Martha Grahams 117th Birthday - Article on Mother of Modern Dance

When i saw my home page of Google today i found dance posture's caricature sort of images , when checked i found today is Martha Grahams 117th Birthday, immediately i gogled to know about her and am sharing brief details about this legendary dancer choreographer who pioneered in modern dance.

 

• She invented a new language of movement, and used it to reveal the passion, the rage and the ecstasy common to human experience.
• In the course of a career spanning 70 years Graham choreographed some 180 pieces and during that time was the first dancer ever to perform at The White House, the first dancer ever to travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and the first dancer ever to receive the highest civilian award of the USA: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• Grahams dance style is based upon contraction and release of the body. She 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.

• Graham first appeared with her own group of dancers in 1929, began her tours after 1939, and became, according to many critics, the seminal figure in modern dance. Her choreography, which requires great discipline and flexibility to perform, is highly individual, stark, and angular.
• Martha Graham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1894. Her father George Graham was what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. The Grahams had a high standard of living. 
• Martha was strongly discouraged from considering any career in the performing arts.Graham started her career at an age that was considered late for a dancer. 

• In 1911, the ballet dancer Ruth St. Denis performed at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. inspired by St. Denis’ performance, Graham enrolled in an arts-oriented junior college, and later to the newly opened Denishawn School. 
• Denishawn was founded by Ruth St. Denis and her husband Ted Shawn to teach techniques of American and world dance. Over eight years, as both a student and an instructor, Graham made Denishawn her home. 
• In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established. One of her students was heiress Bethsabée de Rothschild with whom she became close friends. When Rothschild moved to Israel and established the Batsheva Dance Company in 1965, Graham became the company's first director.

•  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.
• Her dances became more explosive and less abstract in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as she achieved her mature style.
• Graham and her troupe  revolutionized set design through  inclusion of sculpture. “Frontier” her first troupe performance also included the sound design of Louis Horst, a close friend and strong influence throughout Graham’s life.

•  Her largest-scale work, the evening-length Clytemnestra, was created in 1958, and features a score by the Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh. She also collaborated with composers including Aaron Copland, such as on Appalachian Spring, Louis Horst, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo Menotti.
• Grahams mother died in Santa Barbara in 1958. Her oldest friend and musical collaborator Louis Horst died in 1964. She said of Horst "His sympathy and understanding, but primarily his faith, gave me a landscape to move in. Without it, I should certainly have been lost." Grahams lighting designer Jean Rosenthal died of cancer in 1967.
• For a majority of her life Graham resisted the recording of her dances and would not allow them to be filmed or photographed. She believed the performances should exist only live on the stage and in no other form. At one point she even burned volumes of her diaries and notes to prevent them from being seen.

• Her works include Primitive Mysteries (1931), Letter to the World (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1943), Appalachian Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Seraphic Dialogue (1955), Phaedra (1962), and Archaic Hours (1969).
• She was still dancing by the late 1960s, and turned increasingly to alcohol to soothe her own despair at her declining body.
• Graham's love of dance was so profound that she refused to leave the stage despite critics who said she was past her prime. When the chorus of critics grew too loud, Graham finally left the stage.
•  she is arguably one of the most important choreographers in the history of dance and perhaps one of the most important artists of the 20th century. she always said that she preferred to be known and remembered as a dancer.

• Graham sank into a deep depression fueled by views from the wings of young dancers performing many of the dances she had choreographed for herself and her former husband Erick Hawkins. 
• Graham's health declined precipitously as she abused alcohol to numb her pain.
• Graham  survived her hospital stay  In 1972 ,she quit drinking, returned to her studio, reorganized her company and went on to choreograph ten new ballets and many revivals. 
• She started teaching and Her last completed ballet was 1990's Maple Leaf Rag.
• Graham choreographed until her death in New York city from pneumonia in 1991 at the age of 96. 
• She was cremated, and her ashes were spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico.

• In 1998, Time listed her as the "Dancer of the Century" and as one of the most important people of the 20th century.
• Everyone from Woody Allen to Bette Davis cites her as a major influence. She is universally understood to be the twentieth century’s most important dancer, and the mother of modern dance.
• Her own troupe, the oldest dance company in the United States, faced problems a decade after her death. Internecine struggles caused the closure  of the Martha Graham Dance Center, but a legal decision in late 2002 allowed the company to regroup, and they began to perform her dances again in early 2003.