Emotions and Greek Heroes on the Dance Stage
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Time: 6:30pm EST
Location: Center for Hellenic Studies, 3100 Whitehaven St. NW, Washington, DC 20008 and via Zoom
Speaker: Nina Papathanasopoulou (CYA Athens)
Please join us for a lecture by Nina Papathanasopoulou (CYA Athens) on revolutionary American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s radical reception of the women of Greek tragedy across her performing career, from the early 1930s to her retirement from the stage in 1969.
Abstract
This talk examines Martha Graham’s radical reception of the women of Greek tragedy across her performing career, from the early 1930s to her retirement from the stage in 1969. I argue that Graham repeatedly turned to Greek tragic heroines—Electra, Medea, Jocasta, Clytemnestra, Alcestis, Phaedra, and Hecuba—with two interlocking aims: to stage archetypal human emotion, and to confront and make sense of her own personal experience of love, jealousy, aging, and loss. Inspired by psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypes, and the abstract art of collaborator Isamu Noguchi, Graham was drawn to Greek tragedy’s direct engagement with human suffering. What makes her reception radical is its consistent relocation of tragic conflict from the civic sphere to the psyche: rather than framing female transgression through public judgment, Graham turns the drama inward, giving visible form to what ancient texts leave unstaged — Jocasta’s reckoning with unbearable knowledge, Clytemnestra’s interior logic of injury and justice, Phaedra’s unruly desire brought into full view, among others. I first give an overview of Graham’s tragic women and then concentrate on Jocasta in Night Journey (1947), where Graham’s inward turn becomes most radical: tragedy is staged not as Oedipus’ public discovery but as Jocasta’s embodied confrontation with knowledge.
Register
We have reached in-person capacity for this event. If you would like to be put on a waitlist, please email events@chs.harvard.edu and we will reach out if a space opens up. Thank you.
About the Speaker
Nina Papathanasopoulou is a Professor of Classical Studies at the study abroad program College Year in Athens and specializes in Greek drama, mythology and their reception. Her current research focuses on Martha Graham’s deep engagement with Greek myth and she is completing a monograph titled Martha Graham & Greek Myth: The Ancient World in Modern Dance, which is under consideration by University of Michigan Press. Nina completed her BA in Classics at the University of Athens in 2003 and her PhD in Classics at Columbia University in 2013. From 2013 to 2019 she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Connecticut College, where she taught Greek, Latin, Classics and Theater courses and was deeply involved in outreach programming for Classics. Since January 2019 Nina also serves as the Public Engagement Coordinator for the Society for Classical Studies, where she oversees their outreach initiative Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities and has been planning public-facing events for the annual meeting since 2025. As part of her efforts to make the study of the ancient Greek world accessible and relevant, in 2022 Nina created “Martha Graham & Greek Myth,” an initiative combining classical philology, art, and dance to explore Martha Graham’s profound connection to the Greeks. More information can be found on Nina’s website.
Banner Photo
Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in Night Journey. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources.
