Martha Graham and George Balanchine

Martha Graham and George Balanchine
Notions of knowledge,certainty and body positivism.
I've really enjoyed looking at these two incredible people who had such a huge impact on American dance and also dance worldwide. They came from very different perspectives in Graham wanting to dance in an expressive way that wasn't controlled by what she saw as the confines of Ballet technique. Balanchine came from a very classical  view point and wanted to to see this ballet technique developed. Graham created a movemnet vocabulary for the human body to express itself whereas Balanchine used the existing ballet vocabulary to express. I beleieve both had an uderstanding that their bodies were able to express and learn through movement often by-passing their brains. Balanchine is quoted as saying, "Don't think, dear, do!".

Graham is quoted as saying "I wanted to begin not with characters or ideas, but with movements... I wanted significant movement. I wanted it to be fraught with inner meaning, with excitement and surge." Balanchine also often started with movements rather than characters and was the first to develop a full length ballet without story line in "Jewels".

Whilst Graham wanted to impact political and social views in society with dance that reflected much of this, Balanchine wanted to create an audience that could appreciate the Arts in all their 'beauty'. They both were challenging the world around them but in very different ways. Graham's way was far more raw and wanted to get to the heart of issues whereas Balanchine wanted to create culture in America and it to be American not European.

They both believed that the body was an instrument to be used to communicate experience as action. Not necessarily stories but they were able to show the experience they had of life through the body and therefore understood the body could gain knowledge through experience. Therefore they both must have beleieved in embodiment.