Maple Leaf Rag (ballet) An audience favorite since the first performance, "Maple Leaf Rag" is a staple of the Graham company repertoire. It is also included in "Three Dances by Martha Graham", a TV program produced by WNET for PBS. Terese Capucilli appears as the Graham surrogate. Kathleen Turner provides the narration. Maple Leaf Rag (ballet) Maple Leaf Rag is a storyless Martha Graham ballet set to ragtime compositions by Scott Joplin. The work premiered on October 2, 1990 at New York City Center with costumes by Calvin Klein and lighting by David Finley. Chris Landriau arranged the music and played piano at the
Maple Leaf Rag on seven piano rolls for use in mechanical player pianos. All seven were made in 1916. Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin made these recordings he may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors and an inability to speak clearly, symptoms of syphilis, the disease that took his life in 1917. The recording of "Maple Leaf Rag", on the Aeolian Uni-Record label from June 1916 was described by biographer Blesh as "shocking ... disorganized and completely distressing to hear". Berlin notes that the "Maple Leaf Rag" roll was "painfully bad" and likely to be the truest record of