Jocasta’s last hours: identity, responsibility, and violence in Martha Graham’sNight Journey

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyses Martha Graham’s Night Journey in relation to its primary model, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. Night Journey captivates us by drawing deeply on Sophocles’ original and invites us to turn our focus to the last hours of Jocasta’s life, a moment to which Sophocles’ play gives comparatively little attention. I argue that Graham’s focus on the last hours of Jocasta’s life brings fresh illumination to our interpretation of the Oedipus myth. I first discuss the dance’s narrative technique and then analyse three themes that are central to both Sophocles’ and Graham’s works: questions of identity; responsibility; and the deep-seated human urge toward violence in the face of anxiety. In each case I show how Graham transforms Sophocles’ treatment of these themes and explores them through the character of Jocasta and a chorus of women, making women the focus of the narrative’s meditations on the nature of identity, moral responsibility, and human emotion.