Martha Graham

See also: Graham

Martha Graham was born the May 11th 1894 in the Comté from Allegheny (Pennsylvania, the United States) and died on April 1st 1991 (New York). Dancer and American choreographer, they is recognized like one of largest innovating of the modern Danse.

Martha Graham starts to be interested in the very young dance, after having seen dancing Ruth Saint Denis in the years 1910. It is not that at the 22 years age, in 1916, that it considers a professional path while entering to the Denishawn School. In 1925, it starts to off teach the dance with the Eastman School Music and Theater with Rochester, before founding its own school. In 1926, it founds its own company, The Martha Graham Dance Company .

Its single style of modern Danse is the reflection of the Modern art of its time. Its creations return it very quickly celebrates for the innovations which it brings to the modern Danse.

Important figure of the modern dance, one owes him a technique based on breathing, the contraction and the relaxation of the body, as well as many works like Lamentation (1930), Cave off the Heart (1946) and The Rite off Spring (1984). It measured 1 meter 60 but appeared often larger on scene thanks to costumes than it had the taste to choose.

In 1998, the American magazine Time indicated Martha Graham like the “dancer of the century” and one of the most important personalities of the 20th century.

Until a very advanced age, Martha Graham accompanied the members by his troop in their rounds through the United States and the rest of the world, to supervise their work. It was thus seen, in July 1987, to appear at the end of the representation, for a standing ovation , on the scene drawn up in the Main courtyard of the Palais of the Popes, at the time of a series of representations given within the framework of the Festival of Avignon.

Theory

Martha Graham engaged as for it on the way of a narrative choreographic language based on the contractions and the relaxations around the basin, center of all the impulses. Its work is very influenced by the Psychanalyse. She speaks much about female desire, in the way in which he is lived. There were only women in her company until in 1938 where Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins danced with her. She also questions the American identity, big spaces and revisits the Mythe S antiques.

The narrative diagram of its parts is rather traditional, as in Night journey where Jocaste dream of the drama of Oedipus. The corps de ballet incarnates the woman matriarcale by dances flamencas, it and the dancer engages in an erotic duet of bringing together, one feels in the corps de ballet an atmosphere of drama, of oppression. Setting in front of the rib cages as a sign of delivery.

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