Martha Graham

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For the supercentenarian, see Martha Graham (supercentenarian).
See also: Category:Ballets by Martha Graham
Martha Graham, shown here with Bertram Ross
Martha Graham, shown here with Bertram Ross

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance, and is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Graham invented a new language of movement, and used it to reveal the passion, the rage and the ecstasy common to human experience. She danced and choreographed for over seventy years, and during that time was the first dancer ever to perform at The White House, the first dancer ever to travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and the first dancer ever to receive the highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. 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 "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."

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early years

Martha Graham was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, a small town that is now part of Pittsburgh. Her father, George Graham, was what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", or a doctor of nervous disorders, which was an early form of psychiatry. Martha's father was a third generation American of Scots-Irish descent, and her mother a tenth generation descendant of Myles Standish. As a doctor's family, the Graham's had a very high standard of living. For example, Dr. Graham often brought his wife strawberries in the winter at a time when they were difficult to acquire, and the Graham children were looked after by a live-in, Irish maid. Although, the social status in which Martha was raised contributed to her education and exposure to art, her family's status largely worked against her. As the eldest daughter of a prominent and strict, Presbyterian, doctor's family she would be strongly discouraged from considering any career in the performing arts.

Though her father was a man of science, he was also theatrical, often playing music and singing for his children. Martha was the eldest daughter in the family and a willful child. Once, when she got in trouble, her father asked her what she had done, and Martha lied to him. He read her body language, knew she was lying to him, and told her, perhaps apocryphally, "Movement never lies." This phrase would become a catechism she would remember and repeat throughout her life.

When Martha was fourteen years old, her family left the often cold and sooty Western Pennsylvania and moved to Santa Barbara, California as a remedy for Mary, Martha's sister, who had respiratory condition. The Graham family traveled cross-country by train. The seemingly infinite expanses of the Midwest made an impression on young Martha and would later inform such works as "Frontier". Santa Barbara, a wonderland of sunshine, oak trees and flowers, provided a strong stimulus to the Graham children, and was a significant contrast to Pennsylvania.


When Martha was sixteen years old, she saw a poster for a dance performance by Ruth St. Denis in Los Angeles, and she begged her father to take her. He complied. In her autobiography, Blood Memory, Graham recalled that her father bought her a bouquet of violets from a Japanese flower vendor outside of the theater. The performance was a revelation to her, and she decided on the spot that she would devote her life to dance. This did not go over well with her parents. The world of dance was not a proper pursuit for the daughter of an upstanding physician, let alone a Presbyterian. But something she saw on that stage in Los Angeles struck a chord within her. Graham was undaunted.

The prevailing style of dance in the early 20th century United States was an odd mixture of fledgling influences. Ballet had been well-established for centuries in Europe and translated fairly well for American audiences. But American dance also drew on a range of other styles and less formal influences including tribal dance, folk dances, burlesque, vaudeville, fantasy, acrobatics, and others. In contrast to high-brow European ballet, American dance was seen as more exotic, popular entertainment and not a form of high art.

Martha was in the right place at the right time. Californian Isadora Duncan had begun to redefine the concept of American dance, and had developed a platform upon which the art form could step beyond itself to something richer and more complex. Many of her dances had a naturalistic style, reminiscent of plants and flowers, with women dressed in gauzy, flowing dresses who moved about the stage barefoot. Duncan drew upon Greek Mythology for her influences. Simultaneously in California, another dance pioneer, Ruth St. Denis, worked along parallel lines, though she drew upon Asian, Egyptian, Mexican, and Native American influences. Both Duncan and St. Denis took the first steps in building the foundation of what Graham would do later. However vital their influences were to Graham's development, their progress in the field was incremental whereas Graham's would be revolutionary.

As soon as Martha had completed high school she was enrolled at the Cumnock School, a junior college where she could study liberal arts as well as the arts. In 1916, at the age of twenty, Martha enrolled with the Denishawn Dance School, studying under Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She was told that she was too old to begin to dance and that her body did not have the correct build for it. But she persevered. Martha proved to be a quick study with an impressive attention to detail and she worked incredibly hard to train her body to great precision.

