Word: grahamism
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...Martha Graham finally retired from the stage at 75, but the decision came hard. A philosophical friend suggested she must remember that she was not a goddess but a mortal. "That's difficult," Graham replied, "when you see yourself as a goddess and behave like...
...early dance inspiration was surprising: Ruth St. Denis, who charmed audiences with free-form creations perfumed with the exoticism of the Orient. Entranced, Graham joined the Denishawn company, but left in 1923 to try Broadway dancing. By 1926 she had formed a group, which performed in New York. The masterpieces began to flow, as they would over several decades. There was a cluster of distinctively American works, such as Letter to the World, about Emily Dickinson, and the ever vernal Appalachian Spring. Though a quintessential modernist, she was attracted to doomed classical heroines: Clytemnestra, Medea, Alcestis, Phaedra...
...students' efforts. "With Martha," Richard Boone once said, "you get it right away or jump out the window." Glen Tetley, a protege in the 1950s, went on to become a ballet choreographer. Just before his first major premiere, he developed crippling back spasms; no one else knew his role. Graham solved the problem. Spying him in a cafeteria, she walked over and slapped his face hard. "You stand up there and go out and dance," she commanded. "It was the shock I needed," says Tetley...
...dancers worshiped her. Says Tetley: "It was like belonging to the most wonderful religious sect. With Martha you were not only training the body but opening the soul." Shelley Washington, who danced for Graham in the '70s, recalls some sources of her magic: "She was a fabulous storyteller -- there was such vitality and imagery...
...After Graham stopped performing, she was still in the spotlight: marching on Washington to plead for government grants, attending fund-raising galas where she spoke mesmerizingly about her life. Her father became a regular player in these little monologues as she summoned up her childhood self riding beside him in the buggy while he made his rounds. Perhaps it was then that the seeds of an artistic revolution were sown, that the secret lies in an indomitable commitment to honesty in motion...