Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance

Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance is located in New York City and is the headquarter to the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance and the Martha Graham Dance Company, which is the oldest continually performing dance company in the world.

The center was founded in the 1926 by Martha Graham. Its first headquarters consisted of a small dance studio on Broadway. The center later moved to a two story building at 316 East 63rd Street, New York, right off of 2nd Avenue.

After Martha Graham's death in 1991, the center's true directorial direction was in debate. In her will, Martha Graham left heir Ron Protas as sole proprietor of her dances. For a time, Protas actually attempted to deny the Martha Graham Dance Company the right to perform Graham's work. After years of legal battles, the Martha Graham Dance Company was ruled the true owner of the Graham repertoire .

In 2005, the center was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

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    We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
    Martha Graham (1894–1991)

    You’ve strung your breasts
    with a rattling rope of pearls,
    tied a jangling belt
    around those deadly hips
    and clinking jewelled anklets
    on both your feet.
    So, stupid,
    if you run off to your lover like this,
    banging all these drums,
    then why
    do you shudder with all this fear
    and look up, down;
    in every direction?
    Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.?, Kashmirian king, compiler, author of some of the poems in the anthology which bears his name. translated from the Amaruataka by Martha Ann Selby, vs. 31, Motilal Banarsidass (1983)

    But since Thy loud-tongu’d Blood demands Supplies,
    More from BriareusHands, than Argus Eyes,
    I’ll tune Thy Elegies to Trumpet-sounds,
    And write Thy Epitaph in Blood and Wounds!
    —James Graham Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)

    Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
    About the center of the silent Word.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere.
    Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)

    God be with the times when I
    Cared not a thraneen for what chanced
    So that I had the limbs to try
    Such a dance as there was danced—
    Love is like the lion’s tooth.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)