Diversion of Angels, initially titled Wilderness Stair, is a Martha Graham ballet performed to an original score by Norman Dello Joio.
The premiere on August 13, 1948, at the Palmer Auditorium in New London, Connecticut, included a set designed by Isamu Noguchi.
Dorothea Douglas, Joan Skinner, Dorothy Berea, Erick Hawkins, May O’Donnell and Dale Sehnert completed the cast.
[6] At the ballet's premiere, the program notes contained a Ben Belitt poem referencing the action, “It is the place of the Rock and Ladder, the raven, the blessing, the tempter, the rose.
It is the wish of the single-hearted, the undivided; play after the spirit’s labor; games, flights, fancies, configurations of the lover’s intention; the believed Possibility, at once strenuous and tender; humors of innocence, garlands, evangels, Joy on the wilderness stair; diversion of angels.”[4] In comparison to much of Graham's oeuvre, the ballet is joyful, exuberant and lyrical.