In 1925 Martha Graham became a dance instructor at the Eastman School of Music and Theatre in Rochester, N.Y. She began to experiment with different types of dance styles. Martha Graham said "I wanted to begin, not with characters or ideas but with movement... I wanted significant movement. I did not want it to be beautiful or fluid. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge". Graham didn't want to do tradition steps or technical classical ballet. She wanted the natural dancing body to be natural motion and to use the music. Martha experimented with what the body could do with its own structure; this was developing what they called "percussive movement".
|