American Icon: Appalachian Spring

In the summer of 1942, Aaron Copland accepted a commission to write the score for a new dance by modernist innovator Martha Graham. Their now-legendary ballet, Appalachian Spring, looks at the tension between community and individualism through the story of a bride and groom in a straitlaced frontier town — complete with a revivalist preacher and his cult-like followers. Jocelyn Gonzales produced this installment of our Peabody Award-winning series American Icons.