Martha Graham
| Martha Graham | |
|---|---|
Martha Graham by Yousuf Karsh (1948)
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| Born |
May 11, 1894 Alleghany (later Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, USA |
| Died | April 1, 1991 (aged 96) New York City, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Dance and choreography |
| Movement | Modern dance |
| Spouse(s) | Erick Hawkins (m. 1948–1954; div.) |
| Awards | Kennedy Center Honors (1979) Presidential Medal of Freedom (1976) National Medal of Arts (1985) |
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her influence on dance has been compared with the influence of Picasso on modern visual arts, the influence of Stravinsky on music, and the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on architecture.
She danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, in the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."
Her style, the Graham technique, fundamentally reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.
Graham was born in Allegheny City – later to become part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – in 1894. Her father George Graham practiced as what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Dr. Graham was a third-generation American of Irish descent. Her mother Jane Beers was a second-generation American of Irish, Scots-Irish, and English descent and was also a sixth-generation descendant of Myles Standish. While her parents provided a comfortable environment in her youth, it was not one that encouraged dancing.
The Graham family moved to Santa Barbara, California when Martha was fourteen years old. In 1911, she attended the first dance performance of her life, watching Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. In the mid-1910s, Martha Graham began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, at which she would stay until 1923. In 1922, Graham performed one of Shawn's Egyptian dances with Lillian Powell in a short silent film by Hugo Riesenfeld that attempted to synchronize a dance routine on film with a live orchestra and an onscreen conductor.
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