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:

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.