GRAHAM, MARTHA 1895-1991

Modern dance innovator

Picasso of Dance

Martha Graham was to modern dance what Pablo Picasso was to modern art: the single greatest innovator of this century. Like Picasso, hers was a sweeping talent defined by a variety of styles and interests. In Graham's work Grand Kabuki, Greek theater, German expressionism, psychoanalysis, Native American ritual, Puritanism, and American history and poetry combined in explosive fashion. The 1940s were her heyday. She produced dances of transcendent splendor and worked with some of the world's most famous composers. During the decade, her experimentation, earlier acclaimed in New York dance circles, became widely known; as modern dance was popularized, her name became synonymous with the form.

Background

Graham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a wealthy family who traced their lineage back to Miles Standish. In 1909 the family relocated to Santa Barbara, California. Graham maintained she was drawn to dance from an early age. At age sixteen she attended a dance performance by Ruth St. Denis of the Denishawn dance troupe and quickly joined the group. One of the first American dance companies and schools, Denishawn specialized in that which was novel and exotic to American sensibilities: Greek pageants, Japanese sword dances, sexy Spanish flamencos. While touring with Denishawn, Graham studied the expressionistic dances of Isadora Duncan and Mary Wigman. Following their innovations, Ted Shawn, choreographer of Denishawn, wrote Xochitl, based on a Mexican legend, for Graham. It brought Graham to the attention of New York producers, and she left Denishawn for a short stint in the Greenwich Village Follies. Dissatisfied with commercial dance, Graham taught for a time at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she began the choreographic experiments that made her famous.

New York Diva

As a choreographer Graham initially returned to simple and primitive movements—walking, running, and skipping—and built short "mood" dances from these fundamentals. Such dances, composed in collaboration with pianist Louis Horst, established her reputation in New York dance circles. More-ambitious pieces featuring the dynamic music of modern composers, such as Lamentation (1930), Dithyrambic (1931), and Primitive Mysteries (1931), formalized the Graham style: highly theatrical expressions, angular stances, explosive, stylized gestures in the limbs, spare and abstract stage settings. Graham sought to integrate motifs and innovations in modern art and psychology into dance. Compelled by Sigmund Freud's and Carl Jung's analysis of the unconscious, she attempted to fuse abstracted gestures to psychological states, and her work was noted for its tension and unsettling qualities. Graham received twenty-three curtain calls after the debut of Primitive Mysteries. As dance companies toured behind her work, Graham's fame rapidly spread from New York.

Triumph

Beginning in 1938, with American Document, Graham crystallized the innovations begun earlier and reached the height of her powers with a series of dynamic, highly ambitious dances. American Document was nothing less than a condensed history of the United States, expressed via the conflict between the individual and society. Probing her own Puritan ancestry, American Document featured the juxtaposition of hellfire sermons by Jonathan Edwards and highly erotic dance. Graham returned to these themes with Letter to the World (1940), based upon the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. Letterto the World reflected the tension between poet and community enshrined in Dickinson's verse: "This is my letter to the world / that never wrote to me." In 1944 Graham returned to her exploration of the American character with a triumph: Appalachian Spring. Featuring music by Aaron Copland (who won a Pulitzer Prize for the score in 1945) and sets by Isamu Noguchi, Appalachian Spring was an evocative celebration of pioneer life, a commemoration of the American spirit. Graham turned to less nationalistic, more intensely private themes with her next dances: Herodiade (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Night Journey (1947), and Death and Entrances (1943; revived, 1947). Herodiade, originally a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé set to music by composer Paul Hindemith, became in Graham's hands a ceremony of eternal feminine patience. Cave of the Heart, featuring music by Samuel Barber, and the stage again set by Noguchi, was a venture into Greek mythology and was as ambitious as classical tragedy. Under the influence of Jung, Graham wrote the dance to express her belief in a collective "motor memory" in the body, a primordial genius of the senses she sought to evoke. A noted psychoanalytically influenced dance was Night Journey, Graham's retelling of the Oedipus legend. Death and Entrances was perhaps the most ambitious of the psychological cycle, an attempt to probe, simultaneously, the inner life of the famous Brontë sisters and that of the dancers on stage. Graham used small portable objects to signify the icons of memory, both collective and individual; the dance itself was filled with tense body gestures, indicative of tortured repressions. At its most ambitious, Death and Entrances aimed less at expression than at therapy. Graham had become not only dance's Picasso, but also its Freud.

