Martha Graham's Journey To Dance

Martha Graham’s Journey with Dance Martha Graham once said, “great artists must reach beyond themselves, to the point of defying death” (Cass 255). She was known for her discipline and the way she encouraged her students to believe in their individual strengths. She was also a very determined and disciplined dancer in her years prior to teaching. She is “arguably the most legendary figure in U.S. modern dance” (Kowal 144). She continued to grow throughout her career as a very established dancer and teacher and is known by many today.
After being born in a Presbyterian family in Pennsylvania, she moved to California when she was only fourteen years old. Several years went by before she was exposed to her inspiration of dance at the age of seventeen when she went to a Ruth St. Denis concert. Instantly, she knew that dance was what she wanted to devote her life to, even if her parents did not approve. At twenty years old, she enrolled in a dance school named Denishawn Los Angeles School. Although her original inspiration, Ruth St. Denis, turned her down, Ted Shawn became fascinated with her intense movements. Within the first year of going to that
She opened the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. Her pieces were evolved from “the decade from anti-Fascism—becoming veiled as patriotism during WWII” (Kowal 145). Later on, she was introduced to Joseph Campbell who showed her Greek mythology. After studying it, she used it as a base of her work after World War II ended. Her dances often were “sensed rather than literally seen” (Kowal 146). Her movements and pieces were tense, harsh, and parallel instead of the usual turned out positions like in ballet. Because of this, “Graham’s approach influenced several generations of dance and theater artists, we are familiar with it by now” (Cass 261). In her day her movements were completely original, however, it is now the basis of our common modern