Who is Martha Graham?
You will like Martha Graham. You will love her because she is the fulcrum of dance and life; the bright point at which the two collide, merge and become indistinguishable. She held up a mirror, giving us, as humans and Americans, a true and irrefutable view.. of ourselves.
Her teaching was almost an afterthought of the demonstration of her own life, lived without apology.
A dance student one aked her if she should become a dancer, Martha answered ''If you have to ask, then you should not.'' We either are a thing or we are not.
Quotations of Martha Graham
''I am dancer. I believe we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or lively practicing living, the principles are the same...''
She was an innovator and groundbreaker, and in the course of her life she came to embody her medium
Born in 1894 (Allegheny, PA.), moved with her family to California when she was 14 and attended at the age 17 a Los Angeles recital by Ruth. St. Denis.
1916 she joined the Denishawn school
In 1922 she left after seven years Denishawn, and moved to New York, struck out own her own, giving solo recitals and eventually launched her company in 1926.
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Quotions about Martha Graham
''Keep in mind, dance up to this point, was about swans, dancing flowers, princesses an royalty - Martha Graham wanted to communicate about us.'' - Janet Eilber
Development of her technique.
When she left Denishawn she was forbidden to use any of their choreographies or teaching methods, without paying Ruth St. Denis an royalty fee. Born out of necessity and a purely primal drive to create, she began to develop her own vocabulary of modern dance.
When Europian classical ballet came to America, Martha wanted none of this. Ballet came out of the royal courts of Europe and Russia. There were dances commissioned by kings and emperors for entertainment, and to reinforce the sitting order. For Martha Graham dance became a medium for personal expression, and so much more.
Martha Graham cam decisively into her own in the 1940s, turning out in rapid succession a decade-long series of potent dance dramas. She continued dancing until the age of 74, and choreographed well into her 90's. By the time of her death in 1991, Martha Graham had become the driving force behind Modern Dance.
A few key principles of her technique
- The body has a natural way of expressing itself and ''The body never lies.''
- The way we move reveals what we are really thinking and feeling.
- Graham took this natural body language and from it, created a theatrical dance language.
- Emotion is revealed by the breath - like when we laugh or cry - and all Graham movement (like all emotion) emanates from the center or your body.
- The key to movements are the contraction and release - which are based on the mechanics of breathing.
- The physical and the emotional are inextricably connected. They are two halves of a whole. To truly communicate, a movement must have both.
- Graham's technique is a system of communication - it's not simply impressive technical feats of interesting designs in space.
''Technically, the movement can stand by itself. But you must be able to add something dramatically - the inner dialog.'' - Tere Capucilli
''It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. First comes the study and practice of the craft.. Then comes the cultivation of the bean from which whatever you have to say comes.''
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In developing her technique, Martha Graham experimented with basic human movement, the most elemental movements of living. These principles is the foundation for her technique, she build a vocabulary on movement that would ''increase the emotional activity of the dancer's body.'' Graham's dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp, angular, percussive, and direct.
The contraction and release was in her method the extension of the breath - of breathing itself.
Contraction: a sob, laugh or sigh, this is really just a big exhale, where the body fold in on itself - a contraction.
Release: The body fills, expands, and project energy. If a contraction is like recalling of a snake, the reals is when the snake strikes.
''The spine is your body's tree of life. And trough it, a dancer communicates; his body says what words cannot.''
Collaboration with Isamu Noguchi
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Martha Graham's philosophy demanded that all of the theatrical elects were integrated into one theme or message. She collaborated with a young sculptor who said he was fascinated by the challenge ''to wed the total void of theater space to form and action.'' Thus began the half-century-long collaboration between herself and sculptor, architect an designer Isamu Noguchi.
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''I realized that he had the astringency that everything was stripped to essentials rather than being decorative. Everything he does means something. Its not abstract except if you think of orange juice as the abstraction of an orange.'' - Martha Graham
Noguchi believed that art should be part of life, that it should have usefulness, an essential value - whether practical-. Noguchi saw the stage as an arena in which abstract forms could create the necessary theatrical illusions. The sets could change and actually create space.