Research on Martha Graham

 

Martha Graham's impact on dance was staggering. Her contributions have transformed the art form, revitalising and expanding dance around the world. In her explorations to emote herself freely and honestly, she has one of the oldest dance companes, Martha Graham Dance Company in America. She has been an inspiration for many such as, Alvin Ailey, Twlya Thwarp, Merce Cunningham and innumerable other performers, actors, artists around the world. 

Dance and Choreography

Martha Graham created a dance technique that became the first significant alternative to the idiom of classical ballet. Her dance language intended to share human emotions and experiences, rather than merely provide decorative displays of graceful movements. Many of her dances feature forceful, angular movements originating in spasms of muscular contraction and release centred in the dancer’s pelvis. These expressive contractions help generate the strong sexual tension that is a feature of so many of Graham’s works. The resulting dance vocabulary is startlingly unlike that of classical ballet in its jagged and angular lines, and its dislocations and distortions that express intensely felt human emotion. Her technique is the most highly developed body-training method in the entire field of modern dance, requiring both unrelenting discipline and prodigious virtuosity.

Key Concepts

Fundamental principles in Graham Technique include contraction and release, opposition, shift of weight and spirals. She has taken natural movement and theatricalised it because the characters are often vibrant and powerful in Graham technique. In her choreography, the torso was the main seat of emotional responses as the movements originated in the solar plexes and then move onto in the limbs The technique is built upon inhalation and exhalation and mainly the muscular contractions and releases. 

 

Research on Matt Mattox

Matt Mattox was a talented chreographer and a gifted dancer who contributed to the evolution of jazz dance in Europe and America.

In the mid 1950's, Mattox was a protégé of Jack Cole ( known as the father of theatrical jazz dance) began to teach jazz classes in New York, using the structure of a ballet class as a model. He codified movements that he learned from Cole, and his work evolved to emphasize an understanding of isolating the body with a keen sense of coordination. He used the word “freestyle” to describe his jazz style because it allows one to make both creative movement and stylistic choices. His technique was more intrecate and it combined the main jazz dance concepts of isolations and propulsive beats with ballet movements. Mattox’s distinctive dancing style originated from a combination of tap, flamenco, ballet, jazz, ethnic and modern dance.

 

Research on House dance 

House dance is a form of social dance primarily to house music, which has its roots in clubs in Chicago and New York. The main elements in house dancing include, 'Footwork', 'Jacking' and 'Lofting'. House dance is often improvised and it emphasizes on fast and complex foot - oriented steps with fluid torso movements, as well as floor work. 

The major source in house dance directly links to the music and the elements with in the music such as, jazz, African, Latin, soul, R&B, funk and hip hop. Another important source involves the people, individuals and their characteristics, ethnicities and origin. House dancing has a great amount of emphasis on subtle rhythms and riffs of the music, to which the footwork follows. This is main thing that distinguishes house dancing from disco before house dance was discovered and current dancing to electronic dance music, as part of rave culture.