Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Martha Graham: the early years, 1973.

Author

Graham, Martha

Publication

1973

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Terry, Walter

Description

1 sound disc (approximately one hour and one minute): digital; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

• Tracks 1- 6 (approximately 26 minutes). [Begins abruptly.] Martha Graham speaks with Walter Terry about her resolving to become a dancer upon seeing Ruth St. Denis perform in Los Angeles; her desire to choreograph arising after she had exhausted her repertory; various anecdotes about her family and her childhood; the Denishawn-influenced dances she created for the [Greenwich Village] Follies; her first solo, Ted Shawn's Serenata Morisca; briefly, teaching at the Eastman School [of Music]; her emergence from the influence of the Denishawn style.
• Tracks 7 - 13 (approximately 31 minutes). Martha Graham continues to speak with Walter Terry about her choreography beginning with her development of the contraction and release; her thoughts on the relationship between movement and words; her work Dark meadows, in particular the puzzled response of the audience; her tendency to focus on the individual in her work; loneliness and fear of death as a powerful motivating factor in the creative process [at approximately 2:57 into track 9 and occasionally afterward, a voice or voices can be heard occasionally, on unrelated subjects]; the elasticity of time in Graham's works; the universal themes in her work, as for example in Clytemnestra; American themes taken from the experience of her own pioneer ancestors; her hopes regarding the influence of her own work [ends abruptly as Terry begins speaking about Graham's influence on theater more generally].
• Track 14 (approximately 4 minutes). [The first approximately 45 seconds consists of brief comments by Walter Terry regarding the working of the tape recorder followed by very brief exchanges with Graham and with a person addressed as "Manuel"; the remaining portion of the recording, which was edited to remove the blank segments, contains an approximately two-minute conversation between Terry and an unidentified woman about the Sapphic odes.]

Donor/Sponsor

Gift of Walter Terry

Subject

• Graham, Martha
• Audiotapes > Graham, M

Note

• Interview with Martha Graham conducted by Walter Terry in 1973. The location of the interview is not identified.
• Sound quality is fair to poor. There is a significant continual extraneous hiss, but the speakers' voices are usually intelligible. In addition, beginning at approximately three minutes into track 9 of the recording, voices from what sounds like an unrelated conversation or recorded voice-overs can occasionally be heard.

Funding (note)

• The conservation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Call Number

*MGZTL 4-807

OCLC

83646506

Author

Graham, Martha, interviewee.

Title

Interview with Martha Graham: the early years, 1973.

Production

1973

Type of Content

spoken word

Type of Medium

audio

Type of Carrier

audio disc

Event

Recorded by Walter Terry 1973

Funding

The conservation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Original Version

Original format: two sound cassettes (approximately one hour and 28 minutes); 1 7/8 ips. originally recorded in 1973; transferred to wav file and compact disc formats in 2013. With the exception of a brief conversation between Terry and an unidentified female, and a few recording instructions, the last (approximately) 29 minutes of the recording are blank. After preservation and transfer into wav and compact disc formats by the vendor, these formats were edited at the Library for the Performing Arts to remove the blank segments.

Local Note

Former classmark: *MGZTC 3-807

Added Author

Terry, Walter, interviewer.

Terry, Walter, donor

Research Call Number

*MGZTL 4-807