- Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 - April 1, 1991), an American dancer and choreographer, known as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance
- Martha Graham is to modern dance as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is to the modern art school of cubism Indeed, for many dance connoisseurs, Martha Graham is synonymous with modern dance
- She developed innovations in structure, style, technique, costuming, and in the training of choreographers and dancers that defined the movement
- She rejected the traditional view of women dancers as beautiful, lithe, and graceful, and instead she viewed female dancers as powerful and intense
- Her colleagues have described her long career as an American archetype, because with only a few exceptions, only Graham herself—or her company—ever performed her compositions, making Graham one of the most individualistic dance artists of the 20th century
- Born on May 11, 1894, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Graham began her formal training at Denishawn School of Dance, a Los Angeles academy started by the dancer Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968) and her partner Ted Shawn (1891-1972)
- In 1923, Graham left Los Angeles to join the Greenwich Village Follies in New York, specializing in exotic Spanish and Indian dances
- She taught dance for two years at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, all the while preparing herself for her debut as a soloist in 1926
- Martha Graham gave birth to modern dance, in the sense that she changed people’s minds about what dancers—especially female dancers—could do
- Whereas traditionally, female dancers had been used by choreographers to symbolize beauty and decoration, Graham de-sentimentalized the female body by emphasizing its power, intensity, and, in her fall sequences, its recovery from defeat