Honors

Graham completed her probing of the psyche through mythology with Clytemnestra in 1958. A retelling of Aeschylus's meditation on remembrance, revenge, and regret, the evening-long dance was a highly acclaimed pageant of color, motion, and violence. Graham, still starring in her own dances, was sixty-four, and she began to put her more famous dances on film, including Appalachian Spring (1959) and Night Journey (1960). Her fame was such that in the next twenty years she received numerous honors, including the Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor. Nonetheless, her over-whelming dominance in modern dance inevitably called forth challengers to her position, especially former students intent on overthrowing her highly structured, overly psychological style. Former associates such as Merce Cunningham took modern dance into a spontaneous, decidedly non-Graham direction in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1969 Graham danced her last role, but she continued to choreograph new works, including two in 1975 starring Rudolph Nureyev, Lucifer and The Scarlet Letter. Despite the eclipse of her style, Graham continued through the Martha Graham Dance Company to choreograph new works, including the Maple Leaf Rag, with music by Scott Joplin and costumes by Calvin Klein, in 1990. She died on 1 April 1991.

Sources:

Martha Graham, Blood Memory (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1991);

Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (New York: Random House, 1991).

Martha Graham

Born: May 11, 1894
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died: April 1, 1991
New York, New York
American dancer, choreographer, and teacher

Martha Graham, American dancer, choreographer (one who creates and arranges dance performances), and teacher, is considered one of the major figures of modern dance.

Early life

Martha Graham was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 11, 1894, one of George and Jane Beers Graham's three daughters. Her father was a doctor who treated people with nervous disorders. When she was ten years old, and after one of her sisters developed asthma (a breathing problem), the family moved to California because the weather was better. Graham became interested in studying dance after she saw Ruth St. Denis (c. 1880–1968) perform in Los Angeles, California, in 1914. Her parents did not approve of her becoming a dancer, so she enrolled in the Cumnock School, a junior college.

Graham's father died in 1914, after which she felt free to pursue her dream. After graduating from Cumnock, she enrolled in the Denishawn Studio, a dancing school operated by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn (1891–1972). Graham had never had a dance lesson up to that point, but the small, quiet, shy, but hardworking girl impressed Shawn and toured with his troupe in a production of Xochitl, based on an Indian legend. In 1923 Graham left this company to do two years of solo dancing for the Greenwich Village Follies.

Becomes dance instructor

In 1925 Graham became dance instructor at the Eastman School of Music and Theater in Rochester, New York. She began experimenting with modern dance forms. "I wanted to begin," she said, "not with characters or ideas but with movement." She rejected the traditional steps of classical ballet; she wanted the dancing body to be related to natural motion and to the music. She experimented with what the body could do based on its own structure, developing what was known as "percussive movements."

Graham's first dances were performed on a bare stage with only costumes and lights. The dancers' faces were tight, their hands stiff, and their costumes short. Later she added more scenery and different costumes for effect. The music was modern and usually composed just for the dance. Isadora Duncan (1878–1927), the first modern dancer, had used music to inspire her works, but Graham used music to make her works more dramatic.

Graham's process of creation usually began with what she called a "certain stirring." Inspiration might come from a classical myth, an event in American history, a story from the Bible, historical figures, current social problems, writings, poems, or paintings. She would then develop a dramatic situation or character to express the feeling or idea. She then found music, or asked for new music from her longtime collaborator (cocreator), Louis Horst, to maintain the inspiration while she created movements to express it. The purpose of Graham's dance was to bring about an increased awareness of life and a greater understanding of the nature of man. Dance was to her an "inner emotional experience."

Graham introduced a number of other new features to modern dance. She established the use of moving scenery, used props as symbols, and combined speech with dancing. She was also the first to integrate her group, using African Americans and Asians in her regular company. She replaced the traditional ballet folk dress with either a straight, dark, long shirt or the common leotard (a tight, one-piece garment worn by dancers). Using the stage, the floor, and the props as part of the dance itself, she produced a whole new language of dance. In 1926 Graham introduced this new language in her first solo recital in New York City. Her first large group piece, Vision of the Apocalypse, was performed in 1929. Her most important early work was a piece called Heretic.

Popular success

After Graham's performance as the lead role in composer Igor Stravinsky's (1882–1971) American premiere of Rite of Spring (1930), Graham toured the United States for four years (1931–35) in the production Electra. During this trip she became interested in the American Indians of the Southwest. One of the first products of this interest was Primitive Mysteries. Her increasing interest in the American past was seen in her dance based on the lives of American pioneer women, Frontier (1935), and in her famous Appalachian Spring (1944). In 1932 she became the first dancer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship (an award to promote artistic research and creation), and she danced for President Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945) at the White House in 1937.

Graham founded the Dance Repertory Theater in New York City in 1930. She also helped establish the Bennington School of Arts at Bennington College in Vermont, where her teaching made Bennington the center of experimental dance in America. With the later establishment of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York City, she taught a large number of modern dancers who went on to spread her ideas and style to the rest of the world.

