Being with Martha in rehearsal was always an incredible adventure.

In 1984, she finally agreed to do "Rite of Spring."

She didn't want to tell anybody she was choreographing to "The Rite of Spring," to Stravinsky's music.

She was terrified to use that music, because she knew that everyone was going to be coming to the theater on opening night to see if her choreography could stand up to it.

And this was a time in the studio that was absolutely explosive.

She was 90.

One night when we couldn't seem to do anything right, and so she just stopped the rehearsal and she said, I hope you all die.

[laughs] She was putting her fear into us.

[chatter] I have based everything that I have done on the pulsation of life, which is to me the pulsation of breath.

Every time you breathe life in or expel it, it is a release or a contraction.

It is that basic to the body.

You are born with these two movements and you keep them both until you die.

She based everything on breath.

It's something that you can think, oh, easy.

So natural.

But it's very, very complicated to achieve, to understand how deep a contraction could be, how deep a release could be, where your center is.

That's where Graham is all about, to me, contraction, release and back.

It's beautiful.

[music playing] "Rite of Spring," It's a presentation a very primitive ritual.

[music playing] It's a community coming together to perform this ritual of sacrificing a virgin every year to bring forth a fertile spring.

[music playing]