Biography
Martha Graham ranks among the pivotal figures who shaped modern dance through her commanding presence and inventive choreography. Her intense emotional drive, combined with intricate physical phrasing, transformed the form into a powerful vehicle for personal feeling. Actress Bette Davis, who took a few classes with her, recalled in a 1970s interview, "I worshiped her. She was all tension lightning. Her burning dedication gave her spare body the power of ten men." Although Pittsburgh was her birthplace, Graham spent her teenage years onward in Santa Barbara, California, where her family enjoyed financial security; her father belonged to the early researchers examining how personality traits endure over time. Following her graduation from the University of Cumnoch, where she had focused on theater and dance, she entered the Denishawn School and Dance Company in Los Angeles during 1916. Over the subsequent decade she performed across an eclectic spectrum of idioms, encompassing folk, experimental, classical, Occidental, Oriental, and Native American traditions, while forming enduring professional connections. She departed Denishawn around 1918 to accept a teaching post at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York, and to launch her solo career; by 1926 she had begun an extended artistic partnership with composer Louis Horst, Denishawn’s former music director, which lasted until his death in 1964. Her first New York recital took place on 18 April 1926 at the 48th Street Theater. Graham continued performing until 1970, when she appeared in Cortege of Eagles at age seventy-six, yet she sustained her choreographic output, creating roles for Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, right up to her passing in 1991. She founded the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in 1929 and, two years afterward, presented her initial ensemble work, Heretic. To support the enterprise she modeled furs and instructed pupils such as Bette Davis and Gregory Peck. In the mid-1930s she declined an offer to perform at the Olympic Games in Germany as a protest against Hitler and the Nazi regime. Her most fertile phase commenced in 1939 with the arrival of Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins in her troupe. Though she and Hawkins wed in 1948 after eight years together, the marriage dissolved within twelve months. Paul Taylor entered the company in 1955, and four years later Graham joined forces with George Balanchine on the ballet Episodes. Beginning in 1944 she collaborated regularly with Japanese-American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, whose inventive three-dimensional scenery significantly altered the visual language of modern dance. Late in life she received the Medal of Freedom in 1976 and the Legion d’Honneur from the French government in 1984. At the time of her death she was still at work on The Eye of the Goddess, commissioned for the Barcelona Olympics.
Singles
