Music: Norman Dello Joio.
Choreography: Martha Graham .
Decors: Isamu Noguchi.
Costumes: Martha Graham.
Lighting: Jean Rosenthal.
Premiere: on August 13, 1948 at Palmer Auditorium, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, under the title "Wilderness Stair".
Dancers at the premiere: Martha Graham , Erick Hawkins, May O'Donnell, Pearl Lang, Helen McGehee, Dorothea Douglas, Joan Skinner, Dorothy Berea, Natanya Neumann, Mark Ryder, Robert Cohan, Stuart Hodes, and Dale Sehnert.
One of our tours when I toured the states with the Follies was Chicago. I remember going into the Art Institute ne afternoon. I
entered a room where the first modern paintings I had ever seen were on display- Chagalls and Matisses- and something within me responded to those paintings.
I saw across the room a beautiful painting, what was then called abstract art, a startling new idea. I nearly fainted because at that moment I knew I was not mad, that others saw the world, saw art, the way I did.
It was by Wassily Kandinsky, and had a streak of red going from one end to the other. I said, "I will do that someday. I will make a dance like that."
And I did. I didn't know it at the time, but it had such a great influence on me; that shaft of intimacy. The dance was Diversion of angels.
It happened one rainy summer at Connecticut College in 1948, and I thought no angel would ever appear in that weather. Diversion is about the love of life and the love of love; the meeting and the parting of a man and a woman. There is a woman in white who symbolizes
mature love. She is only able to move in balance
with her partner, her lover. There is a girl in yellow
who is adolescent love; and a woman in red, who flashes across
the stage as erotic love. All are aspects of the same woman, and thegirl in red is the Kandinsky flame I had seen so long ago at the Chicago Art Institure.
(Martha Graham, Blood Memories)
Thanks to Suzie Snyder for the information about this ballet!