[edit] 1920s

Graham toured with the Denishawn company for years before she moved to New York City in 1923 where lived in Greenwich Village, and had some success as a dancer on Broadway with the Greenwich Village Follies. Although, she was able to make an impressive sum of money, she also felt dissatisfied. At the age of thirty she accepted a teaching position at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she directed a newly formed dance department. She enjoyed having her own students to teach but she chafed against the limits and the bureaucracy of the school. She returned to New York City and began to teach dance out of a classroom in the back of Carnegie Hall. During this time she began to choreograph some of her earliest dances. On April 18, 1926, she gave the first performance of her own dance company. This was an important milestone for the young dancer but even she recognized her early performances as derivative of her work with Denishawn. As she continued to choreograph, her dances increasingly became her own, each one pushing herself and the art form further. With early dances such as "Revolt" (1927) and "Fragments" (1928) Graham found her voice. Her breakthrough was in 1929 with "Heretic", in which Graham appeared as a sole dancer dressed in white facing a wall of opposing dancers dressed in black while a simple, stark, Breton song was pounded out on the piano by Louis Horst. Horst would go on to become a life-long collaborator. 1930's "Lamentation" saw Graham as a solo dancer on a bare stage encased in a tube of stretch jersey fabric, rocking with pain and anguish.

Graham's early dances were not generally well-received by audiences who were not sure what they were seeing. The works were spare, powerful and modern, devoid of the dreaminess and glamour of the works of the previous decades. The dances were often based on strong, precise movement and pelvic contractions, and were charged with beauty and emotion. It was a stirring period of revolution for Graham in which she would begin to establish a new language of dance which was different from everything that preceded it and which would leave everything that came after it indelibly changed.

In the 1930s, Graham taught at Bennington College and New York University where Martha Hill directed the dance departments. In 1951, Graham became a founding member of the dance division of the Juilliard School, also directed by Martha Hill.

[edit] A new era in dance

Photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1948
Photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1948

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. Influenced by the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War, it focused on depression and isolation, reflected in the dark nature of both the set and costumes.

In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established. One of her 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, groomed its first generation of dancers, and created dances for the company.

In 1948, Graham married Erick Hawkins (a principal dancer in her company), who was younger than she was. Although Graham was not really interested in marriage as an institution, she felt that after eight years of living with Hawkins that marriage would be an appropriate step.

Her largest-scale work, the evening-length Clytemnestra, was created in 1958, and features a score by the Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh.

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's lighting designer Jean Rosenthal died of cancer in 1967.

Graham actually despised the term "modern dance" and preferred "contemporary dance." She thought the concept of what was "modern" was constantly changing and was thus inexact as a definition.

For a majority of her life Graham resisted the recording of her dances and would not allow them to be filmed or photographed. She believed the performances should exist only live on the stage and in no other form. At one point she even burned volumes of her diaries and notes to prevent them from being seen. There were a few notable exceptions. For example, she 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 Meadows" 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.

Graham started her career at an age that was considered late for a dancer. She was still dancing by the late 1960s, and turned increasingly to alcohol to soothe her own despair at her declining body. A younger generation who had heard of her legend went to her later performances and were confused about what all the fuss was about. Her works from this era included roles for herself which were more acted than danced and relied on the movement of the company dancing around her. Graham's love of dance was so profound that she refused to leave the stage despite critics who said she was past her prime. When the chorus of critics grew too loud, Graham finally left the stage.

In her biography Martha Agnes de Mille cites Graham's last performance as the evening of May 25, 1968 in a '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.

Those who had the privilege of seeing her perform in her prime have attested to her precision, form and mesmerizing brilliance as a dancer on stage. Though she is arguably one of the most important choreographers in the history of dance (and perhaps one of the most important artists of the 20th century) she always said that she preferred to be known and remembered as a dancer. In the years that followed her departure from the stage Graham sank into a deep depression fueled by views from the wings of young dancers performing many of the dances she had choreographed for herself and her former husband Erick Hawkins. Graham's health declined precipitously as she abused alcohol to numb her pain. In Blood Memory she wrote:

"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 stopped dancing] I had lost my will to live. I stayed home alone, ate very little, and drank too much and brooded. 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.

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).

Graham choreographed until her death from pneumonia in 1991 at the age of 96. She was cremated, and her ashes spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico.

In 1998, Time listed her as the "Dancer of the Century" and as one of the most important people of the 20th century.

[edit] Quotes

According to Agnes de Mille: "I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. ... 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 is] 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"'
from The Life and Work of Martha Graham [1]

"It was [Robert Edmond] Jones who used to say to his classes, Some of you are doomed to be artists. Martha picked up this phrase and used it many times thereafter. She also borrowed from him the phrase doom-eager, which he had borrowed from Ibsen."

from The Life and Work of Martha Graham [2]

[edit] Quotes from the public

  • "Dancer of the Century"
1998,TIME Magazine
  • Named as one of the Female "Icons of the Century"
1998, People Magazine
  • "Brilliant, young dancer"
1920, Unknown
  • "A National Treasure"
1976, President Gerald R. Ford

