Martha Graham is a 20th-century American choreographer and dancer widely considered one of the most significant figures in modern dance and the first dancer to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Martha Graham Technique, her approach to choreography, is a breath-centered system that challenged many of ballet's rules. Today, she is sometimes called "the Picasso of dance."
The Martha Graham Dance Company was founded in 1926 and continues to operate today, making it America's oldest dance company. Through her school and company, Graham taught many dancers who would go on to form their own influential companies, including Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, and Alvin Ailey. She also worked with celebrities such as Madonna, Woody Allen, and Liza Minnelli.
Graham's work—including her 1944 collaboration with Aaron Copland, "Appalachian Spring," considered a masterpiece of American dance—continues to be performed today, over 35 years after her death.
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This history of the modern dancer's life uses archival photos and videos to illustrate how Graham's childhood, especially her upbringing by a psychiatrist and her early dance performance, set the stage for her career.
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.
The dancer and choreographer created a uniquely American form of ballet that brought together stories from the country's history, abstract expressionism, modern psychological ideas, and collaborations with other major artists.
It's considered the first codified modern dance technique and a foundational pillar of American dance. In this 1975 instructional film, its namesake explains how the Graham Technique works. "As you can see," she notes, "the body is capable of almost endless variations and combinations once it is trained."
This BBC explainer walks you through Martha Graham's famous approach to dance, offering you six moves you can work into your exercise regiment—or Graham-inspired routine.
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.
Graham choreographed and performed the piece about grief, which premiered in 1930. The dance is performed while seated, with Graham's character attempting to free herself from an all-encompassing purple jersey.
Graham turned down an invitation to perform at that year's Summer Games in Berlin, citing the Nazi regime's persecution of artists and implying that Jewish members of her company would not be welcome. "Chronicle," a work about the rise of fascism, debuted in New York the following December.
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.
This performance of the American ballet—choreographed by Martha Graham, with music composed by Aaron Copland—about a small community in 19th-century Pennsylvania, aired in 1959 on Pittsburgh's WQED.
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