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Rebellion is a part of human nature. It is something that everyone goes through at some point in their life. Very few people can say that their rebellion caused a revolution.

There are some people who take the world that they live in and turn it on its ear. They do not settle for has always been, but seek out ways to change the world that they live in. These are the people that blaze a trail for those who will come behind them.

In the art world the greatest artists are the ones who have brought about a revolution with their innovative thinking. Artists like Picasso changed the way we see the world. Pollock changed the way that we think that art is supposed to look like. And Martha Graham brought the world of dance out of the realm of entertainment and into the world of art.

Martha Graham lived in New York City during the 1930′s. As you can imagine devastating poverty and hopelessness surrounded her. It was her thought that the stage productions that were on Broadway were nothing more than a way for some in society to escape the reality of the stark conditions of their city. Instead of creating more of the same, Graham incorporated the turmoil and hopelessness into the dances that she created.

One of her dance pieces has been noted for its stark ability to show the anguish of poverty with the movements of the dance. The piece is called “Steps in the Streets” which is actually a small part of a larger work. The dance is performed by twelve women who are all dressed in black dresses.

When you watch this dance you will see the twelve women in their long dresses grinding and gyrating around the stage in unison as they display the collective human form dragged down by the spiral of depression. The dance was unique for the time period and no one knew how to classify it or even what to call it. It was like no other dance performance at the time.

There were of course critics of Grahams work mostly because it was so misunderstood. Because her dance was so different than anything else that existed it took many years before it could be appreciated. Today, almost twenty years after Martha Graham died, we see dance as an art form that can be an expression that uses the body to communicate.

Martha Graham is an innovator in the world of dance because she used her medium to express the social situation and political truths of her time. Dance became, because of Graham, something more than just entertainment. It entered the realm of art.

Martha Graham was a woman who was unafraid to perform her art the way that she felt it should be performed and not what was expected from the audience. She was a pioneer who never cared what the critics thought of her work, but performed it because she was passionate about her art. This is the true meaning of artistic integrity.

It takes a brave few to push the envelope in the art world and move beyond what is currently the trend. It is the trend setters and the artists that step over boundaries and move their art forward without regard for their reputation or material wealth that we remember for centuries. No matter what the medium that is used, it takes innovation and forward thinking artists to continue to push the limits of what we perceive as art. Martha Graham is one of these artists.

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