Although she is less well-known today, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham revolutionized dance in the 20th century with her bold and original style.
Holly Hobbs, assistant professor of dance, gave a lecture about Graham’s innovative technique and legacy on Nov. 10 in the Sage Center.
“She was a cultural icon, dancer, choreographer, and actress,” Hobbs said. “She developed a training ground for the next generation of modern dancers.”
According to Hobbs, she first learned about Martha Graham while she was a ballet student at Western Michigan University.
“I heard about Martha Graham and how important she was, but I also heard her work being dismissed,” she said. “I’m just one of those people that will do something if you tell me not to do it, so I started researching her.”
As Hobbs’ interest grew, she started practicing Graham’s famously difficult technique herself.
“She created a whole new language for dance,” Hobbs said. “She moved differently than anyone had before and she found a new way to sculpt the body in space.”
According to Hobbs, Graham was inspired by other forms of movement while she developed her technique.
“Graham studied yoga as well as dance, and there’s a lot of overlap between some of the positions, the way that we use the body, and especially how we use our breath,” Hobbs said. “Her movements have a spiraling action that pushes the body to the extreme of possibility.”
Sophomore Chloe Kersey, a dance minor at Hillsdale, said she learned Graham’s technique in high school.
“The technique is something completely unexpected in the body and in performance,” she said. “It’s incredibly narrative, and it deals a lot with being off-balance and finding that balance within yourself.”
According to Kersey, learning to dance like Martha Graham is hard work.
“There’s a lot of contradictory movement, which makes her style very different and very interesting,” she said.
Senior Stephen Rupp, also a dance minor at Hillsdale, said that Graham’s influence is evident in Hobbs’ classes.
“Having danced for Holly over the last three years, I find that her attention to sculpting the spine as the center of movement is rooted in Graham’s technique, and the Graham tradition is evident in her style,” he said.
In her lecture, Hobbs showed a video of Christine Dakin, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, who revealed the thought process behind Graham’s unique style.
“The dance she made was unique and looked very different from any other kind of dance that existed,” Dakin said in the video. “Martha wanted dance to show the reality of life, its complexity, its harshness, and its passion.”
According to Hobbs, Graham was a prolific choreographer who created 181 dances over the course of her long career. Although they varied widely, one theme runs through them all.
“The one thing that stands out is the idea of the heroic quest, usually with her as the central figure,” Hobbs said. “There is this constant struggle of the human against something or someone.”
Rupp said that he appreciates the wide variety of themes that can be found in Graham’s work.
“No topic is off-limits,” he said. “Controversial ideas about war to psychological pieces about love and hate to retellings of Greek myth — she did it all. Movement like hers wasn’t just groundbreaking: it was revolutionary.”
Hobbs said that she spent the summer immersing herself in Graham’s work, and she shared a quote by Graham that she thought summed up her thought process.
“You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you,” Hobbs quoted. “Keep the channel open — no artist is pleased. There is only a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than the others.”
Martha Graham’s prolific choreography, original style, and enduring legacy prove that she certainly took her own advice.
