=== Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life === This passage is adapted from the book Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life by Russell Freedman (©1998 by Russell Freedman). Denishawn refers to the Denishawn School of Dancing, where Graham was once a student. In 1926, Martha Graham’s first company, billed as “Martha Graham and Dance Group,” made its debut. Most of the dances, with titles like The Three Gopi Maidens and Maid with the Flaxen Hair, were reminiscent of her Denishawn days, though there were sparks of freshness and originality. Newspaper critics found Martha and her trio of dancers “decorative, pretty and undisturbing.” Graham herself would later describe those early dances as “childish things, dreadful.” Martha and her fellow “modern” dancers were often the butt of ridicule and hostile jokes. Women in America had won the right to vote only a few years earlier, in 1920, and many people were still uncomfortable with the image of the “new woman” who sought a career, spoke out on social issues, and went knowledgeably to the polls. It was all right to be a high-kicking, scantily clad chorus girl, but a woman who ran a dance company and created works that commented on war, poverty, and intolerance seemed unnatural and suspicious. In 1927 she stunned her audience with a short solo called Revolt, a dance that was anything but “decorative, pretty and undisturbing.” Revolt was Martha’s first dance of social protest, a stark, forceful comment on injustice and the outraged human spirit. Martha’s work was so startlingly different, people did not always know how to react. After one of her early recitals, a friend from her Denishawn days went backstage and said, “Martha, dear, how long do you expect to keep up this dreadful dancing?” “As long as I have an audience,” Martha replied. Graham’s last complete work, composed when she was ninety-six years old, is one of her most joyful. Maple Leaf Rag, a self-mocking commentary on human foibles and on her own legend, is set to the ragtime tunes of Scott Joplin.