This blog was expanded from text in SCRC's Spring Exhibition "Showing United states Our Ain Confront": Performing Arts and the Man Experience.

In mid-century America, y'all would be hard-pressed to discover ii dancers more popular than Martha Graham and Maria Tallchief. Both masters of their respective arts, the ii women were trailblazers in the world of trip the light fantastic toe.

Maria Tallchief. New York Urban center Ballet 1959-1960 season plan, 1959. Charles Rodrigues playbill drove, C0184, Box 27, Folder 2
Special Collections Research Center, George Mason Academy libraries.
Martha Graham. Playbill for a performance by modern dancer Martha Graham, 1958. Mary Lavigne programs collection, 2020.009 Special Collections Inquiry Center, George Mason Academy libraries.

Expressing emotion and narrative through movement of the body, or dance, is present in but about every culture on the planet, both in codification and non-codified means. Codified dance, ballet being the most well-known, has risen to the rank of high fine art, with dancers dedicating their lives to perfecting the art form. With the advent of the 20th century, dance began to evolve across codified. Isadora Duncan was a pioneering dancer who rejected technique in favor of freedom of the body, as well as freedom of expression. She is often regarded as the creator of mod dance, which is the yin to ballet's yang. Duncan paved the style for others to pass up the ballet model, and introduce other modes of dance into the mainstream. Martha Graham was one such dancer, who connected to break barriers in Duncan's wake, and arguably surpassed her in renown.

Martha Graham dancing, photographed by Barbara Morgan. Image Source.

Built-in in 1894, Graham pioneered her very own trip the light fantastic mode, known as the Graham technique. According to the Martha Graham Dance Company's website: "Graham created 181 ballets and a trip the light fantastic technique that has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude. Her approach to trip the light fantastic and theater revolutionized the fine art course and her innovative physical vocabulary has irrevocably influenced dance worldwide.

"In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company and schoolhouse, living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, Martha Graham experimented endlessly with basic human move, beginning with the most elemental movements of contraction and release. Using these principles as the foundation for her technique, she built a vocabulary of motion that would 'increase the emotional activeness of the dancer'southward body.' Martha Graham's dancing and choreography exposed the depths of human emotion through movements that were sharp, angular, jagged, and direct." Graham danced well into her seventies, and choreographed into her nineties. She died in 1991 at the age of 96.

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Maria Tallchief was one of the most hitting and talented ballet dancers of the 20th century, and was considered the nearly famous prima ballerina in mid-century America. Tallchief was of Osage and Scots-Irish descent, marking her the first Native American ballet dancer to reach such renown. However, it was Maria herself who said "In a higher place all, I wanted to be appreciated every bit a prima ballerina who happened to exist a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina." Tallchief constitute a creative home for iii decades with the New York City Ballet, and collaborated to much success with its founder and choreographer George Balanchine. The lead role in Balanchine'due south version of the ballet The Firebird was created for Tallchief, who was known for her perfect technique, besides as her intense passion and athleticism when dancing. In her New York Times obituary, her colleague Jacques D'Amboise, "who was a 15-yr-old corps dancer in Balanchine's 'Firebird' before becoming one of City Ballet'due south stars, compared Ms. Tallchief to two of the century's greatest ballerinas: Galina Ulanova of the Soviet Matrimony and Margot Fonteyn of Corking United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.

Maria Tallchief dancing in Firebird costume. Prototype source.

"'When you thought of Russian ballet, information technology was Ulanova,' he said an interview on Friday. 'With English ballet, information technology was Fonteyn. For American ballet, it was Tallchief. She was g in the grandest manner.'" Tallchief would continue to constitute the Chicago City Ballet in 1981, and continued performing and teaching ballet until her expiry in 2013.

"Showing United states Our Ain Confront": Performing Arts and the Human Experience will exist on display until May 2020 in Fenwick Library, 2FL.

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