Paul Meltsner (1905-1966)
Oil on canvas, circa 1940, T/NPG.73.41
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Martha Graham was one of the leading dancers and choreographers of the American modern dance movement. In 1916 she began her training at the Denishawn School in Los Angeles, under the tutelage of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. There, Graham learned to discard the strict forms and gestures that had traditionally governed choreography. By the time of her New York debut in 1926, she had developed a style that was both revolutionary and controversial. Graham intended her dances to provide insight into the human condition, as in Letter to the World (1940), inspired by Emily Dickinson's life and poetry, or Appalachian Spring (1944), a celebration of America's pioneer spirit. While early modern dance did not use characters or tell stories, Graham had a theatrical bent that surfaced increasingly in her later works. Her modern-dance ballets, beginning with Clytemnestra in 1958, used the free-form techniques of modern dance to present classical literary works. Included in Graham's legacy are several monumental dance scores written for her by composers such as Samuel Barber, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland.
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