Later years

Graham danced her last role in 1969, but she continued to choreograph. In 1976 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A year before her death, in 1990, she choreographed Maple Leaf Rag, a show that featured music by Scott Joplin (1868–1917) and costumes by Calvin Klein (1942–). Her name is still linked with modern dance in many people's minds. Martha Graham died on April 1, 1991, known as one of the twentieth century's revolutionary artists.

For More Information

DeMille, Agnes. Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. New York: Random House, 1991.

Freedman, Russell. Martha Graham: A Dancer's Life. New York: Clarion Books, 1998.

Graham, Martha. Blood Memory. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Martha Graham

Martha Graham (1894-1991), American dancer, choreographer, and teacher, was the world's leading exponent of modern dance.

Martha Graham was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, in May 1894. Her family moved to California when she was 10. Graham became interested in dance when she saw Ruth St. Denis perform in 1914. Overcoming parental restraint, Graham enrolled in the Denishawn Studio. This small, quiet, shy, thin, but perceptive and hardworking girl impressed the leader of the studio, Ted Shawn, and toured with his troupe in a production of Xochitl, based on an Aztec Indian legend. In 1923 she left this company to do 2 years of solo dancing for the Greenwich Village Follies.

In 1925 Graham became dance instructor at the Eastman School of Music and Theater in Rochester, N.Y. She began experimenting with modern dance forms. "I wanted to begin," she said, "not with characters or ideas but with movement…. I wanted significant movement. I did not want it to be beautiful or fluid. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge." She rejected the traditional steps and techniques of classical ballet, for she wanted the dancing body to be related to natural motion and to the music. She experimented with what the body could do based on its own structure, developing what was known as "percussive movements."

Graham's first dances were abstract and angular, almost "cubist" in execution. "Like the modern painters," she said, "we have stripped our medium of decorative unessentials." The dances were performed on a bare stage with only costumes and lights. The dancers' faces were taut, their hands stiff, and their costumes scanty. Later she added scenery and costumes for effect. The music was contemporary and usually composed especially for the dance. Whereas Isadora Duncan, the first modern dancer, had used music to inspire her works, Graham used music to help dramatize hers.

Martha Graham's process of creation usually began with what she called a "certain stirring." Inspiration might come from classical mythology, the American past, biblical stories, historical figures, primitive rituals, contemporary social problems, Zen Buddhism, the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the poems of Emily Dickinson the flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, or the puberty rites of Native Americans. After the initial inspiration she developed a dramatic situation or character to embody the emotion or idea. She then found music, or commissioned new music from her longtime collaborator Louis Horst, to sustain the inspiration while she created movements to express it.

The purpose of Graham's dance was to evoke a heightened awareness of life, to develop psychological insights about the nature of man. Dance was to her an "inner emotional experience." Her themes were often overtly psychological. Characters in her dance plays were divided into two complementary parts, each representing an aspect of the psyche. Her stage sets were filled with huge phallic symbols, as in Phaedra, a rite of sexual obsession.

Martha Graham introduced a number of other innovations to modern dance. She established the use of mobile scenery, symbolic props, and speech with dancing and was the first to integrate her group racially, using blacks and Asians in her regular company. She replaced the traditional ballet tunic or folk dress with either a straight, dark, long shirt or the common leotard. Using the stage, the floor, and props as part of the dance itself, in all she produced a whole new language of dance.

In 1926 Graham introduced this new language of dance in her first solo recital in New York. Her first large group piece, Vision of the Apocalypse, was performed in 1929. The most important early work was a revolutionary piece called Heretic.

Graham toured the United States for 4 years (1931-1935) in the production Electra. During this trip she became interested in the American Indians of the Southwest. One of the first products of this interest was Primitive Mysteries. Her increasing interest in the American past was seen in her dance on the American pioneer women, Frontier (1935), and culminated in her famous Appalachian Spring (1944), in which she recreated in dance what composer Aaron Copland had done in his music. Among her other accomplishments during the 1930s was her performance of the principal role in Igor Stravinsky's American premiere of Rite of Spring (1930). She was the first dancer to receive a Guggenheim fellowship (1932), and she danced for President Franklin Roosevelt at the White House in 1937.

Graham founded the Dance Repertory Theater in New York in 1930. She helped establish the Bennington School of Arts at Bennington College in Vermont, where her teaching made Bennington the mecca for avantgarde dance in America. With the later establishment of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York, she taught a large number of modern dancers who have spread her ideas, techniques, and style to the rest of the world.

