A Look Into Iconic Collaborations at Martha Graham Dance Company

“It was heaven to dance in his costumes,” Janet Eilber the director of the Martha Graham Dance Company said at Graham+Halston: The Original Celebrity Collaboration an intimate and thougtful event at the company’s studio on Bethune Street, referring to Halston’s costumes. Eilber has danced some of the legendary modernist dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s greatest roles as well as having roles created for her by Graham. Eilber sat together with designer Ralph Rucci, who worked closely with Roy Halston Frowick, and Gabriel Hendifar, the founder of the luxury design studio Apparatus to speak about Graham and Halston’s creative partnership in between performances.

“She was his spiritual mother,” Rucci explained. The two were very close, unfortunately, although Graham was thirty-eight years his senior, he passed away before her. “Meeting at Halston’s office at 33 West 68th Street, Halston would sit and sketch reinterpreting and building on Graham’s vision,” Rucci explains about their joint design process. Halston rose to fame when he designed the iconic pillbox hat that Jacqueline Kennedy wore at her husband’s inauguration and designed for the greats of his time Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Barbara Walters, Liza Minelli, and the Italian jewelry designer Elsa Peretti who were among his regulars—bringing extra magic to the evening that made me feel like one of these icons just might step through the door and say hello, Eilber was wearing a long silver snake-inspired Peretti necklace.

“It was a French textile company that facilitated Lamentation,” Rucci explains after the performance of Lamentation by Leslie Andrea Williams. The company Rucci is referring to engineered the jersey from which Graham designed her tube-like costume, with no arms or legs. Seated, Williams struggles to move beneath the jersey which becomes a moving sculpture as she performs Graham’s visionary choreography. I was surprised at its short length, shy of four minutes, yet this piece that premiered in 1930 came to create a new modernist expression through dance. Graham first performed this short but poignant piece on grief, and how it constrains and engulfs. Later, Graham would first choreograph and then send her scripts off to composers, like Aaron Copland, to add music.  But as one of her early works, Lamentation was accompanied by Kodaly’s Neun Klavierstücke, op. 3. no. 2.

One of the most theatrical Halston-designed pieces of the evening was a spectacular cape worn by leading dancer Lloyd Knight whose red colors evoked the fires of hell as he danced in Lucifer. In Conversation of Lovers, Xin Ying wore a beautiful Halston dress with long slits which, in signature fashion, allows the legs to extend beyond the fabric as it drapes downward creating a dramatic silhouette as she danced together with Knight. These costumes reinforce the contract and release motions that Graham was so known for while revealing the strangeness of the body. For Graham, the choreography was not only related to the body but also the costumes and even her dancer’s hair. “Oh you noticed the hair choreography,” Ying exclaimed, thrilled, as Chokra, a performance artist, questioned if her head movements to manipulate the fall of her long hair were deliberate, as we chatted in the hall after the performance. Pointing to her left, Ying showed us a document pinned to a message board describing head and hair movements for company dancers. Graham was astutely aware of the draping, fall, and hugging of both fabric and hair and how it they could both extend and contract the body.

During the fireside chat, Eliber shared that Lucifer was first danced by Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in a special one-night performance in 1975 at the company’s fiftieth-anniversary gala. There was a 19-year age difference between the electric duo of dancers, yet they continued to dance for two decades until she retired in 1979 at the age of 60. Proving once again that the best collaborations are based on energetic, spiritual, and emotional connection above all else. On December 13-14 the company will continue on its theme of collaboration, or at least inspiration, as they host a preview of The Drama an intimate and personal solo by Lloyd Knight inspired by his time as an artist, and the women in his life, his mother and Martha Graham.

