HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARTHA GRAHAM
(May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991)

Time Magazine called her "Dancer of the Century" in 1998; People Magazine claimed she was one of the female "Icons of the Century": and The New York Times acknowledged her as a"brilliant dancer."

Martha Graham was American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on the modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.

Martha Graham danced and choreographed for over seventy years.  She was the first dancer ever to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and she also received the National Medal of the Arts in 1985.  In the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed , she said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasan't. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless, it is inevitable."

Her Presbyterian family never encouraged dancing but when she was 14 she watched Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. In the mid 1910s, she began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn until 1923.
                The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established in 1926 and she debuted with her first independent concert of 18 short solos and trios she had choreographed.

She 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.

Throughout her career she resisted requests for her dances to be recorded because she believed that live performances should only exist on stage as they are experienced. But in later years her thinking on the matter evolved and others convinced her to let them recreate some of what was lost.

An entire movement was created by her that revolutionized the dance world and created what is today known as modern dance. Choreographers and professional dancers look to her for inspiration.  According to Agnes de Mille:  "The greatest thing she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine.  I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. Martha said very quietly, "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

In 1976 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford (First Lady Betty Ford had danced with Graham in her youth). Ford declared her a "national treasure".




References: Wikipedia, Martha Graham, Martha, a biography by Agnes de Mille, Blood Memory, autobiography of Martha Graham in which she lists her final performance in Cortege of Eagles at the age of 76.www.facebook.com/SPTheatricalhistory