(PENITENTE, STEPS IN THE STREET, DIVERSION OF ANGELS, HERO...)
PENITENTE, STEPS IN THE STREET, DIVERSION OF ANGELS, HERODIADE, MAPLE LEAF RAG. LIVE 1991 PERFORMANCE FROM THE PALAIS GARNIER IN PARIS. NO DVD RELEASE. THIS IS THE ONLY VERSION EVER RELEASED ON VIDEO.
(Dance, like film, visualizes meaning. When two such mediu...)
Dance, like film, visualizes meaning. When two such mediums work together, strategic close-ups and mobile camerawork can bring out vibrant details that might otherwise be lost in the space between stage and audience. The three works by Martha Graham presented here, ACROBATS OF GOD (1970), CORTEGE OF EAGLES (1970) and SERAPHIC DIALOG (1970), retain their original dynamism and inner time and preserve on film the remarkable capacities of the incomparable Graham company. ACROBATS OF GOD, performed in 1969, is one of Miss Graham's handful of lyrical, light-hearted works. It is her fanfare for dance as an art, a celebration of the trials and tribulations, the discipline, denials, glories and delights of a dancer's world. CORTEGE OF EAGLES, composed n 1967, is set in ancient Troy at the time of its fall. Miss Graham portrays the bereaved queen, Hecuba, who, when faced with the inevitable consequences of the violent times, is driven to terrible violence herself. SERAPHIC DIALOG dates from 1955 and is a drama about Joan of Arc at the moment of her exaltation as she looks back at the three phases of her legend: maiden, warrior and martyr. It has been called one of Miss Graham's most beautiful works. Martha Graham set out to create her own kind of dance, but she also succeeded in achieving her own ideal of total theater.
(An insightful program dedicated to the legendary dancer, ...)
An insightful program dedicated to the legendary dancer, teacher and choreographer. Includes interviews with Agnes de Mille, Erick Hawkins, Ron Protas and many others. Many extracts shown of her work including Acts of Light, Errand into the Maze, Frontier, Appalachian Spring and more.
Martha Graham Three Contemporary Classics Errand into the Maze, Cave of the Heart, Acts of LIght
(Martha Graham Three Contemporary Classics Errand into the...)
Martha Graham Three Contemporary Classics Errand into the Maze, Cave of the Heart, Acts of LIght with Terese Capucilli , Larry White, George White jr., Takako Asakawa, Donlin Foreman, David HOchoy Thomas Grimm DENMARK 1984 85 minutes. Dance Company
Martha Graham Dance on Film (The Criterion Collection)
(One of the great artistic forces of the twentieth century...)
One of the great artistic forces of the twentieth century, performer, choreographer, and teacher Martha Graham influenced dance worldwide. Criterion presents a sampling of her stunning craft, all collaborations with television arts-programming pioneer Nathan Kroll. A Dancer's World (1957: 31 minutes), narrated by Graham herself, is a glimpse into her class work and methodology. Appalachian Spring (1959: 29 minutes) and Night Journey (1961: 33 minutes) are two complete Graham ballets, the first a celebration of the American pioneer spirit, scored by Aaron Copland, the second a powerfully physical rendering of the Oedipus myth. These are signature Graham works and tributes to the art of the human body.
Martha Graham Dance Company's Dance in America: Diversion of Angels / Lamentation / Frontier / Adorations / Cave of the Heart (Medea's Dance of Vengenance) / Appalachian Spring VHS
(Martha Graham as she reminisces on the history of her dan...)
Martha Graham as she reminisces on the history of her dance company and gives her interpretation of six dance creations as they are performed by her company.
Martha Graham: In Performance (Night Journey; Appalachian Spring; A Dancer's World)
(A true pioneer in the world of dance, Martha Graham becam...)
A true pioneer in the world of dance, Martha Graham became an American legend. She was a fearless explorer and a passionate artist, and she exemplified the American spirit in it's truest form. The program is in three parts. In a Dancer's World, Miss Graham and her company demonstrate the challenge and beauty of expression through movement. Developed during her European and Oriental tours, the format of the film - "exercises de style," as the French call it - takes us into her dressing room, the studio, and the spirit of dance itself. Directed and filmed by Peter Glushanok. (Filmed in 1957) Night Journey is Martha Graham's retelling of the legend of Oedipus, danced by Miss Graham as Jocasta, Paul Taylor as Tiresais, and Bertram Ross as Oedipus. This work has a score by William Schumann and set design by Isamu Noguchi, the internationally renowned sculptor and designer. "This film contains the essence of Graham and is among the two or three successful dance films ever made" (Clive Barnes). Directed by Alexander Hammid. (Filmed in 1961) Appalachian Spring is an American folk tale of a young pioneer, his bride, and a wandering revivalist preacher with a band of followers. The dance tells of the couple's wedding, the building of their home, the preacher's dire sermon, and the woman's gentle blessing as the couple begins a life in the wilderness. The Pulitzer Prize-winning score was composed by Aaron Copeland, and the sets were designed by Isamu Noguchi. Directed and photographed by Peter Glushanok. (Filmed in 1958)
Martha Graham - An American Original in Performance
(A true pioneer in the world of dance, Martha Graham becam...)