Graham and Halston met in 1974—he lent her an earth-toned caftan and darker-colored poncho in cashmere and arranged for David Webb to lend her an emerald and ruby string of beads to wear as she presented the Capezio Dance Award. She could not afford to buy anything new. When she called the next day to ask if she could keep the clothes and pay them off monthly he replied, as published in her autobiography Blood Memory (1991), “Martha, if I cannot give you that dress, there is nothing in the world I can give you.” By then she always wore gloves as her hands were crippled by arthritis, she could no longer feel craft or feel fabrics. Halston offered to be her hands. “Halston was a strange, gentle, and fierce man. Fierce because he would only settle for the best. If you couldn’t give your best, then too bad for you. He made that very clear in the beginning. Halston believed as did I that the only sin was mediocrity,” she wrote.

One year earlier, being the United States’ most famous designer of the sixties, in 1973 Halston had sold his name and company to Norton Simon, and as Halston Enterprises continued to rise, he moved his headquarters in 1978 to the 21st floor of the Olympic Tower. There he designed a lavish 12,000 square feet U-shaped space that hosted private fittings, parties, runway shows, and the brand’s day-to-day operations—the parent company was proud to call it the most expensive office space in New York. However, the brand would soon start faltering and was sold to another conglomerate Esmark, who cut the brand’s spending. Rucci continued to work with Halston through these shifts, only slightly touching on the topic (Halston’s extravagances and rise and fall are well detailed in the miniseries Halston from 2021) he explained that Halston continued to design for Graham, paying out-of-pocket for their projects together, or receiving her and her dancers at his private residence a townhouse on 101 East 63rd street as the brand shifted ownership. Despite the stormy history of the brand, Halston remained a visionary minimalist with forward-thinking ideas in New York’s glamorous set and avant-garde scene and “would do anything” for his dear friend Graham and her dance company.

Both Graham and Halston liked snakes, whose patterns can be seen in several of their pieces, he did not care much for Greek patterns but would incorporate them for her. Elber explains that he would not only create costumes for dancers out of incredible fabrics but also dress them for dress for galas. And, sometimes dancers modeled for the brand. She modeled designs for Braniff Airlines in Hawaii, she remembers. Other than the costumes worn by the dancers, some pieces from the archive were on view beside the stage. Costumes from the hero and the sea goddess from Tangled Night (1986) were created when Martha was 92 years old, she used a sea voyage as a metaphor for life’s quest. In 1978, Halston designed the costumes for Graham’s only full-length piece Clytemnestra (1958) it was filmed by PBS for television. And, costumes for The Owl and the Pussycat (1978) a reinterpretation of Edward Lear’s classic poem ideatec by Halston and Graham together. Elements from the mermaid dresses have a striking resemblance to Swedish designer Emelie Janrell’s new collection Matridemonia, with sheer bodices and fabrics that can fly and flip (in Graham’s case, like mermaid tails)–an example of a (un)knowing reference.

As the evening was centered around collaborations, former company member and co-organizer Jacob Larsen commented: “This event series is a beautiful relationship between apparatus and Graham. Martha was the queen of collaboration so bringing people into spaces that allow them to learn and convene can birth further collaborations. Martha is an untapped genius from which we constantly, many times unknowingly, pull inspiration.” Graham and those she chose to work with were pioneers of believing in and developing the power of individuality. “Martha encouraged her dancers and invited the audience to see the magic and majesty in who you are,” Larsen continued. Eilber remembers an early comment, serving as a wake-up call, from Graham: “You can not only rely on your looks. Your power must come from within, through your spine, and out through your eyes.” It is beautiful to be able to gain further insight into the greatness of both Graham and Halston through their proteges and the company, besides the next generation, like Hendifer, whotakese inspiration from their aesthetic language and philosophy.

The Martha Graham Dance Company hosts Studio Series has scheduled events December-April 2025. On January 7-8 as part of GrahamDeconstructed, Cave of the Heart, will look at how Graham’s choreography, set design by Isamu Noguchi, and score by Samuel Barber created a modernist masterwork that transformed the ancient legend of Medea. See the full schedule here.

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