Martha Graham

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Martha Graham was born in Allegheny City, later to become part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894. Her father, George Graham, was an 'alienist', a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were Presbyterians. Her father was a third-generation American of Irish descent. Graham's mother, Jane Beers, was a second-generation American of Irish, Scots-Irish, and English ancestry, and who claimed to be a tenth-generation descendant of Myles Standish. The Graham family moved to Santa Maria, 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. Graham left the Denishawn establishment in 1923 in order to become a featured dancer in the Greenwich Village Follies revue for two years. In 1925, Graham was employed at the Eastman School of Music where Rouben Mamoulian was head of the School of Drama. Together Mamoulian and Graham produced a short two-color film called The Flute of Krishna, featuring Eastman students. In 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established, in a small studio on the Upper East Side of New York City. On April 18 of the same year Graham debuted her first independent concert, consisting of 18 short solos and trios that she had choreographed. This performance took place at the 48th Street Theatre in Manhattan. She would later say of the concert: 'Everything I did was influenced by Denishawn.'

Reader's Guide

Martha Graham's significance lies in her creation of the Graham technique, which pioneered a principle known as 'contraction and release' in modern dance, derived from a stylized conception of breathing. She choreographed 181 compositions, including the full-length ballet Clytemnestra (premiered April 1, 1958), the only full-length work in her career. Her refusal to perform at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, despite a personal letter from Joseph Goebbels assuring her that her Jewish dancers would 'receive complete immunity', demonstrated her principled stance against the Nazi regime. She later created American Document in 1938 as a patriotic statement focusing on rights and injustices, representing the American people including its Native-American heritage and slavery. During the performance, excerpts from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation were read. Graham collaborated with many composers including Aaron Copland on Appalachian Spring, Louis Horst, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio, and Gian Carlo Menotti. She resisted requests for her dances to be recorded because she believed that stage performances should only be experienced live, though exceptions included collaborations with photographers Soichi Sunami in the 1920s, Imogen Cunningham in the 1930s, Barbara Morgan in the 1940s, and Philippe Halsman, whose photographs of Dark Meadow she considered the most complete photographic record of any of her dances. In 1952 Graham allowed taping of her meeting and cultural exchange with famed deaf-blind author, activist and lecturer Helen Keller. Her legacy includes founding the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel with former student Bethsabée de Rothschild, becoming the company's first director in 1965.

Did You Know?

• Martha Graham was the first dancer to perform at the White House, in 1938 when the Roosevelt family invited her.
• She refused an invitation to dance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, even after Joseph Goebbels personally assured her that her Jewish dancers would 'receive complete immunity'.
• Graham's only full-length ballet was Clytemnestra, which premiered on April 1, 1958, with a score by Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh.
• She choreographed 181 compositions over her career.
• In 1952, Graham allowed taping of her meeting with Helen Keller, who became a close friend and supporter after feeling the vibration of drums and movement at a rehearsal.