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Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer, teacher and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped the dance world and is still taught in academies worldwide.
Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown.
She said, in the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed: "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable." The Dancer Revealed, American Masters: Season 8, Episode 2, PBS, May 13, 1994.
Founded in 1926 (the same year as Graham's professional dance company), the Martha Graham School is the oldest school of dance in the United States. First located in a small studio within Carnegie Hall, the school currently has two different studios in New York City.
/ref> The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Her father was a third-generation American of Irish descent. Graham's mother, Jane Beers, was a second-generation American of Irish, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry, and who claimed to be a tenth-generation descendantNurturing Creativity in the Classroom – An Exploration of Consensus Across Theory and Practice, Karen Hosack Janes, Critical Publishing Ltd, 2022, p. 31, quoting Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi, Howard Gardner, 1993 (rep. 2011), p. 250 of Myles Standish. While her parents provided a comfortable environment in her youth, it was not one that encouraged dancing.
The Graham family moved to Santa Barbara, California, when Martha was fourteen years old. In 1911, she attended the first dance performance of her life, watching Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. In the mid-1910s, Martha Graham began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, at which she would stay until 1923. In 1922, Graham performed one of Shawn's Egyptian dances with Lillian Powell in a short silent film by Hugo Riesenfeld that attempted to synchronize a dance routine on film with a live orchestra and an onscreen conductor."Music Films", Standard-Examiner (Ogden, Utah), May 21, 1922, p. 5
In 1925, Graham was employed at the Eastman School of Music where Rouben Mamoulian was head of the School of Drama. Among other performances, together Mamoulian and Graham produced a short two-color film called The Flute of Krishna, featuring Eastman students. Mamoulian left Eastman shortly thereafter and Graham chose to leave also, even though she was asked to stay on.
In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established, in a small studio on the Upper East Side of New York City. On April 18 of the same year Graham debuted her first independent concert, consisting of 18 short solos and trios that she had choreographed. This performance took place at the 48th Street Theatre in Manhattan. She would later say of the concert: "Everything I did was influenced by Denishawn." On November 28, 1926, Graham and others in her company gave a dance recital at the Klaw Theatre in New York City. Around the same time she entered an extended collaboration with Japanese-American Pictorialism photographer Soichi Sunami, and over the next five years they together created some of the most iconic images of early modern dance. Graham was on the faculty of Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre when it opened in 1928.
One of Graham's students was heiress Bethsabée de Rothschild with whom she became close friends. When Rothschild moved to Israel and established the Batsheva Dance Company in 1965, Graham became the company's first director.
Graham technique pioneered a principle known as "contraction and release" in modern dance, which was derived from a stylized conception of breathing.
Contraction and release: The idea to highlight emotional expressions while also using the bodies ability to gather strength from its core led Graham to empahsise the movements "contraction and release" in her dance technique, for which she would become known. Each movement could separately be used to express either positive or negative, freeing or constricting emotions depending on the placement of the head. The contraction and release were both the basis for Graham's weighted and grounded style, which is in direct opposition to classical ballet techniques that typically aim to create an illusion of weightlessness. To counter the more percussive and staccato movements, Graham eventually added the spiral shape to the vocabulary of her technique to incorporate a sense of fluidity.
As time went on Graham moved away from the more stark design aesthetic she initially embraced and began incorporating more elaborate sets and scenery to her work. To do this, she collaborated often with Isamu Noguchi—a Japanese American designer—whose eye for set design was complementary to Graham's choreography.
Within the many themes which Graham incorporated into her work, there were two that she seemed to adhere to the most—Americana and Greek mythology. One of Graham's most known pieces that incorporates the American life theme is Appalachian Spring (1944). She collaborated with the composer Aaron Copland—who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the piece—and Noguchi, who created the nonliteral set. As she did often, Graham placed herself in her own piece as the bride of a newly married couple whose optimism for starting a new life together is countered by a grounded pioneer woman and a sermon-giving revivalist. Two of Graham's pieces— Cave of the Heart (1946) and Night Journey (1947)—display her interest in not only Greek mythology but also with the psyche of a woman, as both pieces retell Greek myths from a woman's point of view.
