MARTHA GRAHAMWCED GRADE 12 REVISION 2012

BORN

MAY 11TH 1894(117 years ago)

DIED 1991 AT THE AGE OF 96

EARLY YEARS AND INFLUENCES• Graham was born in Pennsylvania

USA - America• Her father had a huge influence on her life

• He was a doctor of mentally disturbed patients and was interested in the body’s ability to express emotions

Once when Graham was a little girl, her father caught her telling a lie.

When she asked him how he knew she was lying, he told her that

her movements gave her away

• Graham’s father was very interested in body movement and what it said about a person

• She inherited this interest

• Graham used this idea later

as a dancer & choreographer

After the show, she begged her parents to allow her to study dance

The Graham family then moved to California

They were very religious Presbyterians and

would not permit her to dance

When Graham was 17,

she saw Ruth St. Denis perform in Los Angeles

• Graham was not put off by her parents lack of support and stayed determined to continue with dance as a career

• She enrolled at an arts- orientated junior college

• After her father died, she enrolled at the Denishawn School of Dancing founded by Ruth St. Denis and her husband, Ted Shawn

who then become

a major influence in her new career

At the age of 22,

she could now finally begin

to receive her basic dance

training

and

begin her dance

career…

Although she was a late beginner, her determination and intelligence caught the attention of Ted Shawn

Graham spent more than eight years at Denishawn

• In 1915 Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn were pioneers of the modern dance movement

• They wanted to free dance from the confines of classical ballet and world dance

• This idea was to be continued by Graham who combined extreme emotions with

technical movements

Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn were just about the

coolest married couple back in their day

They met when he saw her perform and he was blown away!!!

He auditioned to be her male partner on her next tour

They then fell in love

•

THIS ALL HAD A MAJOR IMPACT ON THE YOUNG MARTHA GRAHAM

Graham often danced as Ted Shawn’s partner

Remember these were early days

and this was all very new

to the dance world

Graham soon got tired of Denishawn’s decorative style and felt that

“… the old forms could not give voice to the more fully awakened man”

Graham left the Denishawn School

and moved to New York

She began to work in experimental

dance techniques

that would change the ideas of movement in dance forever

After 10 years of dancing for others,

Graham performed her first solo concert and created

The ‘Martha Graham School of Modern Dance’

as well as forming her own Dance Company in 1926

EARLY YEARS OF GRAHAM’S DANCE COMPANY

• Her all-female dance company was unpaid

• Her performances had no sets/ designs

• She designed & sewed all the costumes herself

• Over time she gained more and more financial support and respect from the public

• Her company then began to included male dancers

Graham married Eric Hawkins A dancer in her company with whom she was deeply in love with

The marriage was short lived and caused her great suffering

Her career can be summed up as a search for self-expression

which developed into the creation of the

Martha Graham Dance Company which still continues today

and has given birth to many famous dancers &

choreographers

Martha Graham constantly

pushed boundaries

She danced violently but performed

everything with the utmost amount of style

• Graham worked with many great talents over the years

• She trained many of the most important dancers in contemporary dance

• However, just as she created her own style, many of her students went on to offer their own interpretations of contemporary dance

• Throughout her career, Graham continually fine-tuned her style and training method

• As new generations of dancers attended her school, she was presented with new abilities

• Her choreography and training method changed in order to fit these new dancers

• Graham’s 180 dance works reflected the rapidly changing world

• Her style always involved the concept of

contraction and release

CONTRACTION AND RELEASE

Humans often express themselves without words …

• When you are waiting for a late bus, how do you stand?

• When you are about to give a speech in front of the entire school, how do hold yourself?

• If you made a goal in a soccer game, how would you react?

