Martha Graham

  Choreographer, teacher and dancer famous American born in Allegheny County, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with its technical innovations that exerted enormous influence in the world and revolutionized modern dance and became known as the mother of modern dance. As a teenager, he heard his father, a doctor who treated mental disorders, saying that underlay their diagnoses on their patients how they moved. He founded the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance (1927) that formed four generations of dancers and choreographers. He created his own style of dance called the Graham method of great emotional expressiveness, breaking the conventional rules of dance of the nineteenth century, creating his own technique that fascinated the world. Was revolutionizing his style, becoming one of the leading figures of contemporary dance. Developed a technique that included a deep relationship between breath and movement and a lot of contact with the floor and passed (1934) using music composed especially for their jobs. For 50-year career included about 200 choreographies exploring different themes, such as a feminine sensibility, Greek mythology, social issues and American folklore. One of his best known works was Letter to the World (1943), with music by Hunter Johnson, whose dance was based on the life of Emily Dickinson, poet of excerpts from poems which are recited in performance. Among other notable successes include Appalachian Spring (1944), Cave of the Heart (1946), Legend of Judith (1962), Acts of Light (1981). Stopped dancing (1970), but also choreographed The Rite of Spring (1984) by Igor Stravinsky, wrote an autobiography, Bloody Memory (1991), which detailed his method and died in New York.