MARTHA GRAHAM
When Dance Became Modern
by Neil Baldwin
A noted biographer attempts to tell the story of an elusive pioneer of modern dance.
When Martha Graham (1894-1991) was growing up in Pittsburgh, her physician father encouraged her to look closely at a drop of water under a microscope. She discovered wriggles in the seemingly pure droplet. “Just remember this all your life, Martha,” he told her. “You must look for the truth,” adding, “movement never lies.” It’s unlikely he expected his daughter would pursue that truth in the nascent world of modern dance. Baldwin, who has written bios of Man Ray and William Carlos Williams, among others, covers the first five decades of Graham’s long life and career, including her “small-town origins [and] dogged quest for artistic integrity”; her early years as a member of the Denishawn dance company; her notable collaborators, from Louis Horst, her “first dedicated accompanist,” to composers like Henry Cowell and Samuel Barber; and “her tumultuous marriage and tragic romance with a young dancer, Erick Hawkins.” Baldwin astutely analyzes Graham’s major dances, among them Primitive Mysteries, influenced by “American Indian life and rituals,” and, most famously, Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. The author acknowledges that Graham, “my provocative angel,” is a difficult subject. She burned letters, left behind few notebooks, and “vigorously discouraged” Don McDonagh’s 1973 bio. This book suffers as a result, with much of it devoted to backstories of other figures in Graham’s life. The narrative is at its best when Graham is in the spotlight and Baldwin shows how mercurial she could be. She was so prone to anger that she “was known to tear a pay phone from the wall or jump out of a moving cab.” The night before the opening performance of Ceremonials in 1932, Graham decided the girls’ costumes weren’t right, so “she ripped the garments to shreds, pinning and refitting them on the dancers while the seamstress stood by trembling and the clock ticked.” The book features a generous selection of photos.
A passionate yet patchy biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest artists.