MARTHA GRAHAM
Beginnings
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Born in 1894 in Allegheny City (later Pittsburgh, PA), Graham grew up Presbyterians with a father who practiced an early form of psychiatry. Family life was comfortable but she was not encouraged to dance until her family moved to Santa Maria, CA where she saw her first ever dance.
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She began studies at the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts until 1923 under Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She then went on to become a featured dancer in the Greenwich Village Follies revue for two years. This pushed her to make dance an art form more grounded in human experience than mere entertainment
Style
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She established the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and she began independent concept showings of her choreography work. She went on to reshape the dance world with her technique which is now known as the cornerstone of American modern dance. It combines that concept of contraction of release based on the breathing cycle and emotional response with spiraling the torso around the acis of the spine, distinctive floorwork, and expressive/dramatic qualities.
Greek Mythology & Social Justice
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Greek mythology was often referenced in her work, particularly looking at greek myths from a woman’s point of view. These include Cave of the Heart (1946) and Night Journey (1947). In 1936, she was invited to perform at the Art Competitions that took place during the Summer Olympics at the time. This would have meant performing at the games in Berlin, she refused saying, “I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time. So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons.”
Later Life
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She was the first ever dancer to perform at the White House in 1938 and continued operating her dance school and troupe for many years. IN 1958 her company premiered the ballet Clytemnestra which was a massive hit. It is difficult to find recordings of her dances because she believed that live performances should only exist on stage as they are experienced.
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Her specific last performance is unclear but it was between 1968-1970 meaning she retired between the ages of 74-76. She sank into a deep depression afterwards struggling to continue teaching all the way until 1991, reminiscing on her own days performing. She choreographed until her death in 1991, aged 96, from pnuemonia in NYC. She was cremated and her ashes were spread over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico.
Mary Wigman
Beginnings
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Born Karoline Sophie Marie was born in 1886 in Hanover, Prussia. She was a German dancer who pioneered expressionist dance and is hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage.
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She was the daughter of a bicycle dealer and spent much of her youth in Hanover, England, the Netherlands, and Lausanne. She came to dance after watching three students of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze who aimed to approach music through movement using solfege, improvisation, and his own system of movements - Dalcroze eurhythmics.
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She studied rhythmic gymnastics as well briefly but found herself unfulfilled by both music and gymnastics compared to expressive dance. She entered the Rudolf von Laban School of Art. Under Laban’s lead she developed a technique based on contrasts of movement; expansion and contraction, pulling and pushing.
Work under Nazi Germany
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She went on to teach dance classes and show her own work in Germany throughout her life. Unlike Martha Graham, Wigman did not make a clear disavowal of Nazism in Germany. While she also never stated any clear support, her contributions to modern dance existed under the umbrella of Nazism and the rejection of structured dance (ballet) in favor of freer movements. Wigman's work also contributed to dance as a gateway for fascist community-building. Susan Manning writes in “Modern Dance in the Third Reich, Redux” that “modern dancers conflated and confused their ideal of the Tanzgemeinschaft (‘dance community’) with the fascist ideal of Volksgemeinschaft (‘ethnic community’)” German dance environments indirectly supported Nazi communities, whether intentional or not.
Later Life
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She continued teaching for many years in post-war Germany eventually opening her own school “the Mary Wigman Studio” in West Berlin in 1949. In 1967, she closed her West Berlin studio and devoted herself to lecturing at home and abroad. She died in 1973 with her funerary urn buried at her family grave in Essen, Germany.