[edit] Choreography

  • 1926 - Chorale. Music by César Franck.
  • 1926 - Novelette. Music by Robert Schumann.
  • 1927 - Lugubre. Music by Alexander Scriabin.
  • 1927 - Revolt. Music by Arthur Honegger.
  • 1927 - Scherza. Music by Robert Schumann.
  • 1929 - Figure of a Saint. Music by George Frideric Handel.
  • 1929 - Resurrection. Music by Tibor Harsanyi.
  • 1929 - Adolescence. Music by Paul Hindemith.
  • 1929 - Danza. Music by Darius Milhaud.
  • 1929 - Moment Rustica. Music by Francis Poulenc.
  • 1929 - Heretic. Music from folklore (old Breton song--de Sivry).
  • 1930 - Lamentation. Music by Zoltán Kodály.
  • 1930 - Harlequinade. Music by Ernst Toch.
  • 1931 - Primitive Mysteries. Music by Louis Horst.
  • 1931 - Bacchanale. Music by Wallingford Riegger.
  • 1931 - Dolorosa. Music by Heitor Villa-Lobos.
  • 1935 - Praeludium. Music by Paul Nordoff.
  • 1935 - Course. Music by George Antheil.
  • 1936 - Steps in the Street (part of Chronicle).
  • 1936 - Chronicle. Music by Wallingford Riegger.
  • 1936 - Horizons. Music by Louis Horst.
  • 1936 - Salutation. Music by Lehman Engel.
  • 1937 - Deep Song. Music by Henry Cowell.
  • 1937 - Opening Dance. Music by Norman Lloyd.
  • 1937 - Immediate Tragedy. Music by Henry Cowell.
  • 1937 - American Lyric. Music by Alex North.
  • 1938 - American Document. Music by Ray Green.
  • 1939 - Columbiad. Music by Louis Horst.
  • 1939 - Every Soul is a Circus. Music by Paul Nordoff.
  • 1940 - El Penitente. Music by Louis Horst.
  • 1940 - Letter to the World. Music by Hunter Johnson.
  • 1941 - Punch and the Judy. Music by Robert McBride.
  • 1942 - Land Be Bright. Music by Arthur Kreutz.
  • 1943 - Deaths and Entrances. Music by Hunter Johnson.
  • 1943 - Salem Shore. Music by Paul Nordoff.
  • 1944 - Appalachian Spring. Music by Aaron Copland.
  • 1944 - Imagined Wing. Music by Darius Milhaud.
  • 1944 - Herodiade. Music by Paul Hindemith.
  • 1946 - Dark Meadow. Music by Carlos Chávez.
  • 1946 - Cave of the Heart. Music by Samuel Barber.
  • 1947 - Errand into the Maze. Music by Gian Carlo Menotti.
  • 1947 - Night Journey. Music by William Schuman.
  • 1948 - Diversion of Angels. Music by Norman Dello Joio.
  • 1950 - Judith. Music by William Schuman.
  • 1954 - Ardent Song. Music by Alan Hovhaness.
  • 1955 - Seraphic Dialogue. Music by Norman Dello Joio.
  • 1958 - Clytemnestra. Music by Halim El-Dabh.
  • 1958 - Embattled Garden. Music by Carlos Surinach.
  • 1959 - Episodes. Commissioned by New York City Ballet. Music by Anton Webern.
  • 1960 - Acrobats of God. Music by Carlos Surinach.
  • 1960 - Alcestis. Music by Vivian Fine.
  • 1961 - Visionary Recital (revised as Samson Agonistes in 1962). Music by Robert Starer.
  • 1961 - One More Gaudy Night. Music by Halim El-Dabh.
  • 1962 - Phaedra. Music by Robert Starer.
  • 1962 - A Look at Lightning. Music by Halim El-Dabh.
  • 1962 - Secular Games. Music by Robert Starer.
  • 1962 - Legend of Judith. Music by Mordecai Seter.
  • 1963 - Circe. Music by Alan Hovhaness.
  • 1965 - The Witch of Endor. Music by William Schuman.
  • 1967 - Cortege of Eagles. Music by Eugene Lester.
  • 1968 - A Time of Snow. Music by Norman Dello Joio.
  • 1968 - Plain of Prayer. Music by Eugene Lester.
  • 1968 - The Lady of the House of Sleep. Music by Robert Starer.
  • 1969 - The Archaic Hours. Music by Eugene Lester.
  • 1973 - Mendicants of Evening (revised as Chronique in 1974). Music by David Walker.
  • 1973 - Myth of a Voyage. Music by Alan Hovhaness.
  • 1974 - Holy Jungle. Music by Robert Starer.
  • 1974 - Jacob's Dream. Music by Mordecai Seter.
  • 1975 - Lucifer. Music by Halim El-Dabh.
  • 1975 - Adorations. Music by Mateo Albéniz, Domenico Cimarosa, John Dowland, and Girolamo Frescobaldi
  • 1975 - Point of Crossing. Music by Mordecai Seter.
  • 1975 - The Scarlet Letter. Music by Hunter Johnson.
  • 1977 - O Thou Desire Who Art About to Sing. Music by Meyer Kupferman.
  • 1977 - Shadows. Music by Gian Carlo Menotti.
  • 1978 - The Owl and the Pussycat. Music by Carlos Surinach.
  • 1978 - Ecuatorial. Music by Edgard Varèse.
  • 1978 - Flute of Pan. Traditional music.
  • 1978 or 1979 - Frescoes. Music by Samuel Barber.
  • 1979 - Episodes (reconstructed and reworked). Music by Anton Webern.
  • 1980 - Judith. Music by Edgard Varèse.
  • 1981 - Acts of Light. Music by Carl Nielsen.
  • 1982 - Dances of the Golden Hall. Music by Andrzej Panufnik.
  • 1982 - Andromanche's Lament. Music by Samuel Barber.
  • 1983 - Phaedra's Dream. Music by George Crumb.
  • 1984 - The Rite of Spring. Music by Igor Stravinsky.
  • 1985 - Song. Romanian folk music played on the pan flute by Gheorghe Zamfir with Marcel Cellier on the organ.
  • 1986 - Temptations of the Moon. Music by Béla Bartók.
  • 1986 - Tangled Night. Music by Klaus Egge.
  • 1987 - Persephone. Music by Igor Stravinsky.
  • 1988 - Night Chant. Music by R. Carlos Nakai.
  • 1990 - Maple Leaf Rag. Music by Scott Joplin.
  • 1991 - The Eyes of the Goddess (unfinished).

