* Isadora Duncan * Martha Graham
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Isadora Duncan was born May 26, 1877 in San Francisco. Her parents divorced when she was an infant. She was raised by her mother, a piano teacher with great appreciation for the arts. When Duncan was 6, she began to teach movement to children in her neighbourhood. By the time she was 10, her classes had become quite large. She left the public school so that she and her sister Elizabeth, could earn income from teaching. Duncan received tutelage from poet Ina Coolbrith. She performed to acclaim throughout Europe after being exiled from the United States for her pro-Soviet sympathies.
Isadora Duncan lived in Chicago and New York before moving to Europe. There with Brother Raymond she studied Greek mythology and visual iconography, which would inform her sensibilities and style of movement as an artist. Duncan came to look at ancient rituals around dance, nature and the body as being central to her performance ideology. Barefoot and clad in sheaths inspired by Greek imagery and Italian Renaissance paintings, Duncan danced her own choreography in the homes of the financially elite before becoming a major success in Budapest, having a sold-out run of shows in 1902.
She embarked on successful tours, becoming a European sensation honoured not only by audiences, but by artists who captured her image in painting, sculpture and poetry. Duncan's style was controversial for its time, as it defied what she viewed as constricting conventions of ballet, placing major emphasis on the human female form and free-flowing moves. Duncan's achievements and artistic vision would lead her to be called the "Mother of Modern Dance"—a moniker also shared by a successor of sorts, Martha Graham.
Duncan faced horrific tragedies, with her two children and their nanny drowning in 1913 when their car fell into the Seine River. Duncan struggled emotionally throughout later years. Her fondness for flowing scarves contributed to her death in an automobile accident in France. Her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, breaking her neck. The same year of her death, Duncan's autobiography was published, My Life, which has gone on to become a critically acclaimed work. Over the years, many other books, along with several films, have offered accounts on Duncan's life and art. In 1987, she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame.
Martha Graham was born in Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, on May 11, 1894. Martha Graham was influenced early on by her father, George Graham, a doctor who specialized in nervous disorders. Dr. Graham believed that the body could express its inner senses, an idea that intrigued his young daughter. Throughout her teens, Graham studied dance in Los Angeles at Denishawn. In 1926, she established her own dance company in New York City.
In the 1910s, the Graham family moved to California. When Martha was 17, she saw Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. After the show, she implored her parents to allow her to study dance, but being strong Presbyterians, they wouldn't permit it.
Still inspired, Graham enrolled in an arts-oriented junior college, and after her father died, at the newly opened Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and her husband, Ted Shawn. Graham spent more than eight years at Denishawn, as both a student and an instructor.
Illustrating her visions through jarring, violent, and trembling movements, Graham believed these physical expressions gave outlet to spiritual and emotional undercurrents that were ignored in other Western dance forms. The musician Louis Horst came on as the company’s musical director and stayed with Graham for nearly her entire career. Some of Graham’s most impressive and famous works include “Frontier,” “Seraphic Dialogue” and “Lamentation.” All of these works utilized the Delsartean principle of tension and relaxation -- what Graham termed “contraction and release.”
Frontier was created a decade after she began dancing on her own after leaving Denishawn, where she danced under the instruction of Ted Shawn. During this period she focused on creating solo dances for herself to perform, before developing the theatrical group dances of the 1940s that would define her later career and secure her popularity (such as Night Journey, which depicts a scene from Oedipus Rex, and Appalachian Spring, which depicts an original story of a pioneering husband and bride.)
Despite the fact that many early critics described her dances as “ugly,” cultural history. Graham continued to dance into her 60s and choreographed until her death on April 1, 1991, leaving behind a legacy of inspiration not only for dancers but for artists of all kinds. Graham’s genius became increasingly respected over time, and her advances in dance are considered to be an important achievement in America’s cultural.

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