Graham broke the mold of ballet with themes, movement, and costumes. In Romantic Ballet the themes evoked mystery and appeared supernatural but Martha Graham choreographed dances set in reality. Audiences were relieved to have some variety and dense themes including grief, fascism, expansion, and fascism. Her choreography also had different forms of movement, instead of perfectly postured ballerinas leaping high with the weightlessness of a feather Graham created movement with gravity to it, using the floor and levels.
Dancers would move in a combination of high, low, and mid-ranged levels instead of in ballet where the dancer remains on point, striving to be as upright and elevated as possible. Every moment of ballet is composed, the dancers sometimes seeming more like actors in their routine of perfectly structured choreography so exact even exits are planned with large movements. Graham fought these limits of dance by having her performers utilize stillness, walking, and falling, which you can see in the clip from her dance, Appalachian Spring. Instead of fighting gravity like ballet, Graham “incorporated into her method...the power of gravity rather than defying it” (1). This, along with Graham’s use of bare feet, made her dances more grounded and the dancers more human, unlike the ethereal ballerinas. In ballet pointe shoes were worn by women to extend their lines, appear weightless, and emphasize femininity. By having her dancer’s perform with bare feet Graham paved the path for a new style of movement.
Dancers would move in a combination of high, low, and mid-ranged levels instead of in ballet where the dancer remains on point, striving to be as upright and elevated as possible. Every moment of ballet is composed, the dancers sometimes seeming more like actors in their routine of perfectly structured choreography so exact even exits are planned with large movements. Graham fought these limits of dance by having her performers utilize stillness, walking, and falling, which you can see in the clip from her dance, Appalachian Spring. Instead of fighting gravity like ballet, Graham “incorporated into her method...the power of gravity rather than defying it” (1). This, along with Graham’s use of bare feet, made her dances more grounded and the dancers more human, unlike the ethereal ballerinas. In ballet pointe shoes were worn by women to extend their lines, appear weightless, and emphasize femininity. By having her dancer’s perform with bare feet Graham paved the path for a new style of movement.
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Fellow choreographer and friend of Martha, Agnes de Mille, captured what made Martha's work so revolutionary when she said, "She gave us a new language, a new way of moving and a new purpose in moving. She gave us a body of dance technique as complex and formal as that of ballet. But ballet evolved over 400 years; she created modern dance in the course of a single lifetime." (2)