Martha Graham was fascinated by answers to questions like these

and how the body moves

She noticed that breathing plays an important role in helping the body express

emotion

Graham believed the body never relaxes, but instead

is constantly giving off energy

How do you breathe? Here are some images of contraction and release in other moments of life

THE MARTHA GRAHAM STYLE• Her style is composed of strong, angular movements

• Contraction and release

• Controlled falling to the floor/ use of gravity

• Percussive movements, floor work, leaps, and jumps

• A Graham dancer is a combination of an athlete and an actor

• In order to prepare for a performance, each dancer has to study their character

• A dancer also has to be in very good physical condition to perform Graham’s difficult movements

• Graham’s performances almost always told a story

• Some of her works were based on Greek myths or on actual events

• Others explored emotions such as grief or love

CAREER AS A CHOREOGRAPHER• Graham has been said to be the one that brought dance

into the twentieth century

• She evolved the meaning of dance into something more abstract and creative

• She revolutionised the dance world and created what is known today as contemporary dance

• Now, dancers all over the world study and perform contemporary dance

• Choreographers and professional dancers look to her for inspiration

• The Martha Graham Dance Company is the oldest dance company in America and continues to perform today

“I wanted to begin not with characters or

ideas, but with movements . . .

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.”

Martha Graham

INFLUENCES IN GRAHAM’S CAREERTwo men would be very close collaborators

throughout her life

• Isamu Noguchi: created beautiful set designs with three-dimensional objects that would replace flat backdrops

• Together Graham and Noguchi revolutionised set design through this inclusion of sculpture

• Louis Horst, a close friend, was a strong influence on her music and choreographic choices throughout her career

Martha Graham in

‘Cave of the Heart’

Stage set designed by Isamu Noguchi

1946A current version of the same work

Martha Graham and May O'Donnell

set by Isamu Noguchi

‘Hériodiade’1944

“Judith” - stage set designed by Isamu Noguchi

for Martha Graham, 1950

Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins and the Martha Graham Dance Company in Martha Graham's "Appalachian Spring"

set design by Isamu Noguchi

GRAHAM WOULD ALSO HAVE A MAJOR EFFECT

ON COSTUME DESIGN IN YEARS TO COME–

SHE CREATED ALL HER OWN DESIGNS

IMPORTANT INFLUENCES IN GRAHAMS CHOREOGRAPHIC CAREER

• Graham believed in showing her visions and work through emotional/ real movements

• She believed these physical expressions gave meaning to spiritual and emotional understandings - ignored before in other dance forms

• This was influenced by leading writers of psychology of the day - e.g. Jung

Graham’s Dark and Sad Years

• When Graham finally retired from performing, she went through a stage of depression that threatened her life after an attempted suicide

• In the years of her absence from the stage she went into a deep depression

• This was filled with images of young dancers performing all of the roles she had choreographed for herself and her former husband

• Graham's health decreased as she was abusing alcohol to calm her pain

"It wasn't until years after I had relinquished a ballet that I could bear to watch someone else dance it.

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 death"

Fortunately she recovered

to choreograph

for 18 more years until her death

AWARDS‘Time’ magazine listed her as "Dancer of the Century" 1998 -

one of the most important figures in the 20th century

President Ford and Martha Graham

admire the

MEDAL OF FREEDOM

presented to her at the White House in 1976

This medal is America’s

highest civilian award

• It is nearly impossible to track the influence of Martha Graham

• She is universally understood to be the twentieth century’s most important dancer, and the mother of contemporary dance

• Her contributions to the art of stage design and dance production are countless

• Her continued experimentation and attention to human emotion are one of the greatest individual achievements in dance history

Graham’s lines and

movements were not classical

but were as real as a heartbreak

Real …

which is why years after her

deaththis woman

is still worthy of mention and

studying

Martha Graham said…

"I have spent all my life

with dance and being a

dancer

It's permitting life

to use you in a veryintense

way

Graham continued choreographing until

her death in New York City

in 1991

She died of pneumonia at the age of 96

She was cremated Her ashes

were spread over the

mountains

in Northern New Mexico

Graham continued to dance professionally into her 60’s and choreographed until her death

She left behind a legacy of inspiration not only for dancers

but for artists of all kinds