In 1936, Graham created Chronicle, which brought serious issues to the stage in a dramatic manner. Influenced by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression that followed, and the Spanish Civil War, the dance focused on depression and isolation, reflected in the dark nature of both the set and costumes.
The same year, in conjunction with the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, the German government wanted to include dance in the Art Competitions that took place during the Olympics, an event that previously included architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature. Art Competitions at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Although Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, was not appreciative of the modern dance art form and changed Germany's dance from more avant-garde to traditional, he and Adolf Hitler still agreed to invite Graham to represent the United States. However, the United States was not represented in the Art Competitions as Graham refused the invitation by stating:
I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible. In addition, some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany.Goebbels himself wrote her a letter assuring her that her Jewish dancers would "receive complete immunity", however, it was not enough for Graham to accept such an invitation.
Stimulated by the occurrences of the 1936 Olympic Games, and the propaganda that she heard through the radio from the Axis Powers, Graham created American Document in 1938. The dance expressed American ideals and democracy as Graham realized that it could empower men and inspire them to fight fascist and Nazi ideologies. American Document ended up as a patriotic statement focusing on rights and injustices of the time, representing the American people including its Native-American heritage and slavery. During the performance, excerpts from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation were read. These were passages that highlighted the American ideals and represented what made the American people American. For Graham, a dance needed to "reveal certain national characteristics because without these characteristics the dance would have no validity, no roots, no direct relation to life".Plotkin, Leah. June 23, 1938. "Exploring the Seven Arts", p. 17.
The beginning of American Document marks modern concepts of performance art joining dance, theater and literature and clearly defining the roles of the spectator and the actors/dancers. The narrator/actor starts with "establishing an awareness of the present place and time, which serves not only as a bridge between past and present, but also between individual and collective, particular and general". Together with her unique technique, this sociological and philosophical innovation sets dance as a clear expression of current ideas and places and Graham as a pillar of the modern dance revolution. 1938 became a big year for Graham; the Roosevelts invited Graham to dance at the White House, making her the first dancer to perform there. Martha Graham Timeline: 1894–1949, The Library of Congress. Also, in 1938, Erick Hawkins became the first man to dance with her company. He officially joined her troupe the following year, dancing male lead in a number of Graham's works. They were married in July 1948 after the New York premiere of Night Journey. He left her troupe in 1951 and they divorced in 1954.
On April 1, 1958, the Martha Graham Dance Company premiered the ballet Clytemnestra, based on the ancient Greek legend Clytemnestra and it became a huge success and great accomplishment for Graham.Martha Graham: A special issue of the journal Choreography and Dance, by Alice Helpern . With a score by Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh, this ballet was a large scale work and the only full-length work in Graham's career. Graham choreographed and danced the title role, spending almost the entire duration of the performance on the stage. The ballet was based on the Greek mythology of the same title and tells the story of Queen Clytemnestra who is married to King Agamemnon. Agamemnon sacrifices their daughter, Iphigenia, on a pyre, as an offering to the gods to assure fair winds to Troy, where the Trojan War rages. Upon Agamemnon's return after 10 years, Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon to avenge the murder of Iphigenia. Clytemnestra is then murdered by her son, Orestes, and the audience experiences Clytemnestra in the afterworld. This ballet was deemed a masterpiece of 20th-century American modernism and was so successful it had a limited engagement showing at the 54th Street Theatre on Broadway theatre, conducted by Robert Irving, voice parts sung by Rosalia Maresca and Ronald Holgate. "Dance: Clytemnestra; Martha Graham Work Offered by Her and Company at Broadway Theatre" by John Martin, p. 23, The New York Times, March 9, 1962
Graham collaborated with many composers including Aaron Copland on Appalachian Spring, Louis Horst, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo Menotti. Marthagraham.org. . Graham's mother died in Santa Barbara in 1958. Her oldest friend and musical collaborator Louis Horst died in 1964. She said of Horst: "His sympathy and understanding, but primarily his faith, gave me a landscape to move in. Without it, I should certainly have been lost."
