martha's lamentation

martha graham is often placed alongside people such as stravinsky, james joyce, and picasso in terms of her extraordinary influence and especially because of her unwavering connection to the essence of herself as a channel for pure creativity . her obituary includes the statement that her "fundamental tenet was that dance should reach audiences through a visceral response rather than an objective image that registered upon the intellect.

"out of emotion comes form," she said, and then demonstrated that from form, she could re-create the same emotion onstage." that this required an entirely new sense of human movement and relation on stage goes without saying, for what she was suggesting asked for a degree of fluidity, and sensitivity to presence that simply wasn't an explicit feature of western dance to that point.

i would've loved to have met this beautiful and extraordinary person.

here is a video of martha describing one of her works entitled "lamentation" which she created in 1930. . . the music was written by zoltan kodaly. the work is interpreted by dancer peggy lyman.