Martha Graham’s Letter to the World: A dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson

Letter to the World is a choreography Martha Graham created in 1940 and revised in 1941. It is dedicated to Emily Dickinson, one of her favourite poets. However, it is not a biographical account, but an introspective work, that, in Graham’s words, investigates the New England poet’s ‘inner landscape’. The protagonist is split into two: the One Who Dances who performs the most demanding dance phrases and the One Who Speaks, who utters lines from Dickinson’s poems and letters. The other characters embody emanations of the poet’s personality. The main narrative rotates around the struggle between the One Who Dances and the Ancestress, who embodies the poet’s Puritan tradition and death. The combination of dances and spoken lines provides a unique portrait of the poet.

In this article, I intend to analyse Letter to the World as a dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson. The method through which I will conduct my analysis consists of cultural and dance history, adaptation and narrative theory. First, I will focus on the notion of dance adaptation itself; then, I will present a reconstruction of the piece and proceed to explore the material Graham consulted for her work; after this, I will analyse it in terms of narrative highlighting the way the dances and spoken lines contribute to shaping it; I will conclude with a reflection on the reasons that brought Graham to focus on Dickinson.