"Martha Graham" by Neil Baldwin

[dirac]

A new biography of Graham is published, the first in a very long while.

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Mr. Baldwin devotes the meat of “Martha Graham” to the choreographer’s fertile mid-career period. The theme of resurrection lies at the heart of many pieces. “In the Graham lexicon,” he notes, “the fall was an affirmation, not a sign of defeat or closure; the floor was used, she would say, as ‘something to hit against and rise from, a way of saying Yes.’ ” As her star ascended—and her income ticked up—she melded her ideas into a gospel of movement, fueled by a chance meeting in Bennington, Vt. in 1936. The handsome, athletic, younger Erick Hawkins joined forces with Graham as a principal dancer......

 

[dirac]

An interview with the author.

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Leaving the performance and braced by the chill, Baldwin, who did not have another writing project planned, said Graham jumped into his open mind. He told himself his “next move” would be her story. He could not stop thinking about this. Indeed, in his introduction to the biography, to be published Oct. 25 by Alfred A. Knopf, he called modern dance the “connective tissue” of American cultural identity. After the student performance, he said it was another four years of research before he felt ready to tackle the project.

A luncheon date with Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, helped. Baldwin said it took some courage to discuss his ambition, and, although Eilber supported him, and his interest in the arts was lifelong, the formidable Graham was another matter.

 

[dirac]

An article on the book and its subject by Emily Hawk in The Nation.

Martha Graham's Movement

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Baldwin’s framing of Martha Graham encourages us to think of early American modernism as an inward-facing, backward-looking quest to shore up an American form that could compete with the longstanding precedent of European classicism. Even as Graham’s angular and abstracted aesthetics were avant-garde, her inspiration came from the American past: frontier narratives, Protestant traditions, changing landscapes observed during a transcontinental train journey. Graham was energized by the opportunity to craft something from this history and become an ambassador of this style. Her technique embodied her infatuation with the sheer potential of her art: Between every contraction and release in her choreography, there was “a still point of immobility [that] hid the promise of further movement.” It represented her ambition to discover uncharted territory in the realms of movement.