External links
- Village Voice: "Maelstrom at Martha's"
- Ballet Magazine: "Who Owns Martha Graham's Work?"
- New York Times archive of Ron Protas articles
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Ron Protas is the former associate director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and heir of modern dance choreographer Martha Graham.
Agnes de Mille writes in Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham that in the late 1960s Protas, who had been a law student at Columbia University, became introduced to the Martha Graham Dance Company. De Mille writes that Protas was not well liked by company members, as he was not a dancer and had no reason to be involved with the company. Initially, Graham did not like Protas. But when Graham's health began to fail, as a result of her alcoholism and depression over having to retire from her performing career, Protas stepped in and nursed Graham back to health. De Mille writes that over the next several years the influence of Protas grew, eventually he and Graham restructured the company entirely. According to de Mille, Protas soon embarked on a campaign to copyright the Martha Graham Dance Technique: "Now, under the guidance of Ron Protas, there was an attempt to charge royalties for all usage, not only of composed dances, but of actual technique: an impossible objective." Eventually, Protas became the second most powerful person in the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, second only to the founder herself. [1]
In her autobiography Blood Memory Martha Graham writes that she trained Protas in her dance technique and that he will be her heir upon her death. [2]
Shortly after the death of Martha Graham, Mr. Protas sued the Martha Graham Dance Company, forbidding them from performing Martha Graham's choreography. Only after a lengthy and multimillion-dollar legal battle were the rights to the choreographic works restored the Martha Graham Dance Company. [3]
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Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.
Louis Horst was a composer, and pianist. He helped to define the principles of modern dance choreographic technique, most notably the matching of choreography to pre-existing musical structure and the use of contemporary music for dance scores.
Helen Tamiris was an American choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher.
Appalachian Spring is a ballet created by the American composer Aaron Copland and the choreographer Martha Graham, later arranged as an orchestral work. Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Copland composed the ballet for Graham; the original choreography was by Graham, with costumes by Edythe Gilfond and sets by Isamu Noguchi. The music was well-received at the 1944 premiere, earning Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music after the ballet's 1945 United States tour. The orchestral suite composed in 1945 was played that year by many symphony orchestras; the suite is among Copland's best-known works, and the ballet remains essential in the Martha Graham Dance Company repertoire.
A dream ballet, in musical theater, is an all-dance, no-singing production number that reflects the themes of the production. The plot, themes, and characters are typically the same—although the people playing the characters may be different, as the roles of the dream ballet are usually filled by well-trained dancers rather than actual actors.
Gemze de Lappe was an American dancer who worked very closely with Agnes de Mille and was frequently partnered by de Mille's favorite male dancer, James Mitchell.
The Batsheva Dance Company is a renowned dance company based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was founded by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild in 1964.
Episodes is a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham and George Balanchine, to compositions by Anton Webern. The ballet was a co-production between the Martha Graham Dance Company and Balanchine's New York City Ballet (NYCB). Though it was conceived to be a collaboration between Graham and Balanchine, leading choreographers in modern dance and neoclassical ballet respectively, they ultimately worked separately on the ballet's two halves. Episodes I was choreographed by Graham, for dancers from her company and four NYCB members, and depicts Mary, Queen of Scots remembering the events in her life before her execution. Episodes II, by Balanchine, is completely plotless, and made for members of the NYCB and Graham dancer Paul Taylor, who originated a solo. The ballet uses all seven orchestral compositions by Webern.
Talley Beatty was born in Cedar Grove, Louisiana, a section of Shreveport, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He is considered one of the greatest of African American choreographers, and also bears the titles dancer, doctor, and dance company director. After studying under Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham, Beatty went on do solo work and choreograph his own works which center on the social issues, experiences, and everyday life of African Americans. Beatty and his technique and style of dancing were both praised and criticized by critics and dancers of his day.
Jane Dudley was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Inspired by her mentor, choreographer Martha Graham, Dudley helped bring her movement inspired by social ills to the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in the 1950s.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which included dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Carmelita Maracci was an American concert dancer and choreographer who creatively combined ballet arts and Spanish techniques. She excelled when before an audience with dance experience, receiving enthusiastic praise from performers and critics. Her stage career began in the mid-1920s. Her programs often were of her own design. From the 1950s she remained influential as a Los Angeles-based teacher.
Mary De Haven Hinkson was an African American dancer and choreographer known for breaking racial boundaries throughout her dance career in both modern and ballet techniques. She is best known for her work as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
The Martha Graham Dance Company, founded by Martha Graham in 1926, is both the oldest dance company in the United States and the oldest integrated dance company. The company is critically acclaimed in the artistic world and has been recognized as "one of the great dance companies of the world" by the New York Times and as "one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe" by the Washington Post.
Graham technique is a modern dance movement style and pedagogy created by American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Graham technique has been called the "cornerstone" of American modern dance, and has been taught worldwide. It is widely regarded as the first codified modern dance technique, and strongly influenced the later techniques of Merce Cunningham, Lester Horton, and Paul Taylor.
Cave of the Heart is a one-act ballet choreographed by Martha Graham to music by Samuel Barber. It was first performed on May 10, 1946, with the title Serpent Heart, at the second annual Festival of Contemporary American Music in the McMillin Theater of Columbia University. Serpent Heart was commissioned by the festival sponsor, The Alice M. Ditson Fund.
Stuart Hodes was an American dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, dance administrator and author. He was Martha Graham's partner, danced on Broadway, in TV, film, in recitals, and with his own troupe. His choreography has appeared on the Boston Ballet, Dallas Ballet, Harkness Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and other troupes. He taught at the Martha Graham School, Neighborhood Playhouse, NYC High School of Performing Arts, headed dance at NYU School of the Arts and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He was Dance Associate for the NY State Council on the Arts, dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, president of the National Association of Schools of Dance, and a member of the First American Dance Study Team to China in 1980, returning in 1992 to teach the Guangzhou modern dance troupe.
Fragilité was a modern dance solo choreographed by Martha Graham to music by Alexander Scriabin. The piece was originally part of Five Poems, a ballet divided into five solo sections: Fragilité, Lugubre, Poeme ailé, Danse Languide and Désir. Each of the sections appears in various programs as individual solos. Five Poems premiered on October 16, 1927, at the Little Theatre in New York City.