Graham resisted requests for her dances to be recorded because she believed that live performances should only exist on stage as they are experienced. There were a few notable exceptions. For example, in addition to her collaboration with Soichi Sunami in the 1920s, she also worked on a limited basis with still photographers Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s, and Barbara Morgan in the 1940s. Graham considered Philippe Halsman's photographs of Dark Meadow the most complete photographic record of any of her dances. Halsman also photographed in the 1940s Letter to the World, Cave of the Heart, Night Journey and Every Soul is a Circus. In later years her thinking on the matter evolved and others convinced her to let them recreate some of what was lost. In 1952 Graham allowed taping of her meeting and cultural exchange with famed deaf-blind author, activist and lecturer Helen Keller, who, after a visit to one of Graham's company rehearsals became a close friend and supporter. Graham was inspired by Keller's joy from and interpretation of dance, utilizing her body to feel the vibration of drums and of feet and movement moving the air around her.Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings.
In her biography Martha, Agnes de Mille cites Graham's last performance as having occurred on the evening of May 25, 1968, in Time of Snow. But in A Dancer's Life, biographer Russell Freedman lists the year of Graham's final performance as 1969. In her 1991 autobiography, Blood Memory, Graham herself lists her final performance as her 1970 appearance in Cortege of Eagles when she was 76 years old. Graham's choreographies span 181 compositions. Martha Graham Dance Company – History. .
It wasn't until years after I had relinquished a ballet that I could bear to watch someone else dance it. I believe in never looking back, never indulging in nostalgia, or reminiscing. Yet how can you avoid it when you look on stage and see a dancer made up to look as you did thirty years ago, dancing a ballet you created with someone you were then deeply in love with, your husband? I think that is a circle of hell Dante omitted.When I had lost my will to live. I stayed home alone, ate very little, and drank too much and brooded. My face was ruined, and people say I looked odd, which I agreed with. Finally my system just gave in. I was in the hospital for a long time, much of it in a coma.
Graham not only survived her hospital stay, but she rallied. In 1972, she quit drinking, returned to her studio, reorganized her company, and went on to choreograph ten new ballets and many revivals. Her last completed ballet was 1990's Maple Leaf Rag.
In 2013, the dance films by her were selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the registry's owner, the Library of Congress.
To celebrate what would have been her 117th birthday on May 11, 2011, Google's logo for one day was turned into one dedicated to Graham's life and legacy.
Graham has been said to be the one that brought dance into the 20th century. Due to the work of her assistants, Linda Hodes, Pearl Lang, Diane Gray, Yuriko, and others, much of Graham's work and technique have been preserved. They taped interviews of Graham describing her entire technique and videos of her performances. Glen Tetley told Agnes de Mille, "The wonderful thing about Martha in her good days was her generosity. So many people stole Martha's unique personal vocabulary, consciously or unconsciously, and performed it in concerts. I have never once heard Martha say, 'So-and-so has used my choreography. An entire movement was created by her that revolutionized the dance world and created what is known today as modern dance. Now, dancers all over the world study and perform modern dance. Choreographers and professional dancers look to her for inspiration.
Agnes de Mille said:
The greatest thing Graham ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be. Martha said to me, very quietly: "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open ... No artist is pleased. There no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
In 2021 actress Mary Beth Peil portrayed Graham in the Netflix series Halston.
In 1957, Graham was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 by President Gerald Ford (the First Lady Betty Ford had studied under Graham in her youth). Ford declared her "a national treasure".
Graham was the first recipient of the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in modern dance in 1981, presented by Betty Ford.
In 1984, Graham was awarded the highest French order of merit, the Legion of Honour by then Minister of culture Jack Lang.
Graham was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.
