It's true to say that we all go through some form of rebellion during our lives. However, few of us are ever brave enough or self-confident enough to passionately follow our individual cause nor have good reason to make this the subject of our lives' work. Moreover, from those who bravely do, even fewer manage to penetrate and render any form of change in the world that sparked them to rebel in the first place. Nevertheless, there are those who vehemently pursue their cause and, over time, are successful in gaining acclaim for their radical, fresh and innovative ideologies. In fact, such radical thinkers can powerfully inject new life into stale institutions and transform the closed thinking minds of the bland lemmings that so diligently subscribe, without any question, to the ideologies of such institutionalized worlds.

When thinking about such pioneering individuals of the art world, we often cast our minds to the best known or perhaps most obvious examples — the geometric lines and shapes and heavy, often dream-like colours of a Picasso masterpiece or maybe the uneven rhythms and clash between discord and harmony of a Stravinsky symphony. There are really many that immediately spring to mind; yet one woman who often bypasses the thoughts of many art lovers is Martha Graham (1894-1991) whose work in the field of movement and expression radically changed the traditional and elite face of the dance world.

New York has always been dubbed as an artistic hub and indeed, with great merit; yet the New York that Graham lived in around 1930 was suffering — like the rest of the world — from what is now recognized as The Great Depression. Worldwide economic instability gave way to poverty, unemployment and deflation. New York, with its high level of immigrants and unskilled workers, was hit hard. And Graham never ignored this. Instead, she embraced the turmoil of the social climate in which she found herself and expressed this in the content and aesthetic of the dances that she began to choreograph.

New York was and always will be famous for its Broadway Shows, Theatrical Reviews and its love of theater and dance as a form of spectacle and entertainment; yet for Graham, such forms of theater were merely an escape for a select few from the harsh realities of the world that surrounded them. Graham began to dance with the ferociousness, pain and anguish that she saw in the faces of the people that surrounded her in the streets of New York City. She wanted dance (an art form considered to express feeling and evoke emotion like no other) to speak the truth.

One of her most noted pieces is "Steps in the Street" (1936, a small section from a much larger work entitled Chronicle) which dances out the pain, agony and helplessness felt by the innocent people of New York during The Great Depression. A chorus of 12 women who wear long black dresses that fit tightly around the torso dances the piece. The stage is simply a black box. The chorus of dancers, in unison, all grind around the stage with angular arms, cupped hands and every step they take is imbued with a strong downward pull of weight, the heel of the foot stabbing the floor beneath it. However, the most crucial element that made Graham's aesthetic movement contrast every notion identified with dance was her contraction and release — a deep exhalation of air initiated in the pelvis which causes every part of the body to contract and contort that is contrasted by the relief of the release, a deep inhalation that refuels and restores every muscle in the body back to normal. This piece danced the anguish of the helpless individual trapped in a collective and seemingly endless spiral of depression. Everything about Graham's work contradicted any perceptions or ideas as to what dance could be at that time. It wasn't ballet. It wasn't musical theater. It wasn't cabaret. So, what was it?

Graham, like any other artist, was not without her critics and for many, many years people failed to understand exactly where she was coming from. In retrospect, almost twenty years after her death, dance now exists as an art form where freedom of expression within the body (perhaps the most telling and useful tool we have) is studied academically, performed around the world and above all, celebrated.

What is so radical about Graham is that she revealed socio-political truths in her work and by doing so instantly levitated the status of dance from entertainment to art. She dared to confront reality and subsequently forced all those who saw her dances to do the same. A problem is never solved if it's ignored! People who saw Graham's dances were not confronted with characters existing only in the untouchable world of myth and fantasy. They were confronted with themselves and their situations. Graham created dance about the people, for the people.

What I admire about Graham is that she was not scared to follow her own path. She did not subscribe to the institution nor take the remarks of her critics to heart and thus she paved the way for many more to do the same. If art in any form — be it acting, filmmaking or dance — becomes stale, then quite simply we have lost our incredible ability as human beings to innovate, create and push the art world into new directions. Artistic integrity comes from originality and originality comes from a desire to go against what has already been done.

Graham never intended to be a rebel but by doing so, she became an innovator in her chosen field. Sometimes we need to rebel if we are to gain credit for our artistic endeavors. In following her artistic vision with such passion and choosing to dance her own dance, so to speak, she created a unique and ground-breaking art form that continues to change and grow today and will continue to evolve in the future in ways far beyond anything we could possibly imagine now.


Since graduating from Laban, London in 2005 with a first class honors degree in Dance Theater and the Marion North Award for Outstanding Achievement in Performance, John-Mark Slade has worked with a diverse and varied range of dance and theater companies as a performer, choreographer and teacher. His work in theater includes All For One, a site-specific dance piece for London Design Festival, 'Burning' for Sparetyre Theater Co. and a residency with Inc.Theater Company. He has also danced for Tania Soubry (Luxembourg), Athina Vahla (Greece) and Merete Dam (Denmark) and has modelled for The Camera Club, London. Slade has since expanded his knowledge in dance to the world of fashion, coaching and training models in how to move for the catwalk. This includes work as choreographer and artistic director for fashion shows such as East Meets West, Sex Sells, Fairytales and Fantasies, and The Collection — a showcase of some of London's hottest new design talents held at some of London's biggest nightspots.