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Martha Graham

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991)[1] was an American modern dancer and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.[2]

Martha Graham

(1894-05-11)May 11, 1894

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.

April 1, 1991(1991-04-01) (aged 96)

New York City, U.S.

Dance and choreography

Modern dance

​
(m. 1948⁠–⁠1954)​

Kennedy Center Honors (1979)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1976)
National Medal of Arts (1985)

Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. 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, in the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed: "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."[3]


Founded in 1926 (the same year as Graham's professional dance company), the Martha Graham School is the oldest school of dance in the United States. First located in a small studio within Carnegie Hall, the school currently has two different studios in New York City.[4]

Early life[edit]

Graham was born in Allegheny City, later to become part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894. Her father, George Graham, practiced as what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry.[5] The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Her father was a third-generation American of Irish descent. Graham's mother, Jane Beers, was a second-generation American of Irish, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry, and who claimed to be a tenth-generation descendant[6] of Myles Standish.[7][8] While her parents provided a comfortable environment in her youth, it was not one that encouraged dancing.[9]


The Graham family moved to Santa Barbara, California, when Martha was fourteen years old.[10] In 1911, she attended the first dance performance of her life, watching Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles.[11] In the mid-1910s, Martha Graham began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn,[12] at which she would stay until 1923. In 1922, Graham performed one of Shawn's Egyptian dances with Lillian Powell in a short silent film by Hugo Riesenfeld that attempted to synchronize a dance routine on film with a live orchestra and an onscreen conductor.[13]

Death[edit]

Graham choreographed until her death in New York City from pneumonia in 1991, aged 96.[35] Just before she became sick with pneumonia, she finished the final draft of her autobiography, Blood Memory, which was published posthumously in the fall of 1991.[36] She was cremated, and her ashes were spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico.

American Dance Festival

Christine Dakin

Concert dance

List of dancers

List of dance companies

Postmodern dance

Terese Capucilli

Women in dance

Bryant Pratt, Paula (1994). The Importance of Martha Graham. Detroit: Gale.  9781560060567.

ISBN

(1991). Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-55643-7.

de Mille, Agnes

Franko, Mark (2012). Martha Graham in Love and War: The Life in the Work.

(1998). Martha Graham – A Dancer's Life. New York City: Clarion Books. ISBN 978-0-395-74655-4.

Freedman, Russell

Graham, Martha (1991). . New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-26503-4.

Blood Memory: An Autobiography

Hanley, E. (2004). The Role of Dance in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

Mansfield Soares, Janet (1992). . Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1226-0.

Louis Horst – Musician in a Dancer's World

Newman, Gerald (1998). . Danbury, Connecticut: Franklin Watts. ISBN 9780531114421.

Martha Graham: Founder of Modern Dance

Au, Susan (2002). Ballet and Modern Dance (second ed.).

Bird, Dorothy; Greenberg, Joyce (2002). (reprint ed.). Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0-8229-5791-1.

Bird's Eye View: Dancing With Martha Graham and on Broadway

(1992). The Body Is a Clear Place and Other Statements on Dance. Hightstown, New Jersey: Princeton Book Co. ISBN 978-0-87127-166-2.

Hawkins, Erick

Helpern, Alice. Martha, 1998

Part Real – Part Dream, Dancing With Martha Graham, (2011) Concord ePress, Concord, Massachusetts

Hodes, Stuart

Horosko, Marian (2002). Martha Graham The Evolution of Her Dance Theory and Training. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.  978-0-8130-2473-8.

ISBN

(2024). Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374709143.

Jowitt, Deborah

Layman, Richard; Bondi, Victor (1995). . Gale Research International. ISBN 978-0-8103-5726-6.

American Decades 1940–1949

(1980). Martha Graham – Sixteen Dances in Photographs. Morgan & Morgan. ISBN 978-0-87100-176-4.

Morgan, Barbara

(1987). Private Domain – An Autobiography. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-51683-7.

Taylor, Paul

Tracy, Robert (1997). Goddess – Martha Graham's Dancers Remember. Pompton Plains, New Jersey: Limelight Editions.  978-0-87910-086-5.

ISBN

Martha Graham at the Library of Congress

Music Division, Library of Congress

Martha Graham collection, 1896–2003

Music Division, Library of Congress

Maxine Glorsky papers relating to Martha Graham, 1940–2019

 – Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance

MarthaGraham.org

at IMDb

Martha Graham

at the Internet Broadway Database

Martha Graham

of the Martha Graham Dance Company performing Rite of Spring in 2013 at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Archival footage