In 1990, the Council of Fashion Designers of America awarded Graham with the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, Graham was posthumously named "Dancer of the Century" by Time magazine, and one of the female "Icons of the Century" by People.Women in Leadership: Contextual Dynamics and Boundaries, By Karin Klenke
In 2015, she was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
On May 11, 2020, on what would have been Graham's 126th birthday, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts announced it had acquired Graham's archives for its Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The archive consists mainly of paper-based material, photographs and films, including rare footage of Graham dancing in works such as "Appalachian Spring" and "Hérodiade"; her script for "Night Journey"; and her handwritten notes for "American Document".Gia Kourlas, "For the Public Library, Martha Graham Is the Missing Link," The New York Times, May 11, 2020.
| 1926 | Chorale | César Franck | |
| 1926 | Novelette | Robert Schumann | |
| 1927 | Lugubre | Alexander Scriabin | |
| 1927 | Revolt | Arthur Honegger | |
| 1927 | Fragilité | Alexander Scriabin | |
| 1927 | Scherza | Robert Schumann | |
| 1929 | Figure of a Saint | George Frideric Handel | |
| 1929 | Resurrection | Tibor Harsányi | |
| 1929 | Adolescence | Paul Hindemith | |
| 1929 | Danza | Darius Milhaud | |
| 1929 | Vision of the Apocalypse | Hermann Reutter | |
| 1929 | Insincerities | Sergei Prokofiev | |
| 1929 | Moment Rustica | Francis Poulenc | |
| 1929 | Heretic | from folklore | Old Brittany song, Tetus Breton, as arranged by Charles de Sivry; added to the United States National Film Registry in 2013 along with three other Martha Graham dance films" 2013 additions to National Film Registry" (8/29), CBS News. |
| 1930 | Lamentation | Zoltán Kodály | Sets by Isamu Noguchi; added to the United States National Film Registry in 2013 along with three other Martha Graham dance films |
| 1930 | Harlequinade | Ernst Toch | Costumes by Graham |
| 1931 | Primitive Mysteries | Louis Horst | |
| 1931 | Bacchanale | Wallingford Riegger | |
| 1931 | Dolorosa | Heitor Villa-Lobos | |
| 1933 | Romeo and Juliet | Paul Nordoff | Dance sequences for a Katharine Cornell production |
| 1934 | Dance in Four Parts | George Antheil | |
| 1934 | Celebration | Louis Horst | Costumes by Martha Graham |
| 1935 | Praeludium | Paul Nordoff | Costumes by Graham (1935), by Edythe Gilfond (1938) |
| 1935 | Frontier | Louis Horst | Sets by Isamu Noguchi; added to the United States National Film Registry in 2013 along with three other Martha Graham dance films |
| 1935 | Course | George Antheil | |
| 1936 | Steps in the Street | Wallingford Riegger | Part of Chronicle |
| 1936 | Chronicle | Wallingford Riegger | Lighting by Jean Rosenthal |
| 1936 | Horizons | Louis Horst | Sets by Alexander Calder |
| 1936 | Salutation | Lehman Engel | |
| 1937 | Deep Song | Henry Cowell | |
| 1937 | Opening Dance | Norman Lloyd | |
| 1937 | Immediate Tragedy | Henry Cowell | |
| 1937 | American Lyric | Alex North | Costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1938 | American Document | Ray Green | Sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1939 | Columbiad | Louis Horst | Sets by Philip Stapp, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1939 | Every Soul is a Circus | Paul Nordoff | Sets by Philip Stapp, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1940 | El Penitente | Louis Horst | Original sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Edythe Gilfond, sets later redesigned by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1940 | Letter to the World | Hunter Johnson | Sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1941 | Punch and the Judy | Robert McBride | Sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Charlotte Trowbridge, text by Edward Gordon Craig |
| 1942 | Land Be Bright | Arthur Kreutz | Sets and costumes by Charlotte Trowbridge |
| 1943 | Deaths and Entrances | Hunter Johnson | Sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Edythe Gilfond (1943) and by Oscar de la Renta (2005) |
| 1943 | Salem Shore | Paul Nordoff | Sets by Arch Lauterer, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1944 | Appalachian Spring | Aaron Copland | Sets by Isamu Noguchi; added to the United States National Film Registry in 2013 along with three other Martha Graham dance films |
