It all began with a party dress. Martha Graham, the dancer whose movements and choreography blew a forceful gust of fresh air into 20th-century dance, was looking for something to wear to the 1975 Capezio Dance Awards. Her friend (and former Vogue contributor) Leo Lerman offered to ring up Halston—and the inquiry catalyzed a decades-long friendship that yielded several artistic collaborations. In her 1991 memoir, Blood Memory, Graham recounts the call: According to Lerman, “Halston said he never lent things like that, but for Martha Graham, he would be honored.”
Halston dressed Graham for the event (in an earth-colored cashmere poncho), and almost immediately after, was called upon to costume Martha Graham Dance Company, designing pieces that amplified her distinctive, fluid style. Excerpts from two of these collaborations, Lucifer (1975) and Conversation of Lovers From Acts of Light (1981), will be performed tonight at the Martha Graham Dance Company Studio in the West Village as part of a one-night-only 100th-year celebration of the New York dance company and Halston’s significant contributions. It’s a legacy that’s alive and well, not least because the Martha Graham Dance Company, which was founded in 1926, is now helmed by artistic director Janet Eilber—a muse to both Graham and Halston.
Eilber first met Halson when he was creating Lucifer. "That’s the first work that he costumed for Martha,” she says .“I was double-cast in the lead role with Margot Fonteyn. Martha would choreograph it for me, and then I would teach it to Margot.” Eilber recalls a generous gift—an Elsa Peretti Diamonds by the Yard necklace—Halston gave her one year for her birthday. Eilber even served as a model for Halston one summer when the dance company was on hiatus.
It was a perfect match. Halston, known as the Ultrasuede King (though he also reigned over Manhattan society and Studio 54), had built a fashion empire with his free-flowing fashions that sheathed the increasingly liberated female bodies of the 1970s—the more uninhibited they were, the better. His pieces were pliable, billowing, and made for life on the go—whether at a disco or on stage. He did to his dresses what Graham did in her choreography: stripped away any florid or decorative elements. While Halston redefined the overly embellished landscape of haute couture, Graham deconstructed the unrelenting codes of classical ballet. In their respective mediums, the two shared the same vision, and when it collided together, the results were nothing short of magic.
In Lucifer—an excerpt of which will be performed tonight—Halston’s costumes were spare and deeply evocative. He understood a dancer’s physicality should never be obscured or overpowered by a costume. With headpieces crafted by Elsa Peretti (another collaborator), the costumes for the legendary Rudolf Nureyev featured a fine mesh chainmail of platinum. Eilber’s costume, meanwhile, was a wispy, semi-sheer chiffon-esque gown in navy; she appeared a goddess who gradually revealed her body as fabric slipped away from her frame.
As to whether the choreography or costumes came first, Eilber reveals their synchronicity. “Martha used the costumes,” she says, “they’re so integrated into the story and the unfolding of one of her ballets. The costumes often came in much earlier than other choreographers. In Lucifer, there were several large capes, and you can t really create choreography without the cape.” Halston’s subsequent commissions were for Graham’s The Owl and the Pussy Cat, Act of Life, and Persephone. (The latter was featured in Netflix’s mini-series, Halston.)
Graham had long harnessed the power of costume; her groundbreaking Lamentation (1930) famously featured a dancer undulating in tubed jersey fabric. “She largely designed the costumes. She really had such a strong, unique vision for what she wanted on stage. She really didn’t relinquish it to other people,” says Eilber. “In the beginning of her revolution, she was showcasing women’s torsos. Graham’s skirts start below the hip so that the entire torso is revealed, and the audience can see the most intimate part of the body.” As Graham wrote in her memoir: “It must reveal the body, reveal the beautiful line of the waist, the hips, the shoulders, the turn of the head. The costume must speak to all of these things.”
Halston came into Graham’s life when she needed him most. “By this time, my hands were so crippled by arthritis that I always wore gloves. I could no longer search out fabrics and, most importantly, my hands had lost the ability to craft. It was and still remains a very painful thing,” Graham wrote in Blood Memory. “We were in his workroom looking at new fabrics, running the skeins through our hands. I could not feel the material because of the gloves. ‘I cannot use my hands,’ I told him, looking down at the long black gloves that covered my bent hands. ‘Martha,’ he said, ‘let me be your hands.’"
Eilber remembers Halston’s generosity and dedication to Graham. “We were in the theater with a full orchestra rehearsing the premiere of Scarlet Letter—he did the costumes,” says Eiber. “Marisol did the set, and Martha, of course, did the choreography—but we hadn’t finished rehearsing and were about to run overtime. To go for another half hour, it was going to cost $5,000. This was back in 1975, so it was an immense amount of money. Halston just turned to Martha and he said, keep going. I’ll cover it. He could be a tyrant, but when he was with us, he was just in his most considerate behavior.”
In addition to the two performances, more of Halston’s costumes will be on showcase at the Martha Graham Dance Company’s Bethune Street Studios. The serpentine bodysuits of Tangled Night and mythologically-inspired costumes for Judith will both be on display—a treat given that the two works are no longer in the company repertoire.
While these pieces are worthy of a fashion museum (and have at times been on view as such), the Martha Graham Dance Company is not strictly housing their works for the sake of posterity. “We wear them out!” says Eilber, “We really wear out our costumes and we remake them for the next cast. It s just a constant renewal,” she says. In addition to general wear and tear, the entire archive was exposed to floods from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.
Tonight’s celebration, which will be co-hosted by Eilber and Gabriel Hendifar and will include a conversation with Ralph Rucci, who once worked as an assistant designer in the Halston atelier, is one of many moments that the company will celebrate its centennial. There is a forthcoming New York Public Library exhibition as well as an upcoming PBS documentary. In the meantime, there are these photographs of rarely-seen costumes Vogue captured ahead of the big night.
“As dancers, we loved wearing Halston s costumes because they not only were so thematically attuned to the dance we were doing, but were so beautifully made. He made me a costume for Frontier with a circle skirt out of a wool jersey. I can remember how it felt. It just moved so beautifully,” says Eilber, “it’s as though it took my cues.”
