Section 1 and 2: The Search for Identity through Movement

Martha Graham in Fronteir

Note: Throughout this Section, students need an introductory understanding of American history from roughly 1850 to 1950, with special emphasis on Western Expansion, the Depression, and World War II. The experiences of immigrants, African Americans, and women during these periods are especially important.

1.) Martha Graham’s Frontier

  1. Ask students to discuss what the term “frontier” means to them and ask them to create their own lists of associations and definitions for the word. CHANGE TO READ definitions and associations.
  2. After viewing Martha Graham’s Frontier and using reading the Movement Analysis Worksheet, have students identify spatial patterns, i.e. circular, rectangular, lines at right angles. Once students can confidently identify the patterns in space, ask them to identify body shapes and different movement qualities, i.e. light/strong, fast/slow, direct/indirect. Student may also want to read the following from Ecologies of Beauty section of this Website: "Words for Movement," Sklar, D. "Movement Observation Guidelines," and Siegel, M. (1991). "Rethinking Movement Analysis". Unpublished manuscript used with author's permission (excerpt). For more information about Movement Analysis, student should read: “Words for Movement,” Sklar, D. “Movement Observation Guidelines,” and Siegel, M. (1991). “Rethinking Movement Analysis”. Unpublished manuscript used with author's permission (excerpt).
  3. Students describe the movements they see using vocabulary from the Movement Analysis Worksheet and “Words for Movement.”

Discussion questions

  • What are the movement themes (repeated gestures, locomotor movements) in Frontier?
  • What are the repeated spatial patterns and movement qualities (for example, strong movement) in Frontier?
  • What traits does the woman in Frontier seem to have?
  • How does the dance relate to America’s Westward Expansion?
  • Why might these ideas about being American have resonated within the cultural agendas that defined 1930s America? 
  • How might the dance have resonated with those concerned about American economic and agricultural issues?
    • Martha Graham in Fronteir
  • How does the Frontier woman resonate with our ideas about American women in the 1930s?  With contemporary ideas about women?
  • Ask students to compare the definitions and associations list they created at the beginning of the class, based on their interpretation of the concept of the frontier, to their present understanding.
  • Can you think of other ways that dance and movement might create a distinctive national or ethnic identity?

Assignment

  • Read the chapter on Pearl Primus from African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, Langston Hughes’s poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers,and Pearl Primus’s My Statement.  Write down ideas about what life might have been like for Primus growing up in the United States in the 1930s. If you need to, do a little research about America in the 1930s, especially the Harlem Renaissance.
  • Students might also read Willa Cather’s  My Antonia or another classic text dealing with the American frontier experience.