Exploring Dance The Martha Graham Dance Company at 100 What Martha’s Heroines Mean to Us Today
Marina Harss, dance writer
In 1926, Martha Graham founded her independent dance company and school in New York City, launching a creative life that would span nearly seven decades and transform the language of modern dance. Through a radical approach to movement, Graham developed works that explored psychological depth, myth, literature and the inner lives of women with unprecedented intensity. As the Martha Graham Dance Company marked its centennial in April 2026, Marina Harss reflects on how Graham changed our understanding of what dance could express — and why the emotional, intellectual and physical force of her choreography continues to resonate with audiences today.
This presentation is part of Marina Harss' Exploring Dance series.
Marina Harss
Marina Harss
Marina Harss is a dance writer based in New York City, with her work featured in prominent publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, Ballet Review, Dance Europe, Tanz and Dance Magazine. In 2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published her critical biography of choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet.
Harss has been recognized with the Robert and Ina Caro Research and Travel Fellowship, was a fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts in 2019 and is currently a fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Beyond writing, she has moderated and conducted interviews at public forums on dance, both live and online, at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum, the National Arts Club and the New York Public Library.
In addition to her contributions to dance literature, Harss is an award-winning literary translator, translating fiction and nonfiction from French, Italian and Spanish. Her translations include works by Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dino Buzzatti, Juan Forn and Élisabeth Gille. In 2012, she received the French-American Foundation translation prize for her translation of Gille’s Le Mirador.
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