How Martha Graham's 'Rite of Spring' imposed order on chaos

Watch Martha Graham perform 'Heretic'

The 1929 piece features Graham in white, expressively dancing on her own, flanked by 12 dancers in black who follow a more rigid choreography. Some critics have argued the piece was an allegory for Graham's rebellion against ballet's strict traditions.

How Martha Graham challenged ballet's rigidity

Ballet prized lightness, but Graham's choreography emphasized weight. This essay explores how her work broke from European influences to embrace American idioms, much as her American contemporaries in jazz and literature did.

Martha Graham on preparation and discipline

This clip from the 1957 documentary "A Dancer's World" features the dancer explaining why she's committed all of her energy to her art. "Spontaneity … is something arrived at over years and years of training," she says, "it is not a mere chance."

View a gallery of vintage photos of Martha Graham's performances

Graham's choreography was as visual as it was physical, complemented by the modernist set design of Isamu Noguchi. That's on display in this collection of artful photos from classic productions of shows like "Night Journey" and "Appalachian Spring."

Exploring Martha Graham's 'love of the body'

The innovative choreographer encouraged her dancers to tune into their bodies' natural movements. According to Dr. Kimerer L. LaMothe, author of "What the Body Knows," that kind of mindfulness made them better able to communicate a piece's symbolic meaning.

Martha Graham's philosophy of creativity

The influential choreographer and dancer once said that creative people will never be satisfied with their work. Instead, "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

How the Martha Graham Company experiments with technology

The dance company was the first major group to livestream rehearsals and has collaborated with Google on a version of Graham's "Lamentation" that superimposes past performances on the present-day dancer.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

The story behind Copland and Graham's 'Appalachian Spring'

The ballet, which premiered in 1944, was conceived by the composer and choreographer through the mail, with the two corresponding about how the music might fit the dancing. Later, designer Isamu Noguchi would design a set that whittled the western Pennsylvanian pioneer town down to its core elements.

Unpacking 'Night Journey,' Martha Graham's take on a Greek myth

The dance piece was inspired by the story of Oedipus, as well as by more contemporary psychoanalytic theories from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This JSTOR article explores how Graham's show merged those texts with her singular approach to movement to explore gender and identity.

‘Rhythm’ 0 was a performance piece that exposed human nature

By inviting the audience to do as they please without repercussions, Abramović showed the public both the beauty and hideousness of human nature. Playful interactions eventually turned into assault, and the performance left her with scars she still wears decades later.

Exploring Oskar Schlemmer's 'Triadic Ballet,' a Bauhaus-inspired performance piece

The "symphonic dance of threeness" brought together Bauhaus' varied artistic interests and offered a fable in which collectivism wins. This history and timeline of the work details its origins as well as its near-destruction at the hands of the Nazis, who considered it profane.

Boston police told Stravinsky he had ‘tampered’ with ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’

There’s no national standard for arranging the national anthem, though it can be a different story on the state level. Conductor Igor Stravinsky learned that in 1944, when the Boston police commissioner visited his dressing room to warn him about a Massachusetts law against “tampering” with national property.

One classical musician arranged a work specifically for yoga

In the middle of a yoga class, Ellen Fishman noticed that sitting closer to a speaker allowed her to feel the music in her body, enhancing her overall experience. She arranged music for a string ensemble with a yoga session in mind. The group, StringFlo, now performs the work live in yoga classes.

Arthur Russell's avant-garde music spanned many genres

The classically trained cellist moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s, mingling with the hippie movement and the Beat Generation. After arriving in New York in 1973, he began exploring the nascent punk and disco scenes, infusing them with his classical training; however, his eclectic style might've been part of the reason he never broke through during his lifetime. That variety, though, is what draws so many devoted listeners to his work today.

Why Robyn's 'Dancing on My Own' became an anthem

Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," was a low-key hit when it was released in 2010, but it's become an anthem in the time since then, influencing artists like Lorde and Charli xcx and inspiring an iconic scene on HBO's "Girls." This article breaks down why that is, studying the song's beats per minute, which match humans' typical walking pace, and the queer experience reflected in its lyrics.

Music may give some of us the chills and goose bumps—perhaps because it shocks us

The science is still unsettled about why music can trigger a chill down your spine, formally known as frisson, but one theory is that anything surprising to the nervous system—including sudden beat drops or unexpected harmonies—stimulates a type of alarm response that gives rise to this feeling.

Billie Holiday ensured performances of 'Strange Fruit' had the right context

In the song's earliest performances at Cafe Society in New York, one of a few truly integrated nightclubs in the society, the song was always performed last, after bar service had stopped, with a single spotlight on Holiday so audiences would pay close attention to the lyrics. Later, Holiday included her ability to perform the song in her concert contracts, allowing her to sing it even if venue owners were nervous about its protest message.

The widespread violence of World War I birthed surrealism

Following World War I, artists used unconventional forms of expression to make sense of the death and destruction they'd witnessed for years. Life as they knew it had ended, and movements like Surrealism, founded by André Breton, rebelled against tradition.

A step-by-step guide to attending the opera

Opera attendance has dwindled in recent decades, leaving some modern operagoers unaware of the traditional etiquette for attending. This how-to video instructs attendees on appreciating the music, dressing appropriately, and choosing the best seats.

Music of the French Revolution

Listen to the melodies of the French Revolution of 1789 in this resource by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Reconstructed by three professionals, these 10 songs from France's revolutionary era offer a glimpse into the haunting realities of such change. The songs were recreated based on musical scores included in fashion magazines from the era. French and English lyrics are provided for each song.

Hitchcock's 'Psycho' broke many established rules in film

Hitchcock flouted convention for “Psycho,” which many consider his masterwork. Hitchcock broke new ground with the 1960 film, with risqué imagery and shocking twists. The film was the most commercially successful in his long and illustrious career.

Artist Raphael was one of the three supreme masters of the High Renaissance

Raphael was a prolific and versatile painter who worked as a sponge, adopting the practices of other great painters while making them his own. Thanks to his creating many iterations of the same scene, we can analyze how his mastery evolved over his career.

Watch Daft Punk's legendary set

Coachella's main stage is known for attention-grabbing performances, but one of the festival's most momentous was on the smaller Sahara stage. That's where Daft Punk brought their huge LED pyramids and played an inventive mix of their past hits—resulting in a reimagining of dance music's approach to live performances.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Chaos gardening involves scattering seeds without any planning

The trend is intended to produce colorful, dense gardens by mixing various seeds. While encouraging experimentation and lower stakes, the success of these gardens depends on choosing plants with similar needs and incorporating native, nectar-rich flowers.

The science of springtime, 101

Dive into the basics on springtime including the astronomy that brings it about, natural signs of spring's arrival, and some of the cultural approaches to the season.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.