A century ago, the dancer Martha Graham began teaching at a small studio above Carnegie Hall in Manhattan. It was the start of a dance revolution. Graham wasn’t the first dancer to cast off ballet’s shackles and look for new ways of moving as the world shifted in the early 20th century: free-spirited Isadora Duncan had wafted her way through European salons; Loie Fuller experimented with costume and light effects; Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn, with whom Graham trained, explored dance aping the styles of India, Egypt and Japan. But it’s Graham who became the true godmother of modern dance, developing a technique that would become the foundation of many dancers’ training around the world, and starkly modernist choreography that would point dance in a new direction.
Where ballet leapt to the sky, Graham was rooted to the earth. Where classical backs stood straight, Graham curved the spine and tilted the pelvis in deep contractions, connecting to some primal place of power. In the most famous images of Graham dancing, she wears a full skirt kicked into a semicircle while she reaches high or far into space, but also into the psyche. You can sense her gravity by just looking at the photo. Masha Maddux, who joined the Graham company in 2007 (Graham herself died in 1991 aged 96) describes the technique: “It’s restrained. It’s very deep, very visceral, theatricalised and with a certain bite.” And what does it feel like to dance it? “Liberating!”
