About Maggie
I fell in love with Martha Graham when I was seven. In my memoir, The Crack Between the Worlds: a dancer’s memoir of loss, faith and family, I write:
“Before I even owned a leotard, I dedicated myself to the technique of Martha Graham and to the person of my teacher, Ethel Butler, who had been a member of Graham’s first company.
On the far side of the school’s vast assembly room, I see Ethel seated on a low stool, drumstick poised to begin class. I’m sitting on the floor in last summer’s two-piece bathing suit, soles of my feet together, back ramrod straight, listening for her, ‘and,’ the danccr’s upbeat. ‘And . . .’ I contract my torso and echo the drum’s downbeat, bouncing my head eight times on my feet, then sit up tall, feeling as though I’ve just arrived inside my skin.”
In 1960 I married Eric Kast, and six years later we moved into a big house in Chicago’s Hyde Park, Where I had a dance studio on the top floor. There I taught, rehearsed and choreographed dances for what would become Chicago Contemporary Dance Theatre. Here my first two sons, Anton and Tom, watch company members Tom Boyd, Carter Frank, Ken Pierce and Marjorie Synakiewicz rehearse while I watch, seated on a cabinet.
Above is an image from a series of organ-and-dance concerts at St. Thomas Apostle Church, which I choreographed in collaboration with organist Thomas Weisflog. Rebecca Phllips, Jenny Kobylarz and Christy Bennett are performing.
A year after my husband’s death I started writing as well as traveling with groups or on my own. In Costa Rica I discovered the joys of flying through the trees.
My children are far flung. All of us who can make it get together in the summer for a week on Martha’s Vineyard (this year in Falmouth), coming from San Francisco, Wales, Vermont, New Jersey and the Midwest. Don’t expect to figure out who’s who! All my friends find the children and grandchildren of my husband’s first two marriages and of our own marriage a hopelessly confusing pot potpourri.
Three Nash cousins, relatives on my father’s side, join us at the Edgartown Lighthouse, Martha’s Vineyard.
Tom, my second son, now lives in Klagenfurt, Austria, so I get to Europe more often, especially to see my six-year-old granddaughter, Arina.
On my last trip I also spent a week at the Biennale de Danse in Lyons, France. This month-long festival includes a Défilé de la Paix, a parade for peace, where dance companies from many communities create their own music, costumes and choreography, each celebrating peace in their own way. Below left, Here: the culminating end of the parade at the Place Bellecour (?).
Always, whether dancing, writing, or traveling, I am collecting information about food, eating, shopping in local markets, and cooking. Here a recent photo of the mise en place for fon sz, bean thread noodles, shot by my daughter, Erica.
