About Martha Graham:

Born in 1893 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Martha Graham is recognized as a seminal artist of the 20th Century, alongside Picasso, Stravinsky, James Joyce, and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1998 TIME Magazine named Martha Graham as the Dancer o the Century, and People Magazine named her among the female “Icons of the Century.” As a choreographer, she was as prolific as she was complex. She created 181 ballets and a dance technique that has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude.

Martha Graham founded her dance company and school in 1926, living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, she experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the most elemental movements of contraction and release. Using these principles as the foundation for her technique, she built a vocabulary of movement that would “increase the emotional activity of the dancer’s body.” Martha Graham’s dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp, angular, jagged, direct. The dance world was forever altered by Martha Graham’s vision; it continues to be a source of inspiration for dance and theatre artists.

Early works by Martha Graham had names like Claire de Lune, Desir, Danse Languid, and Maid with the Flaxen Hair, and almost certainly were influenced by the flowing and decorative style of her mentor, Ruth St. Denis. Yet within a few years, titles such as Revolt (1927), Immigrant: Steerage, Strike (1928) and Poems of 1917 (1928) reveal Martha Graham’s commitment to the contemporary world. Heretic (1929) staged “the essence of the eternal struggle of the individual with something new to offer, coming up against the blank wall of conservatism in any field,” a theme that would be repeated often throughout Graham’s long and prolific career. As an artist, and particularly as a woman artist, she was a rebel in conventional society.

From 1929 to 1938, Martha Graham worked with an all-female company, refining her technique and crafting her approach to choreography under the demanding gaze of her mentor and lover, the composer Louis Horst. The classic works from this period demonstrate Martha Graham’s ever-widening command of her materials. The 1930 solo Lamentation explored grief as essence, not representation; “Dance is action, not reaction, “ she said. Primitive Mysteries (1931) was inspired by the meeting of Indian and Catholic traditions in the American Southwest. Celebration (1934), an abstract dance for eleven women to a score by Horst, was influenced by 1930’s modernist experiments in architecture.

The looming of Fascism in Europe inspired a number of Martha Graham’s dances during the 1930’s. The solos Imperial Gesture (1935) and Deep Song (1937) were made in response to the Spanish Civil War, while the large group work Chronicle (1936) reflected Martha Graham’s fears for the world. Invited to perform in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, she refused. “Some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany, “ she stated, referring to the fact that many of her group were Jewish. As she had established through her 1929 work Heretic, Martha Graham continued to stand for the rights of theindividual.

In 1938, the Company expanded to include men; Erick Hawkins, who would later become Martha Graham’s husband, was the first. The arrival of the male protagonist permitted Martha Graham to experiment with dramatic narrative in her choreography. In the 1938 American Document, company members portrayed epic American characters, including Native Americans, African-Americans, and Puritans; integrating text taken from historical American documents, Graham asked the critical question, “What is an American?” Between 1938 and 1944 Martha Graham composed a number of works exploring the American condition. Letter to the World (1940) drew its inspiration from the poetry of Emily Dickinson and her experiences as an artist in a conventional Victorian world.

Deaths and Entrances (1943) grew from Martha Graham’s fascination with the three Brontë sisters; the dance is a modern psychological portrait “of women unable to free themselves to follow their hearts’ desires.” Appalachian Spring (1944), Graham’s ode to the pioneer families of this land, is an enduring tribute to the American spirit.

Virginie Mecene, former Principal Dancer of the Martha Graham Dance Company from 1994 to 2007. Ms. Mecene is presently the Director of the Martha Graham School of Contemporary dance and the Artistic Director of Graham II since January 2007. A native of France, she received multi-disciplinary dance training in Paris, and received a CAE by the Fédération Française de la Danse. Se moved to New York in 1988 to study the Martha Graham technique and took part in the reconstruction of two of Ms. Graham’s original works: Panorama and Prelude to Action from Sketches from Chronicle.

Ms. Mecene was invited to join the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1994 and toured around the world performing many pieces of the repertoire. She has been a regisseur for the Martha Graham Resources, restaging several pieces of the repertoire in different Universities of America including Harvard Dance Comapany in Cambridge, The University of The Arts in Philadelphia, the University of Washington in Seattle, Temple University in Philadelphia and the Fieldston High School in New York.

She has been recently published in the French magazine Danser where her article about the Martha Graham technique was featured.

Ms. Mecene is a guest teacher at the Alvin Ailey School and has served as a Lecturer at Barnard College, NY. She is a guest teacher at the Studio Harmonic, Paris and was invited to teach at the Centre National de la Dance, Paris.

Ms. Mecene was invited to choreograph and teach for the Joffrey Midwest Workshop, Michigan; L’opera Ballet de Metz, France; the Singapore Dance Ensemble, Singapore; the EFSD (Emergency Fund for Student Dancers), NY.; the DUMBO Dance Festival, NY.; Cool New York Festival and the Martha Graham Dance Ensemble.

Ms. Mecene has also been a member of the Buglisi/Foreman Dance Company since their beginning in 1994, the Pearl Lang Dance Theater, Battery Dance Company and others.