Sections 5, 6, 7, and 8: Creating Contemporary American Identities through Movement

Martha Graham’s American Document

Classroom Activities

  • Read aloud excerpts from the text accompanying Martha Graham’s 1938 dance American Document.
  • Discuss what becoming “American” might mean for immigrants arriving in the United States, in the past and in the present. 
  • Ask students to comment on the different perspective of the First and Second Episodes.
  • Free write a response (5 minutes) to the American Document text, asking students to pay particular attention to their experiences of becoming “American.” How do they identify themselves as Americans? Does the history present in American Document resonate with them?  List documents, events, attitudes, social and cultural practices such as holidays, material goods and the like that contribute to that identity. Do they know people who have come to America as immigrants?  What about their own families? Discuss their experiences.

Movement Experience

  • Students break into groups of four or five and share the movement that they have learned as Assignment from the previous class, based upon their own cultural identity.
  • Students teach their movement phrases to the other members of the group and discuss how the movement phrases relate to their sense of identity. 
  • Students share the ideas created during free-writing. Does anything in the writings suggest movements or text that might contribute to a dance about American identities? 

Possible Assignments

  • Keeping in mind the lists created during free-writing and discussion during your in class work, find text that defines your “American-ness.”  This might include excerpts from documents such as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, advertising slogans, poetry, and excerpts from novels and speeches.
  • Read Mona in the Promised Land or another novel dealing with identity and the immigrant experience.
  • Students might research and analyze any of the documents from the text of American Document.The full text of American Document is available in Needham, Maureen ed., I See America Dancing, 206 – 215.