Lamentation

"Lamentation, my dance of 1930, is a solo piece in which I wear a long tube of material to indicate the tragedy that obsesses the body, the ability to stretch inside your own skin, to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief which is honorable and universal." -Martha Graham Blood Memory 

• First performed on January 8th, 1930 at the New York's Maxine Elliot's Theatre
• Was able to finally make a mother cry who watched her son be killed by a truck
• Important choreographic elements: grieving emotion, tubular, skin-like fabric, contraction and release, and staccato thrasing