Youth and Inspiration
Martha Graham, born on May 11, 1894, was raised in what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From an early age, Graham was interested in movement because of the influence of her father, a doctor who treated patients affected by nervous disorders. Her interest was sparked by George Graham’s view that the body was capable of expressing its feelings. In her adolescence, when one of Graham’s two sisters became affected by asthma, her entire family moved across the country to California so she could be exposed to better weather.(1)
There in Los Angeles at the age of seventeen, Graham watched Ruth St. Denis perform, changing the course of her life. She was fascinated Denis and wanted to study her dance but her parents, specifically her father, resisted her pleads since they did not wish for their daughter to become a dancer. Because she did not have permission to study dance she attended the junior college, Cumnock. After her father’s death in 1914, however, Graham felt she was free to pursue her passion, allowing her to enroll in Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn’s Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts. Here, Graham excelled as a student, becoming one of the most popular performers there despite having never taken a dance class before, and later as a teacher.
Every aspect of Graham's life revolved around dance because that was her main focus. To her, nothing else mattered besides her work. A friend of Martha's and choreographer Agnes de Mille explains this when she reflected that "when [Martha] was done with a person or an idea, she cut it off as though she were shedding skin. She dropped habits, assistants and even friends. But her work was everything to her." (2) Her extreme passion alienated Graham since "she had no other interest, no family... She was absolutely alone." (3)
Graham combined performing, teaching, and choreographing to achieve her fame and influence on the world of dance. Her final performance was in 1969 but she continued choreographing until the year before her death on April 1, 1991.
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