Martha Graham in Frontier: A weirdly intense dance solo

Should you watch Frontier? If you have ten minutes and want to feel like your brain is being scrubbed clean, then yeah. Absolutely.

This isn’t a movie for people who need dialogue or, like, a character arc that moves from A to B. It is pure movement. If you hate abstract art or think dance is just people jumping around, you’ll probably find this boring. But honestly? That’s your loss.

The whole thing is just Martha Graham. She’s alone in this space with some ropes, and the way she uses them to frame the stage is just… man. It’s so simple but it makes the space feel massive. You keep waiting for the camera to cut to a wide shot or show you something else, but it doesn't. It just stays on her.

It reminds me a bit of the starkness in The Bat, though obviously in a completely different genre. There’s a similar feeling of being trapped in a frame, but here it’s self-imposed. It’s tight. It’s focused.

There’s this one moment where she looks off-screen and the lighting just hits her face in this really jagged way. It’s not smooth. It looks like she’s fighting the air itself. You can tell she’s exhausted, but she doesn't stop. It makes you feel lazy just sitting on your couch with a lukewarm coffee.

The music by Louis Horst is weird. It’s sharp. It doesn’t try to be pretty. It sounds like someone hitting a piece of metal with a stick, and it actually works perfectly with the way she jerks her shoulders. 💃

I don’t know. It’s not really a "movie" in the way Taming the West is. It’s more like a document of someone doing something impossible for a few minutes. I found myself hitting rewind just to see how she held her hands during that one turn. I still don't get it.

It’s short enough that you don't have to commit your whole life to it. Just watch it once. Don't look at your phone. Just watch the way the ropes move when she pulls them. It’s weirdly hypnotic.

• The ropes are doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
• Graham’s posture makes me want to go to a chiropractor immediately.
• The silence between the music cues is actually louder than the music itself.

It’s not perfect. Sometimes the camera feels like it’s struggling to keep up with how fast she changes directions. But that just makes it feel more real, I guess. It’s not a polished studio product. It’s just someone dancing until they drop. 🎞️