Martha Graham mother of modern dance

Animated Google Doodle Honors 117th Birthday of Dancer Martha Graham.

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 — April 1, 1991) was an American dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Stravinsky had on music, Picasso had on the visual arts, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.


She danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer ever to perform at The White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the USA: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.

Martha Graham, the U.S. choreographer who helped to pioneer modern dance, would have been 117 today.


And to mark the anniversary, she has been celebrated by Google's third doodle of the month so far, which is another animated one.

The doodle shows dancers performing a series of flowing, emphatic Graham-esque moves. The whirling trails of their limbs spell out the six letters of the search engine's name.


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