Martha Graham: A Dancer's Life Tapa dura - 1998

"The subjects of Freedman's photo biographies range from his 1988 Newbery Medal-winning Lincoln and his two Newbery Honor Books, Eleanor Roosevelt (1993) and The Wright Brothers (1991), which was also Booklist's Top of the List for youth nonfiction, to his stirring The Life and Death of Crazy Horse, a 1996 Booklist Editors' Choice. This is his first book about an artist, and, as always, he writes with eloquence and grace about the private person and her revolutionary public role. Martha Graham herself said that her life was her work, as dancer, teacher, and choreographer; and Freedman's focus is on how she created a thrilling new modern dance language that connected movement with emotion, how she made visible "all those feelings that you have inside you that you can't put words to." He connects her artistic breakthroughs with the social and cultural history of her time, the political and artistic rebellion that challenged the role of women and the formality of ballet. In discussing individual dances, he shows how her themes of the outsider and the lonely rebel changed to complex psychological portraits of people like Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson. The electrifying black-and-white photographs are an integral part of every chapter: you read Freedman's lyrical description of a performance and feel you must see a picture of it; turn the page, and there is a photo of Graham in flaming action. Full documentation in chapter notes at the back shows the routes of Freedman's research: books, articles, and tapes that readers can search out, and also his own extensive personal interviews with those who knew and worked with Graham. Another great YA title that will appeal to adults as much as to teens." Booklist, ALA

"Illustrated with stunning black-and-white photographs, this book deserves not only a place in the reading repertoire of those who desire to dance, but in the hands of all young people." NATE-Language Arts