Martha Graham "The Mother of American Modern Dance"

Martha Graham 

11 May 1894 - 1 April 1991

Martha Graham was an American Modern dancer and choreographer. Her technique, called  the graham technique reshaped dance and is still taught to this day. She danced and taught for over seventy years.

She was born in Allegheny and moved to California when she was 10 because of her sister's asthma and the weather was better there. Her father used to treat people with nervous disorders. 

After seeing Ruth St Denis perform in LA, she decided she was  interested in studying dance but her parents didn't approve so she enrolled in Cumnock College.

Martha’s father died in 1914, which then pushed her to pursue her dream of studying dance. After she graduated from Cumpock, she enrolled in Denishawn Studio - a dancing school - operated by Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn. After this, she became a dance teacher and experimented with different styles. For Martha Graham, ballet's concern for grace and flow was left behind as she experimented through trembling movements and falls that she could express emotional and spiritual themes ignored by other dance forms. She aimed to evoke strong emotions through the repetition of violently disjunctive movements 

Her father was very interested in diagnosis through physical movements. The belief that the body was able to express its inner senses was pivotal in Graham's desire to dance. 

Starting with her students, she formed her dance school “Martha's Graham School for Contemporary Dance” in New York. Fundamental pieces of the graham technique a contractions, reveases, apposition, shift of weight and spirals

Graham's choreography is culled with vibrant powerful characters• You are to be daring

and you're only in competition with the person you can become. It's important to move big and make big mistakes, don't be afraid and don't watch other people:

Focus on breathing and now it makes your body feel, give into gravity and quite literally, dance like no one's watching. Focus on your pelvis and how it moves in contraction. 

Ballet is all about defying gravity whereas contemporary is all about giving into gravity.

Frontier (1935)

Frontier is a tribute to the vision and independence of the pioneer woman. It portrays her strength and tenderness, her determination and jubilation at overcoming the hazards of a new land, as well as her love of the land.

Lamentation (1930)

Lamentation was a piece performed by Graham in 1930 about grief. She explained that the long tube of lyrca was " to indicate the tradgedy that obsesses the body, the ability to stretch inside your own skin to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief, which is honourable and universal ".

Heretic (1929)

Martha Graham describes this piece, "To many people, I was a heretic. A heretic is a woman who

is put upon in all she does, a woman who is frightened. Everyplace she goes she goes against

the heavy beat and footsteps of those she opposes."