The Difference Between Martha Graham's Facial Expressions, Costume And Movement?

Martha Graham is an American dancer and choreographer who is famous for embodying lamentation in her work. Lamentation means to express grief or sorrow passionately and that is what Graham expressed in her dances. She showed it very effectively through her facial expressions, costume and movement.

Graham embodies grief by using facial expression that look as if she is extremely upset about something. She doesn’t show any signs of happiness, the whole time her facial expressions have a sense of negativity and sadness. Throughout the video she makes you feel sympathetic and sorrowful towards her. At one point in the video she scrunches up her face while frowning and looking up with her hands together as if she is begging to someone or begging for something. In the beginning her face is still and neutral then it slowly starts to express more grief and look more miserable, symbolizing that as time goes on many people become more depressed about the unhappy feeling they feel. They start to feel guilty at some stages so they might beg for the pain of being so depressed to go away. A lot of people

Her movements a very angular and repeated. She continuously rocked from side to side and had very sudden, sporadic movements. Grief isn’t an easy thing to experience so making her movements like that had a purpose. The movements play a big role in making people feel sadness and grief. The movements are very unusual and abnormal, people don’t think of Lamentation when they hear the word “dance”, dance usually flows beautifully but this dance doesn’t. The angular shapes create an uncomfortable feeling just like grief does. At one point in the dance she has her hands pressed together as she looks up as if she is begging, then she suddenly drops her weight towards the ground just an inch as if she is weak and can’t hold herself up. The feeling you get when this happens makes you feel the grief she