[edit] Early dancers

So many important dancers appeared in Graham's company that any listing involves editorial decisions that leave out deserving performers. Some lists made by scholars include:

"Graham's original girls were superb - Bessie Schonberg, Evelyn Sabin, Martha Hill, Gertrude Shurr, Anna Sokolow, Nelle Fisher, Dorothy Bird, Bonnie Bird, Sophie Maslow, May O'Donnell, Jane Dudley, Anita Alvarez, Pearl Lang - as were the second group - Yuriko, Ethel Butler, Ethel Winter, Jean Erdman, Patricia Birch, Nina Fonaroff, Matt Turney, Mary Hinkson. And the group of men - Erick Hawkins, and after him Merce Cunningham, David Campbell, John Butler, Robert Cohan, Stuart Hodes, Glen Tetley, Bertram Ross, Paul Taylor, Mark Ryder, William Carter." [3]

Graham also taught movement classes to actors including Woody Allen. Madonna was a pupil of Graham's as well in the 1980s.

[edit] Later former dancers

Elisa Monte, Takako Asakawa, Lyndon Branaugh, Christine Dakin, Peggy Lyman, Terese Capucilli, Maxine Sherman, Joyce Herring, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Dudley Williams, Tim Wengerd, Dan Wagoner, Donlin Foreman, Peter Sparling, Pascal Rioult, Kenneth Topping, Steve Rooks and Larry White.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ *de Mille, Agnes (1991). Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. NYC: Random House, p. 264. ISBN 0-394-55643-7.  de Mille precedes the Graham quotation with: "The greatest thing she 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, ... "
  2. ^ Ibid. (de Mille, 1991), p. 115
  3. ^ Ibid. (de Mille, 1991), p. 417

[edit] Further reading

  • Graham, Martha (1991). Blood Memory: An autobiography. NYC: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-26503-4. 
  • Freedman, Russell (1998). Martha Graham: A Dancer's Life. NYC: Clarion Books. ISBN 0-395-74655-8. 
  • Horosko, Marian (2002). Martha Graham: The Evolution of Her Dance Theory and Training. Gainesville, FL: Univ. Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-2473-0. 
  • Morgan, Barbara (1980). Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs. Morgan & Morgan. ISBN 0-87100-176-4. 
  • Tracy, Robert (1997). Goddess - Martha Graham's Dancers Remember. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-086-9. 
  • Bird, Dorothy; Greenberg, Joyce (2002 reprint). Bird's Eye View: Dancing With Martha Graham and on Broadway. Pittsburgh, PA: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-5791-4. 
  • Taylor, Paul (1987). Private Domain: An Autobiography. NYC: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-51683-4. 
  • Soares, Janet Mansfield (1992). Louis Horst: Musician in a Dancer's World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1226-3. 
  • Hawkins, Erick (1992). The Body Is a Clear Place and Other Statements on Dance. Hightstown, NJ: Princeton Book Co. ISBN 0-87127-166-4.