Course (ballet)
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Course was a modern dance work choreographed by Martha Graham to music by George Antheil. The piece sometimes appeared on programs as Course: One in Red; Three in Green; Two in Blue; Two in Red.[1] It premiered on February 10, 1935, at the Guild Theatre in New York City. The ballet was performed by Martha Graham and Group, the forerunner to the Martha Graham Dance Company.[2]
Martha Graham was an American dancer and choreographer who became an influential figure in modern dance. She was born on May 11, 1894, in Pittsburgh and later moved with her family to Los Angeles. Graham did not begin studying dance until she was in her late teens, but she quickly became dedicated to the art form. She studied at the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, where she trained under Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. After leaving Denishawn, Graham began developing her own style of dance that focused on expressing deep emotions and human experiences. She is also known as the "Mother of Modern Dance" for pioneering a new, highly expressive, and codified technique characterized by "contraction and release," grounded, angular movements, and intense emotional expression. Her style often focused on the torso, using breathing and spiraling to convey raw, primal human emotion, breaking away from classical ballet's lighter, gravity-defying form.She later founded the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1926, which became an important modern dance company.[3]
Structure and cast
In the debut performance, Graham appeared in the solo One in Red. Bonnie Bird, Lil Liandre and May O'Donnell performed Three in Green. Sophie Maslow and Dorothy Bird danced Two in Blue; Anna Sokolow and Lily Melman, Two in Red. Unlike much of Graham's oeuvre, Course was upbeat and full of youthful vitality.[4]
The critic Henry Gilfond described the choreography in his review for The Dance Observer. "Miss Graham (One in Red) set the tempo of the composition in a running, light prelude introducing the first impulsive rush of the Group across the stage - lifting, elemental, striding vigor." Three in Green "took up the hurried pace in a grouping of spreading leaps and runs. A second rush across the stage was prelude to the andante Two in Blue,...and the third sweep set a frame for Two in Red,...a closer, tighter movement to maintain the pace for the last thrust of the Group, a repetition of the three segment themes, and the final sustained circular current that moved everything before it in the climax of an urgent, overwhelming statement."[5]