| 1944 | Imagined Wing | Darius Milhaud | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, costumes by Edythe Gilfond |
| 1944 | Hérodiade | Paul Hindemith | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1946 | Dark Meadow | Carlos Chávez | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, costumes by Edythe Gilfond, and lighting by Jean Rosenthal. |
| 1946 | Cave of the Heart | Samuel Barber | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, costumes by Edythe Gilfond, and lighting by Jean Rosenthal. |
| 1947 | Errand into the Maze | Gian Carlo Menotti | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, lighting by Jean Rosenthal |
| 1947 | Night Journey | William Schuman | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1948 | Diversion of Angels | Norman Dello Joio | Sets by Isamu Noguchi (eliminated after the first performance) |
| 1950 | Judith | William Schuman | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, lighting by Jean Rosenthal |
| 1951 | The Triumph of St. Joan | Norman Dello Joio | |
| 1952 | Canticle for Innocent Comedians | Thomas Ribbink | |
| 1954 | Ardent Song | Alan Hovhaness | |
| 1955 | Seraphic Dialogue | Norman Dello Joio | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1958 | Clytemnestra | Halim El-Dabh | Sets by Isamu Noguchi, costumes by Graham and Helen McGehee |
| 1958 | Embattled Garden | Carlos Surinach | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1959 | Episodes | Anton Webern | Commissioned by New York City Ballet |
| 1960 | Acrobats of God | Carlos Surinach | |
| 1960 | Alcestis | Vivian Fine | |
| 1961 | Visionary Recital | Robert Starer | Revised as Samson Agonistes in 1962 |
| 1961 | One More Gaudy Night | Halim El-Dabh | |
| 1962 | Phaedra | Robert Starer | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1962 | A Look at Lightning | Halim El-Dabh | |
| 1962 | Secular Games | Robert Starer | |
| 1962 | Legend of Judith "Moving force", Haaretz | Mordecai Seter | |
| 1963 | Circe | Alan Hovhaness | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1965 | The Witch of Endor | William Schuman | |
| 1967 | Cortege of Eagles | Eugene Lester | Sets by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1968 | A Time of Snow | Norman Dello Joio | |
| 1968 | Plain of Prayer | Eugene Lester | |
| 1968 | The Lady of the House of Sleep | Robert Starer | |
| 1969 | The Archaic Hours | Eugene Lester | |
| 1973 | Mendicants of Evening | David G. Walker | Revised as Chronique in 1974 |
| 1973 | Myth of a Voyage | Alan Hovhaness | |
| 1974 | Holy Jungle | Robert Starer | |
| 1974 | Jacob's Dream | Mordecai Seter | |
| 1975 | Lucifer | Halim El-Dabh | |
| 1975 | Adorations | Mateo Albéniz Domenico Cimarosa John Dowland Girolamo Frescobaldi | |
| 1975 | Point of Crossing | Mordecai Seter | |
| 1975 | The Scarlet Letter | Hunter Johnson | |
| 1977 | O Thou Desire Who Art About to Sing | Meyer Kupferman | |
| 1977 | Shadows | Gian Carlo Menotti | |
| 1978 | The Owl and the Pussycat | Carlos Surinach | |
| 1978 | Ecuatorial | Edgard Varèse | |
| 1978 | Flute of Pan | Traditional music. | |
| 1978 or 1979 | Frescoes | Samuel Barber | |
| 1979 | Episodes | Anton Webern | reconstructed and reworked |
| 1980 | Judith | Edgard Varèse | |
| 1981 | Acts of Light | Carl Nielsen | Costumes by Halston |
| 1982 | Dances of the Golden Hall | Andrzej Panufnik | |
| 1982 | Andromanche's Lament | Samuel Barber | |
| 1983 | Phaedra's Dream | George Crumb | |
| 1984 | The Rite of Spring | Igor Stravinsky | |
| 1985 | Song | folk music | played on the pan flute by Gheorghe Zamfir with Marcel Cellier on the organ |
| 1986 | Temptations of the Moon | Béla Bartók | |
| 1986 | Tangled Night | Klaus Egge | |
| 1987 | Perséphone | Igor Stravinsky | Costumes by Halston |
| 1988 | Night Chant | R. Carlos Nakai | Set by Isamu Noguchi |
| 1989 | American Document (new version) | John Corigliano | Guest Artist M.Baryshinikov |
| 1990 | Maple Leaf Rag | Scott Joplin | costumes by Calvin Klein, lighting by David Finley |
| 1991 | The Eyes of the Goddess (unfinished) | Carlos Surinach | Sets by Marisol Escobar |
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