Dancer and choreographer, born in Allegheny (now Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, USA. Prevented by her strict father from attending dance school when a girl, after he died she enrolled in the Denishawn School of Dancing in Los Angeles (1916). She then toured with their company, making her professional debut in 1920, appeared with the Greenwich Village Follies (19235), a dance group in New York City, and taught at the Eastman School of the Theatre in Rochester, NY.
For some years she had been working out her own ideas about choreography, and she gave her first solo recital in 1926 in New York City. From then on, working at first with pick-up groups, and by the 1930s with a fairly regular company, she began to develop a radically new approach to dance: spare and angular in certain movements yet using exotic costumes far removed from classical ballet; improvised through tapping inner feelings and psychology, yet controlled down to the last facial expression and finger movement. The music for many of the early pieces was composed by Louis Horst, her long-time collaborator (192648), and later she commissioned new works from major composers such as Aaron Copland and William Schuman, and also commissioned sets from artists such as Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Calder. In the 1930s she choreographed several works drawing on Mexican Indian themes, such as Primitive Canticles, and then turned to works inspired by the lives of historical women, such as Joan of Arc (Seraphic Dialogue) and Emily Dickinson (Letter to the World). From 1946 she produced a number of works derived from Greek mythology, most powerfully the evening-long Clytemnestra (1958).
By the 1950s she was internationally recognized as the leading American choreographer of interpretive dancing, yet she always considered herself a dancer first, and usually cast herself as the central figure in her works until her final performance in 1969. She continued as a teacher and choreographer almost to her death. Demanding and autocratic, she nevertheless inspired a devoted following, among both her students and public, and received continual financial grants and personal honours. Many of the most prominent dancers and choreographers of the 20th-c began in her company, including her one time husband, Erick Hawkins.
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, is known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. After seeing Ruth St. Denis perform in the 1910s, she took an interest in dance. In 1925, Graham became a dance instructor at the Eastman School of Music and Theater in Rochester, New York. Graham founded her own company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, in 1926.
In the 1930s, Graham taught at Bennington College and New York University where Martha Hill directed the dance departments. In 1951, Graham was a founding member of the dance division of the Juilliard School, also directed by Martha Hill.
In 1936, Graham made her defining work, "Chronicle", which signalled the beginning of a new era in contemporary dance. The dance brought serious issues to the stage for the general public in a dramatic manner.
Graham's dancing life gradually came to a rest starting in the 1950s. In 1927, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established. When Rothschild moved to Israel and established the Batsheva Dance Company in 1965, Graham became the company's first director, groomed its first generation of dancers, and made works for it.
In 1948, Graham married Erick Hawkins(a principal dancer in her company).
Her largest-scale work, the evening-length Clytemnestra, was created in 1958 and features a score by the Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh.
Her final dance performances came in the late 1960s, and from then on she focused on choreography. Some critics say that even though there is little physical record of her dancing, it is more memorable than her choreography. Graham continued working until her death from pneumonia in 1991 at the age of 96.
She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 by President Gerald Ford (the First Lady Betty Ford had danced with Graham in her youth).
Quotes
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others."
User Comments Add a comment…