Jean Erdman: The Transformations of Medusa

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF MEDUSA 
Temple Virgin
Lady of the Wild Things 
Queen of Gorgons

Choreography: Jean Erdman (1942) 

Reconstructed by: Nancy Allison with Christine Dakin 

Commissioned score: Louis Horst 

Pianist: Amir Khosrowpour

Costume: Charlotte Trowbridge 

Performer: Christine Dakin

According to Erdman “The Transformations of Medusa”,  “reveals an organic progression of energy flowing through three different stages of life”. From the mesmerized fanatic of “Temple Virgin” to the conscious, harmony-seeking “Lady of The Wild Things” to the embodiment of destructive power in “Queen of Gorgons” this exacting and enigmatic dance has challenged dancers and riveted audiences since its creation.

Jean Erdman (1916-2020) was born and raised in Hawaii in the early years of the 20th century. She embraced hula and other forms of world dance, along with a life-long dialogue with her husband, the mythologist Joseph Campbell, as sources of inspiration for her evocative, innovative dance and theater creations. 

Erdman began her career as a soloist in Martha Graham's company from 1938 – 43, originating many roles in the repertory of that period. Together with fellow Graham company member, Merce Cunningham with whom she shared a choreographic debut in 1943 at the Arts Club of Chicago, she was instrumental in seeking out the more abstract direction that marks American modern dance to this day. 

She collaborated with some of the most innovative artists of her time, including composers John Cage, Henry Cowell, Alan Hovanhess and Teiji Ito, poet e.e. cummings, visual artists Peter Max, Ralph Lee and Paul Jenkins and filmmaker, Maya Deren. In 1949, Dance Magazine noted her dance “The Perilous Chapel”, with a commissioned score by Lou Harrison and sculptural set by Carlus Dyer, as “one of the best new works of the season”. 

Her most famous work “The Coach with the Six Insides” (1962), an adaptation of James Joyce's “Finnegans Wake” received the Vernon Rice (a forerunner of the Drama Desk Award) and OBIE awards for Outstanding Achievement in Off-Broadway Theater and toured the world including stops in Dublin, Tokyo, the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy and Paris where the piece was dubbed "total theater" by the Paris press. In 1971, she received a Drama Desk award and a Tony nomination for her choreography for the New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona”.

Other Broadway choreography credits include Jean Giraudoux’s “The Enchanted” (1950), Helen Hayes Repertory production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (1964) and Lincoln Center Repertory production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Yerma” (1962).  In 1972, Campbell and she founded the Theater of the Open Eye where she created other total theater works including “Moon Mysteries: Three Visionary Plays for Dancers by W.B. Yeats”, “Gauguin in Tahiti” and “The Shining House: A Dance Opera of Pagan Hawaii”. 

She was an inspiring teacher and ambassador for dance, touring the US with her company, or as a solo artist, from the 1940s through the 1970s. In 1954 she toured India and Japan, the first solo dancer to do so since WWII. The report she filed with U.S. State Department upon her return, helped initiate cultural exchange programs with many countries in the Far East. She was director of the Dance Program at Bard College from 1954 – 57, Artist in Residence and director of Summer Dance Program at University of Colorado in Boulder from 1949 – 55 and founding director of the Dance Program at New York University School of the Arts from 1966 - 71. 

She received the American Dance Guild Achievement Award for Arts in Collaboration (1986) and National Dance Association Heritage Honoree Award (1993). In 2006, along with other members of the New Dance Group of which she was a member from 1943 to 1948, she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance Hall of Fame.

For more information please visit: www.jeanerdmandance.com