Martha Graham

A dancer named Eric Hawkins joined her troupe in 1939 and played the male lead in many of her works. Eventually the two developed a relationship and got married in 1948. The couple divorced in 1954.

She became addicted to alcohol at one point of time following her last performance as a dancer. She became so depressed that she even tried to commit suicide. However, she bounced back by quitting alcohol and revived her career as a choreographer.

She lived a long life and continued choreographing till the very end. She died of pneumonia on April 1, 1991, at the age of 96.

She was born on May 11, 1894, as one of the three daughters of George Graham, a physician, and his wife Jane Beers, in Pennsylvania. Her father practiced psychiatry and was interested in the bodily expression of human behaviour.

She joined the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, in the mid-1910s. The newly established school explored different types of dance styles including folk, classical, experimental, Oriental, and American Indian, thus introducing her to the rich cultural heritage of dances from around the world. She studied here till 1923.

Ted Shawn, who was her mentor at the school recognized her potential and guided her to perform an Aztec ballet, ‘Xochitl’. Her performances at various concerts and vaudeville were met with great success.

She performed an Egyptian dance with Lillian Powell—again under Shawn’s guidance—in a short silent film by Hugo Riesenfeld, in 1922.

She left Denishawn in 1923 and became a featured dancer in the Greenwich Village Follies revue. She went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1924 where she taught dance.

Her made her debut as an independent artist in New York, in 1926. She loved experimenting with dance movements and this was reflected in her performances. Some of the performances she gave during this time were ‘Three Gopi Maidens’ and ‘Danse Languide’.

She founded the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1926, as a contemporary dance company. The company went on to become a very famous institution for dancers and choreographers.

In 1927, she performed a program, ‘Revolt’, set to the avant-garde music of Arthur Honegger. This was an original dance that was considerably different from her previous works and was not received positively by the audiences. But this did not dampen her imaginative spirit.

Over a period of time her genius mind and creativity began attracting the attention of critics and by the time she choreographed ‘American Document’ in 1938, her fame as an innovative choreographer had spread far and wide.

She founded the Martha Graham Dance Company which is today the oldest continually performing dance company in the world. The company has till date trained many world famous dancers and choreographers and has been recognized as "one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe" by the Washington Post.