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The Martha Graham Dance Company Records were donated to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in 1969 by Leroy Leatherman.
Collection is open to the public. Photocopying prohibited. Advance notice required
For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.
Martha Graham Dance Company Records, (S) *MGZMD 152 . Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The Martha Graham dance legacy, which embodied principles of contraction and release, was brought into prominence in 1928. The Group, as she called her dancers, were selected from the private students that Graham (11 May 1894-1 April 1991) took on while teaching dance at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Graham and her cultivated students debuted as The Group on 14 April 1929. The arrangement was such that the dance fueled classwork just as classwork influenced the dance. The Group remained an all female group until 1938. That year Erick Hawkins joined, an event eclipsed only in 1939 when Merce Cunningham became a member. This period marked a new development for dance. The fusion of sculptural elements, through Isamu Noguchi’s stage designs, coalesced with dance in Frontier (1935). Sculpture was to the 1930s what literary content was to the 1940s. Landmark performances for the incorporation of spoken word in dance include Letter to the World (1940).
The company continued to evolve in other ways. Since 1934, the company rehearsed at Bennington School of the Dance. In 1941 Bennington fell apart and the company moved to teaching dance at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College. That same year Diversion of Angels (1948) was also the first time that Graham choreographed a dance without performing in it herself. In 1950 Erick Hawkins left the company following Cunningham’s earlier departure in 1945. Despite these company changes, tours and commissions continued. On two separate occasions in 1950 and 1951, the Louisville Arts Council commissioned the company to perform with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra. Later, the U.S. State Department sponsored an Asian tour in 1954. In the 1960s the company increased its male members which somewhat altered Graham’s choreography toward the masculine. Her last performance occurred on 20 April 1969 for The Lady of the House of Sleep. Although she stopped performing, Graham spent the 1970s and 1980s preparing for her dancers to replace her. In 1975 Halston began designing her company’s costumes, a task that Graham always participated in believing that the costumes contributed to the dance’s expression of the mental state. Despite deteriorating health, Graham continued to choreograph but in 1977 she began using pre-existing compositions. This marked a departure from the earlier days when musical director Louis Horst composed original music for the company. In the end of her life Graham was bestowed many awards including the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur from the Paris Opera in 1984 and the Carina Ari Medal awarded in 1985 by the Princess of Sweden. Even after Graham’s death in 1991, her dance tradition continues today in the Martha Graham Dance Company.
This collection only covers the years 1944-1955. Therefore, it does not provide a full inventory of the company members including Martha Graham. It is primarily correspondence and performance information from the offices of Isadora Bennett and Richard Pleasant, publicists for Martha Graham, approximately from 1942-1958. It includes dance company press materials which discuss how for the first time architecture and sculpture were fused with dance. Additional informational value is continued in the dance analysis for Eye of Anguish. It examines dance for its emotive qualities. The performance materials are equally illuminating. While offering a timeline of activity in the 1940s and 1950s, they also touch upon contemporary dance issues such as the relationship between dance and music.
The collection is organized into 3 series and 3 sub-series. They are:
This series contains historical information on the Martha Graham Dance Company.
This subseries contains professional correspondence. Most of the letters are in exchange with Martha Graham’s press representative Isadora Bennett (1900-1980) and deal with publicity matters and performance arrangements.
Includes two letter from Isadora Bennett, one to Martha Graham regarding publicity work and another addressed to Erick Hawkins pertaining to personal matters, 1949.
This subseries provides a rough timeline of the Martha Graham Dance Company in the 1940s. Additionally, this series contains a Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance program dated 1948-1949, indicating that the Company functioned not only in a touring but also in a teaching capacity. Please note that company members, not covered in this collection, are identified in the program.
Includes press releases for performances at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and for dance lectures given at the Town Hall Morning Lecture Series.
This subseries addresses Martha Graham’s treatment of dance and the company identity, in terms of a few individuals: Erick Hawkins (dancer), Simon Sadoff (pianist and musical director) and Virgil Thompson (composer). Please note that the biographies in this section are not comprehensive in their coverage of the Martha Graham Dance Company or the individual.
Includes a draft press release that describes the Company's unique fusion of dance with sculpture, painting and architecture
Chronological
The contents in this series do not adequately represent the company’s financial profile. Some information pertaining to company worth, however, may be found in the financial statement dated spring 1944.
Chronological
This series contains a facsimile of Martha Graham’s sister’s (Jane Beers Duffey) death certificate dated 1958.
Shadows (1826). NYPL Art and Architecture Collection.
One of 700,000 pictures in the NYPL Digital Gallery
