Martha Graham

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Martha Graham
May 11, 1894 April 1, 1991
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Martha Graham

• Martha Graham is recognized as a primal artistic
  force of the 20th Century alongside Picasso,
  Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
  In 1998 TIME Magazine named Martha Graham as the
  "Dancer of the Century," and People Magazine
  named her among the female "Icons of the
  Century." As a choreographer, she was as prolific
  as she was complex. She created 181 ballets and a
  dance technique that has been compared to ballet
  in its scope and magnitude. Many of the great
  modern and ballet choreographers have studied the
  Martha Graham Technique or have been members of
  her company.

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Graham- The Beginning

• Martha Graham was born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania
  in 1894.
• Her father George Graham was what in the
  Victorian era was known as an "alienist," an
  early form of Psychiatry.

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Martha Graham The Beginning

• The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Dr.
  Graham was a third generation American of Irish
  descent and her mother Jane Beers was a tenth
  generation descendant of Puritan Miles Standish.
  They were a proper family in the upper echelon of
  Pittsburgh society. While the social status in
  which she was raised contributed to her access to
  education and refinement, it would also work
  against Martha as the eldest daughter of a
  prominent physician would be strongly discouraged
  from considering any career in the performing
  arts.
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham

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Martha Graham- The Beginning

• Graham moved with her family to California when
  she was 14. Three years later, she attended a Los
  Angeles recital by the dance pioneer Ruth St.
  Denis. It was the first dance performance of any
  kind that Graham had ever seen, and it
  overwhelmed her in 1916 she joined Denishawn,
  the school and performing troupe that St. Denis
  co-led with her husband Ted Shawn. At 22,
  dangerously late for an aspiring dancer, Graham
  had found her destiny.

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Martha Graham- A New Way

• After seven years with Denishawn, Graham moved to
  New York City and struck out on her own, giving
  solo recitals and eventually launching her own
  company, in 1929.

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Martha Graham- A New Way

• In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company
  and school, living and working out of a tiny
  Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In
  developing her technique, Martha Graham
  experimented endlessly with basic human movement,
  beginning with the most elemental movements of
  contraction and release.

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Martha Graham- A New Way

• Using these principles as the foundation for her
  technique, she built a vocabulary of movement
  that would "increase the emotional activity of
  the dancer's body." Martha Graham's dancing and
  choreography exposed the depths of human emotion
  through movements that were sharp, angular,
  jagged, and direct.

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Martha Graham- A New Way

• The dance world was forever altered by Martha
  Graham's vision, which has been and continues to
  be a source of inspiration for generations of
  dance and theatre artists.

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Modern Vs. Contemporary

• Graham actually despised the term "modern dance"
  and preferred "contemporary dance." She thought
  the concept of what was "modern" was constantly
  changing and was thus inexact as a definition.

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Graham Choreography

• Martha Graham's ballets were inspired by a wide
  variety of sources, including modern painting,
  the American frontier, religious ceremonies of
  Native Americans, and Greek mythology. Many of
  her most important roles portray great women of
  history and mythology Clytemnestra, Jocasta,
  Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc, and Emily Dickinson.

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Graham Choreography

• In 1936, Graham made her defining work,
  "Chronicle", which signaled the beginning of a
  new era in contemporary dance. The dance brought
  serious issues to the stage for the general
  public in a dramatic manner. Influenced by the
  Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression and the
  Spanish Civil War, it focused on depression and
  isolation, reflected in the dark nature of both
  the set and costumes.

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Graham Choreography

• Martha Graham choreographed 181 works in her
  lifetime. Among these are such well known ballets
  as Heretic (1929), Lamentation (1930), Primitive
  Mysteries (1931), Frontier (1935), Deep Song
  (1937), El Penitente (1940), Letter to the World
  (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1943), Appalachian
  Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Errand
  into the Maze (1947), Night Journey (1947),
  Diversion of Angels (1948), Seraphic Dialogue
  (1955), Clytemnestra (1958), Embattled Garden
  (1958), Phaedra (1962), Frescoes (1978), Acts of
  Light (1981), The Rite of Spring (1984),
  Temptations of the Moon (1986), and Maple Leaf
  Rag (1990).

