The Modern Dance Movement & Martha Graham

In the 1920s, when Graham began her career as a professional dancer, the classical ballet was the dominant artistic genre. As is the case with any classical form, the ballet was, and continues to be, a highly refined tradition that offers sublime expressions of grace and beauty. Over the 300 or so years of its development, however, it had become a somewhat formulaic medium of artistic expression. As a traditional art form, the acceptable repertoire of movement was well-established. Any innovations could be incorporated only when they were proven to be aesthetically compatible with the tradition.

The ballet evokes the aesthetics of weightlessness and flight. With graceful leaps, the dancer appears to transcend gravity and all things earthly. Although there are only five basic, relatively simple positions that form the basis for all balletic movement, they must be performed with grace and agility if the dancer is to convincingly create the illus

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o form a working partnership with Graham. They rented a studio and rehearsed relentlessly the new compositions that Graham had created. By April the material was ready to perform. There was very little money with which to stage a concert, however. GrahamÆs dancers revered her and would be delighted to work for expenses only, but the cost of renting a theater was prohibitively expensive. The producers of the Follies offered the 48th street theater at cost. While the required $1,000 may have been an easily recoupable amount for a production as successful as the Follies, it was an enormous amount of money for the budding dance company. Frances Steloff had never seen Graham dance but was incensed by the descriptions given by her friend Louis Horst. In a monumental and historic act of faith, she pawned her most valuable possession, a jade necklace, and turned the money over to Graham to rent the theater (De Mille, 1991, p. 82). On April 18, 1926 the show would go on. Graham and her three dancers, with Horst at the piano, presented 18 short pieces. Set to the music of such composers as Scriabin, Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, among others, the show was a mix of styles that progressed from those established at Denisha
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