75
Celebrating the 75th Anniversary
of the premiere of
Appalachian Spring
October 30, 1944
Photo credit: Martha Graham and May O'Donnell in Appalachian Spring. Photograph by Cris Alexander, circa 1944. Courtesy of Martha Graham Resources.
F
rom within the house comes the DAUGHTER. She is
the daughter of this country. She has a strength that is
feminine. There is a great eagerness and yet great steadiness
about her and she loves and plays with great completeness. She is
what we like to think of when we think of the American woman.
There follows a solo for the DAUGHTER. It has a joyous quality
yet it is deeply serious with a kind of greeting to new place. At
times there is almost a Biblical quality about it; it is a little like a
joyous psalm. It has an electric eagerness about it, an eagerness
for destiny that is the unconscious partner of youth.
–– Martha Graham to Aaron Copland