A major biography--the first in three decades--of one of the most
important artistic forces of the twentieth century, the legendary
American dancer and choreographer who upended dance, propelling the art
form into the modern age, and whose profound and pioneering influence is
still being felt today.
**"Brings together all the elements of Graham's colorful life...with
wit, verve, critical discernment, and a powerful lyricism."--Mary
Dearborn, acclaimed author of Ernest Hemingway
Time magazine called her "the Dancer of the Century." Her technique,
used by dance companies throughout the world, became the first
long-lasting alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her
pioneering movements--powerful, dynamic, jagged, edgy,
forthright--combined with her distinctive system of training, were the
epitome of American modernism, performance as art. Her work continued
to astonish and inspire for more than sixty years as she choreographed
more than 180 works.
At the heart of Graham's work: movement that could express inner
feeling.
Neil Baldwin, author of admired biographies of Man Ray ("Truly
definitive . . . absolutely fascinating" --Patricia Bosworth) and Thomas
Edison ("Absorbing, gripping, a major contribution to our understanding
of a remarkable man and a remarkable era" --Robert Caro), gives us the
artist and performer, the dance monument who led a cult of dance
worshippers as well as the woman herself in all of her complexity.
Here is Graham, from her nineteenth-century (born in 1894) Allegheny,
Pennsylvania, childhood, to becoming the star of the Denishawn exotic
ballets, and in 1926, at age thirty-two, founding her own company (now
the longest-running dance company in America).
Baldwin writes of how the company flourished during the artistic
explosion of New York City's midcentury cultural scene; of Erick
Hawkins, in 1936, fresh from Balanchine's School of American Ballet, a
handsome Midwesterner fourteen years her junior, becoming Graham's muse,
lover, and eventual spouse. Graham, inspiring the next generation of
dancers, choreographers, and teachers, among them: Merce Cunningham and
Paul Taylor.
Baldwin tells the story of this large, fiercely lived life, a life beset
by conflict, competition, and loneliness--filled with fire and
inspiration, drive, passion, dedication, and sacrifice in work and in
dance creation.