Rehearsal for Deep Song

Rehearsal for Deep Song recreates Martha Graham’s choreographic piece Deep Song , the last dance that she, as a mother of Modern Dance, performed alone in 1937 in response to the Spanish Civil War startling pictures of the performance reached the United States at the time, through different media. This project focuses on the analytical study, through pictorial mimesis, of the sequence of movements proposed by Graham in her choreography in order to deal with the Spanish conflict. Working with oil paint on long strips of canvas designed and prepared to represent sequences of movement in an exercise close to stop-motion, it develops a creative process based on an expanded concept of the idea of historical frieze. Its aim is not only to learn other ways to cope with the images of violence that news and social media are able to expose us to today but also to contribute to the renewal of the genre of historical painting through a working methodology that emphasizes the power of recreation (re-enactment) of the pictorial medium rather than restricting it to the mere realm of representation. Graham entitled her dance in reference to Federico García Lorca’s poem ‘Poema del Cante Jondo’ published in Madrid in 1931 and translated into English as ‘Poem of Deep Song’.