Graham’s Footsteps Graced Goodhart’s Stage!

tech bourrees

There are always ancestral footsteps behind me, pushing me, when I am creating a new dance, and gestures are flowing through me.

(Blood Memory)

When I began my research for Mawr Steps I gathered information on Martha Graham, her dancers, her technique, her body of work, the politics that this dance referenced, etc. But I also sought to learn something about the history of dance at Bryn Mawr College. Because it is not just Graham’s legacy that this project is involved with, of course, it is our legacy too.

I was surprised – and incredibly excited – to find that these two great legacies have been intertwined for decades!

Below are pages from the March 1, 1939 edition of Bryn Mawr’s College News.

(Here is a PDF version of the paper in its entirety.)

The review continued on Page 3

The review continued on Page 3

Front page: "Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance"

Front page: “Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance”

 

 

 

 

 

 

(via BMC Special Collections Repository)

 

 

The front page headline reads: “Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance,” reported from Goodhart Auditorium on February 23, 1939. So, 75 years ago Martha Graham herself performed on the same stage that Steps in the Street will be performed on tomorrow and Saturday nights. What’s more – Graham was performing works at Bryn Mawr (in 1939) created during the same period of her career as Steps (1936).

The serendipitous parallels are truly uncanny.

 

“…a newcomer, the Modern Dance.”

Below is a page from the Bryn Mawr College Yearbook, Class of 1939,  remarking upon the success of Bryn Mawr’s first Modern Dance classes:

modern dance class bmc1939y

via Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections

After a few weeks of laughter at the contortions and resulting aches of its devotees, the college began to be interested. …the Modern Dance is now given for credit, is self-supporting, and has an hour and place all its own.  Without doubt there is something fascinating about controlled but strenuous rhythmic movement.

(Special Collections Repository)

 

And from the same year, 1938-39: a film of Bonnie Bird, an early Graham Group dancer, demonstrating the beginnings of what would become Martha Graham’s codified technique.