Dance Community Split Over Grant to Martha Graham

The nation’s dance community is stepping ever so gingerly over the matter of the senior senator from Arizona and Martha Graham.

Twice in the last nine months Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) has sought special funding to renovate the 94-year-old dance legend’s studio in New York, to videotape the Graham company’s repertory and to set up permanent archival records of her choreography.

And that has the organized arts community irate.

Currently the federal government gives $9.2 million to support a number of dance organizations. DeConcini proposes giving a separate grant of $7 million to Graham.

The National Endowment for the Arts reacted strongly: “If this precedent were set, it could open the door to a long line of similar requests not based on merit but on the ability of an organization to manipulate the political process.”

A House-Senate conference committee is prepared to deal with the Graham issue, perhaps as early as this week, with Rep. Edward Roybal (D-Los Angeles), who represents downtown and East Los Angeles, playing a key role.

Roybal, as chairman of the House Appropriations Treasury and Postal Service subcommittee and DeConcini’s counterpart in the House, will be conference co-chairman.

Roybal in an interview hinted that he is opposed to a special grant for Graham.

“I think it sets a precedent. It is a special appropriation, and we have to examine the advisability of setting that up as a regular practice,” Roybal said. “If we do have a National Endowment for the Arts, then that is the way we should be funding.”

Supporters of DeConcini’s measure say they want to preserve the work of the “national treasure” and dance “legend.” They contend that annual matching grants that Graham receives from the arts endowment are a far cry from the $7 million needed. In fiscal 1987 the Graham company received $240,200, plus $125,000 for artistic fees and salaries.

“Every dance company in America has financial needs and could benefit from such a grant,” said Mikhail Baryshnikov, executive director of American Ballet Theatre, in a statement from his office. “If there was ever a person who deserved such unprecedented funding, it is Martha Graham. She is a true pioneer. . . . “

Opposed to the special grant is the organized arts community, led by the American Arts Alliance, which agrees that Graham is wonderful but argues that it would set “a dangerous precedent” and amount to “blatant unfairness” to bypass the endowment’s long-established peer-panel reviews by which members within a particular artistic discipline determine who gets what. The opponents maintain that such a precedent could pave the way for “politicization” of the arts.

“Seven million dollars for Martha Graham, and $9.2 million for all other dance in the rest of the country?” asked Anne Murphy, the arts alliance executive director.

Joining the arts alliance on this issue is the endowment itself, as well as Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee, which handles the endowment’s federal budget. Last December, when DeConcini tried to get $4.1 million for Graham in a bill that would have required matching funds raised from the private sector, Yates helped kill it during a House-Senate conference.

Then in June, DeConcini caught arts leaders off guard when he tacked the $7-million appropriation for Graham with no requirement for matching funds--$4.5 million for rebuilding, $2.5 million for videotaping--onto his own Treasury, Postal Service and general government subcommittee’s appropriations bill for fiscal 1989. The Senate passed the bill June 27.

Pointing out that most of the grant would be for renovation, Anne Murphy, the alliance’s executive director, asked: “What does a building have to do with preserving Martha Graham?”

Caught in the middle of the Graham issue is the dance community. Donald Moore, executive director of Dance U.S.A., the service organization for the nation’s nonprofit dance companies, declined to discuss the issue. “At this point we don’t take positions on grant requests; I can’t comment further.” Other dance leaders declined comment as well.

“I’m walking a very fine line on this one,” noted Penelope Curry, executive director of the Joffrey Ballet NY/LA.

“I would think the arts people would be jumping up and down” with happiness over this grant, DeConcini said in a recent interview. “It isn’t like Martha Graham is 69 years old (and has years to live). She has received piddling little (grant) amounts. I don’t know how long the lady is going to live, and it’s just a shame not to preserve this woman’s work on videotape for posterity.

“I could see their (the arts community) point if I was designating money going to everyone,” he added, “but the fact of the matter is I’m adding money on.”

The Graham fracas began in October when DeConcini, a member of the Senate Appropriations interior subcommittee, sought the $4.1 million grant for Graham. At the time Yates said through an aide that while he has “great respect for Martha Graham and the magnificent contributions she has made to the American performing arts . . . it was not possible to single her out, both for the bad precedent it would have set and also because of the questions it would have raised during this time of fiscal restraint.”

Richard Burke, president of the Graham company, said the Graham situation was “an extremely special case. This is not like it’s some method to stop the NEA. . . . We received grants from the NEA but when we approached them for a very large grant, we were turned down.”

In 1983 the endowment rejected a $1-million request for videotaping and renovation, although the endowment did grant the company $250,000 for filming and preservation the following year.

Bella Lewitzky, choreographer of the company that bears her name, praised Graham as “one of the most singular artists this nation has ever produced,” but said she supports the arts alliance position because “peer panels are typically American democratic in their style. Until something better comes along, it becomes a little bit iffy to favor one arts organization as more remarkable. If it were private money (Graham was getting), everyone would send up cheers, rockets and fireworks.”

And the Joffrey’s Curry, who noted that she generally opposes the idea of special arts grants, allowed: “If I would have thought of it first--$10 million to protect what Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino have done--I would have done it.”