“Dance these days — spring ’59 — is decidedly split into two main factions,” wrote the dancer Paul Taylor: neoclassical ballet, a modernist update of classical ballet, and modern dance, which broke free of ballet’s strictures to use movement as an expressive tool. These two genres were epitomized by the work of the choreographers George Balanchine and Martha Graham, respectively. “So when it’s announced that the two giants will collaborate on a new work,” Taylor continued, “it comes as a startling surprise.” That piece, titled Episodes, premiered on May 14, 1959, at New York’s City Center of Music and Drama, to music by Anton Webern. Sixteen thousand fans were expected to turn up to see the co-creation.
But the performance was not, as some may have hoped, a syncretic blend of ballet and modern dance. Balanchine and Graham instead choreographed separate sections that reflected their signature styles. Balanchine presented a plotless ballet motivated by the formal considerations of Webern’s score; Graham a dramatic, narrative interpretation of Mary, Queen of Scots in the moments before her beheading. Taylor, a Graham dancer loaned to Balanchine in the spirit of collaboration, recalled that whereas Graham spent hours in the studio explaining the ideas, references, and emotions behind her choreography, Balanchine was economical with his rehearsal time. When he did speak, it was often in the form of aphorism. Taylor, seeking guidance on how to perform, once asked what his solo in Episodes was about, and Balanchine replied, “Is like fly in glass of milk, yes?” While Balanchine watched performances silently from the wings, Graham took the stage (just three days after her 65th birthday) as the ill-fated queen.
At the time of the premiere, Graham was the more established choreographer, and her contribution to Episodes was met with greater acclaim. Even though she was clearly declining in ability and stature, she was still renowned as a virtuoso performer and considered the mother of modern dance. Yet put side-by-side with Graham’s, Balanchine’s work appeared more abstract and modernist. His leotard-clad dancers flexed their feet, twisted their bodies, and moved with angular precision to Webern’s atonal music; hers donned full costumes to tell a story through gestures less suited to the radical composition. In the wake of Episodes, Graham and Balanchine swapped trajectories: like the bygone queen she embodied onstage, Graham became an archaic figure, the personification of modern dance history, while Balanchine became the emblem of twentieth-century American dance.