75
Celebrating the 75th Anniversary
of the premiere of
Appalachian Spring
October 30, 1944
Photo credit (left): Martha Graham, May O'Donnell, Yuriko, and Pearl Lang in Appalachian Spring. Photograph by Arnold Eagle, 1944. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources.
Photo credit (right): Marjorie Mazia, Merce Cunningham, Yuriko, and Pearl Lang in Appalachian Spring. Photograph by Arnold Eagle, 1944. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc.
I
have used quotations from the Bible, not in any religious sense
so much as in a poetic sense. As the words finish, the congregation
begins to dance very quietly but ecstatically. This could have the
feeling of either a Shaker meeting where the movement is strange and
ordered and possessed or it could have the feeling of a negro church
with the lyric ecstasy of the spiritual about it. I use this to give again
the American feeling of place. There are so many cults here. There is
something in the very soil that seems to make them flourish. There are
over two hundred small ones in America. While it will not have a
specifically religious quality, there will be something evoked of that
aspect of American life.
–– Martha Graham to Aaron Copland