Graham danced her last role in 1969, but she continued to choreograph. In 1976 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A year before her death, in 1990, she choreographed Maple Leaf Rag, a show that featured music by Scott Joplin and costumes by Calvin Klein. Today, her name is synonymous with modern dance. She died April 1, 1991, known as one of the 20th century's revolutionary artists.

Further Reading

One biography is Agnes DeMille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991). A biographical study is LeRoy Leatherman, Martha Graham: Portrait of the Lady as an Artist (1966). Merle Armitage, ed., Martha Graham (1966), is an anthology of articles discussing Miss Graham's contributions and significance to modern dance. See also Barbara Morgan, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs (1941). □

Graham, Martha (1894–1991), dancer, choreographer, founder of the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Marthe Graham School of Dance in New York City.During an extraordinarily long career, Graham was one of America's most honored cultural figures, her name synonymous with modern dance. A visionary, she developed a new and wholly unique dance technique and vocabulary of steps and movements. Her theory of movement derived from the primary human activity, breathing, and the body's visible contraction and release when breathing is exaggerated by strong emotions. Her choreography, which eschews the gravity‐defying lightness of classical ballet, is filled with tension, power, and strength. Graham's nearly two hundred works included highly charged retellings of Greek myths such as Cave of the Heart (1946), Errand into the Maze (1947), and Clytemnestra (1958); theatrical interpretations of ceremonial rites (Lamentation [1930], El Penitente [1940]); episodes from America's cultural landscape (Frontier [1935], Appalachian Spring [1944]); and dances with a literary or biographical context (Letter to the World [1940], Deaths and Entrances [1943]). A self‐described storyteller, Graham in many of her works created a new kind of theater fusing words and music, decor and movement.

Graham collaborated with such composers as Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland, but her most celebrated and long‐lasting collaboration was with the sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988). For works such as Appalachian Spring, Cave of the Heart, and Clytemnestra, Noguchi designed innovative sets and props, including three‐dimensional sculptural forms that the dancers might move around or through, carry, manipulate, and even wear. Graham was also a noted teacher, and many of her students and members of her company went on to form their own troupes, including Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp.

Bibliography

Agnes de Mille , Martha: The Life and Works of Martha Graham, 1991.
Martha Graham , Blood Memory, 1991.

Trudy Garfunkel

Martha Graham 1894–1991, American dancer, choreographer, and teacher, b. Pittsburgh. Her family moved from Allegheny, Pa., to Santa Barbara, Calif., when she was 14. After 1916, Graham attended the Denishawn School, Los Angeles; in 1920 she made her debut in Ted Shawn's Xochitl, which was created for her. She left the Denishawn company in 1923 to dance in musical revues and to make her independent debut (1926). Graham first appeared with her own group of dancers in 1929, began her tours after 1939, and became, according to many critics, the seminal figure in modern dance . Her choreography, which requires great discipline and flexibility to perform, is highly individual, stark, and angular. Her dances became more explosive and less abstract in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as she achieved her mature style.

Graham's dances often draw upon historical and mythological subjects. After World War II, she created works based increasingly on Freudian and Jungian themes and centered on the female figure. Her works include Primitive Mysteries (1931), Letter to the World (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1943), Appalachian Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Seraphic Dialogue (1955), Phaedra (1962), and Archaic Hours (1969), created the year she retired from dancing. Because so many of her students themselves became choreographers and leaders of companies, her influence on modern dance is especially widespread. Her own troupe, the oldest dance company in the United States, faced problems a decade after her death. Internecine struggles caused the closure (2000–2002) of the Martha Graham Dance Center, but a legal decision in late 2002 allowed the company to regroup, and they began to perform her dances again in early 2003.

Bibliography: See her Notebooks (1973) and her autobiography, Blood Memory (1991); biography by D. McDonagh (1973); E. Stodelle, Deep Song (1984); A. de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991); R. Tracy, ed., Goddess: Martha Graham's Dancers Remember (1996).

Graham, Martha (b Allegheny, 1894; d NY, 1991). Amer. dancer, choreographer, teacher, and ballet company director. Began studying at Denishawn 1916, member of Denishawn Dancers till 1923. Founded own co. 1929. Developed own technique and became leading exponent of modern dance in USA, exerting enormous influence and producing many famous pupils. Comps. who wrote ballets for her co. incl. Hindemith, Hunter Johnson, Copland, Chávez, Barber, Menotti, Schuman, Dello Joio, Hovhaness, and Seter. Cond. ballet at Salzburg Fest. 1989.

Graham, Martha (1894–1991) US choreographer and dancer, a leading figure in modern dance. In the early 1920s, she began to break with traditional ballet, employing highly individual forms based on natural movement.

Graham, Martha. See NOGUCHI.