A true pioneer in the world of dance, Martha Graham became an American legend. The program is in three parts and highlights a fearless explorer and a passionate artist.
Martha Graham was an American dancer, choreographer, and teacher, was the world's leading exponent of modern dance.
Background
Martha Graham was born in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States on May 11, 1894; the daughter of George Graham and Jane Beers. Her father was a doctor who treated people with nervous disorders. Her family moved to California when she was 10.
Education
Her parents did not approve of her becoming a dancer, so she enrolled in the Cumnock School, a junior college. Graham's father died in 1914, after which she felt free to pursue her dream. After graduating from Cumnock, she enrolled in the Denishawn Studio, a dancing school operated by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn (1891–1972).
Graham toured with Ted Shawn's troupe in a production of Xochitl, based on an Aztec Indian legend. In 1923 she left this company to do 2 years of solo dancing for the Greenwich Village Follies.
In 1925 Graham became dance instructor at the Eastman School of Music and Theater in Rochester, New York. She began experimenting with modern dance forms. She rejected the traditional steps and techniques of classical ballet, for she wanted the dancing body to be related to natural motion and to the music. She experimented with what the body could do based on its own structure, developing what was known as "percussive movements."
Graham's first dances were abstract and angular, almost "cubist" in execution. The dances were performed on a bare stage with only costumes and lights. The dancers' faces were taut, their hands stiff, and their costumes scanty. Later she added scenery and costumes for effect. The music was contemporary and usually composed especially for the dance. Whereas Isadora Duncan, the first modern dancer, had used music to inspire her works, Graham used music to help dramatize hers.
Martha Graham's process of creation usually began with what she called a "certain stirring." Inspiration might come from classical mythology, the American past, biblical stories, historical figures, primitive rituals, contemporary social problems or the puberty rites of Native Americans. After the initial inspiration she developed a dramatic situation or character to embody the emotion or idea. She then found music, or commissioned new music from her longtime collaborator Louis Horst, to sustain the inspiration while she created movements to express it. The purpose of Graham's dance was to evoke a heightened awareness of life, to develop psychological insights about the nature of man. Dance was to her an "inner emotional experience." Her themes were often overtly psychological.
Using the stage, the floor, and props as part of the dance itself, in all she produced a whole new language of dance. In 1926 Graham introduced this new language of dance in her first solo recital in New York. Her first large group piece, Vision of the Apocalypse, was performed in 1929. The most important early work was a revolutionary piece called Heretic.
Graham toured the United States for 4 years (1931 - 1935) in the production Electra. During this trip she became interested in the American Indians of the Southwest. One of the first products of this interest was Primitive Mysteries. Her increasing interest in the American past was seen in her dance on the American pioneer women, Frontier (1935), and culminated in her famous Appalachian Spring (1944), in which she recreated in dance what composer Aaron Copland had done in his music. Among her other accomplishments during the 1930s was her performance of the principal role in Igor Stravinsky's American premiere of Rite of Spring (1930).
Graham taught at Bennington College in Vermont and made the establishment the mecca for avantgarde dance in America. With the later establishment of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York, she taught a large number of modern dancers who have spread her ideas, techniques, and style to the rest of the world.
Graham danced her last role in 1969, but she continued to choreograph. A year before her death, in 1990, she choreographed Maple Leaf Rag, a show that featured music by Scott Joplin and costumes by Calvin Klein.
She died April 1, 1991, known as one of the 20th century's revolutionary artists.
Quotations:
"I wanted to begin, not with characters or ideas but with movement. .. . I wanted significant movement. I did not want it to be beautiful or fluid. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge."
"Like the modern painters, we have stripped our medium of decorative unessentials."
"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 pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."
Membership
In 1957, Graham was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Connections
In July 1948 Graham married Erick Hawkins, the first man to dance with her company. He left her troupe in 1951 and they divorced in 1954.