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Grahams Collaborations

• As an artist, Martha Graham conceived each new
  work in its entirety dance, costumes, and
  music. During her 70 years of creating dances,
  Martha Graham collaborated with such artists as
  sculptor Isamu Noguchi actor and director John
  Houseman fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan
  and Calvin Klein and renowned composers
  including Aaron Copland, Louis Horst (her
  mentor), Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos
  Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo
  Menotti.

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Grahams Students

• Her company was the training ground for many
  future modern choreographers, including Merce
  Cunningham, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. She
  created roles for classical ballet stars such as
  Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail
  Baryshnikov, welcoming them as guests into her
  company

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Contract and Release

• The contraction serves as the foundation of
  Graham technique. Graham developed the idea from
  observing the physical manifestation of grief in
  the body. It is one of the fundamental
  characteristics of her choreography and as such,
  most of Graham exercises were created with the
  contraction in mind. While Graham was the creator
  of the contraction, the move has become a staple
  of modern dance and has been used, altered, and
  redefined by many subsequent choreographers.

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Contract and Release

• A Graham contraction begins from the pelvis and
  travels up the spine, lengthening the space
  between each vertebra, up to the neck and head,
  which remain in line with the spine. Each
  contraction is accompanied with an exhalation of
  breath. To the inexperienced eye, a contraction
  may look like a sucking in of the gut or a
  hunching over of the torso. However, any change
  in the rib cage, shoulders, or neck, is a result
  of the building of the contraction from the
  pelvis and occurs automatically when it has been
  performed correctly.

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Contract and Release

• The release is the counter to the contraction. It
  occurs on the inhalation of breath. A release
  also begins from the pelvis and travels up the
  spine to return the torso to a neutral, straight
  position.

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Contract and Release

• A second type of release, called the high
  release occurs when a dancer opens their
  breastbone to the sky and seems to rest their
  torso on an invisible shelf beneath the shoulder
  blades. The rib cage maintains alignment over the
  hips with no break in the lower back. The head
  remains in line with the spine.

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Spiral

• A twisting of the torso around the spine, or
  spiral, is another fundamental part of Graham
  technique. Like the contraction, the spiral
  begins in the pelvis and travels up the spine to
  the neck and head, although the head always stays
  in line with the spine. The changes in the torso
  take places as a cause and effect process as the
  spiral moves up from the pelvis. The lower spine
  must move before the shoulders which move before
  the neck, etc. As the dancer releases from the
  spiral and returns to a neutral position, the
  movement, again, originates from the pelvis and
  travels upwards.Read more http//contemporaryda
  nce.suite101.com/article.cfm/martha_graham_dance_t
  echniqueixzz0WITIo8TW

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Graham Technique Class

• All Graham classes spend approximately 30-45
  minutes performing exercises on the floor at the
  beginning of class. Much like a ballet technique
  class, there is a progression of specific
  exercises, each which can be altered to fit the
  ability level of the class. The floor work is
  especially focused on the use of the
  contraction/release and the spiral.

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Graham Technique Class

• The middle of class is spent on center work
  with a set of standard exercises to warm up the
  legs and feet and to get the dancers moving. The
  rest of the class is spent applying the concepts
  learned in the beginning of class to combinations
  that move across the floor. Choreography from
  Graham dances may sometimes be used during this
  portion of the class to demonstrate the
  intersection of technique with repertory

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Graham Company

• Founded in 1926 the Martha Graham Dance Company
  is the oldest and most celebrated contemporary
  dance company in America.

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Graham Company

• Since its inception, the Martha Graham Dance
  Company has received international acclaim from
  audiences in over 50 countries throughout North
  and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the
  Middle East.

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The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance

• Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance is
  located in New York City and is the headquarter
  to the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance
  and the Martha Graham Dance Company.

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Sources

• http//marthagraham.org/company/
• http//www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/g
  raham.html
• http//contemporarydance.suite101.com/article.cfm/
  martha_graham_dance_technique
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham_Center_
  of_Contemporary_Dance