first and purest vehicle of meaning,” she wrote in Robert Tracy’s “Goddess: Martha Graham’s Dancers Remember,” published by Limelight Editions in 1997. “The curtain parted and time cracked open ... like a firecracker, showering insight and sudden illuminations. This attenuated ‘nontime’ seemed to stretch back to the beginning and extend into the future. The action was powerful and magic; the telling, ominously clear. The curtain closed and time seemed again with ‘now.’ Try as I might I could not sustain the miraculous sensations and deep revelations, but I was always permanently affected, as though a truth-tipped arrow had found its mark ... that place where mystery, beauty and intelligence are inseparable.” Born in Americus, Ga., in 1925, Ms. Turney grew up in Milwaukee. She trained in modern dance with Nancy Hauser and earned a bachelor’s degree in dance at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before heading to New York City with Ms. Hinkson, a fellow graduate. In New York, Ms. Turney studied at the New Dance Group and joined Ms. Hinkson at the Graham school. She and Ms. Hinkson soon joined the Graham company, the first members of a newly revitalized young troupe and the company’s earliest black dancers. Their first performance was in Graham’s “Canticle for Innocent Comedians.” Ms. Turney also performed briefly with other choreographers, among them Pearl Primus, Donald McKayle, Alvin Ailey and Paul Taylor and was a dancer in the 1961 musical “Milk and Honey.” Before college, she had been invited to join Katherine Dunham’s company, but her parents would not let her. Ms. Turney’s marriage to Bob Teague, a former reporter for WNBC-TV in New York and for The New York Times, ended in divorce. She is survived by a son, Adam Teague of Poughkeepsie, and three grandchildren. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
