Grace Cornell

Grace Cornell Graff (1906–1992) was an American ballet and modern dancer who performed on Broadway and built a career spanning concert stages in Europe and the United States. Born in Chicago, Illinois, she began formal dance training in 1923 under Adolph Bolm in her hometown. Her early professional work took her abroad, where she made her solo concert debut at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and toured Western Europe with Bolm's company during the late 1920s. In the fall of 1928, Cornell returned to the United States and made her American debut at the Booth Theater in New York City, appearing alongside dancer Frank Parker.

Her Broadway career ran from 1926 to 1932 and included appearances in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Manhattan Varieties. During the same period, Cornell pursued advanced training in modern dance, studying from 1929 to 1931 with Rudolf von Laban in Berlin, Germany, while also working with Martha Graham's dance group in New York City. It was in Berlin that she met Kurt Graff, with whom she began performing as a professional duo.

Cornell and Graff departed Germany in 1932 to tour the United States together, following that engagement with a European tour from 1932 to 1933. The two married in 1934. The following year, they founded the Little Concert House in Chicago, Illinois, which served simultaneously as a dance theater, studio, and residence. In 1936, they established Graff Ballet, a company whose repertoire drew on both ballet and modern dance.

In the late 1940s, the Graffs relocated to Hopkinton, New Hampshire, where they converted a colonial property into an artists' colony called Meadow Hearth Theatre Art Center. The facility included an outdoor theater, dance studios, and residential buildings. Through the 1950s, the Graffs used the center to produce summer dance festivals, concerts, and plays, and offered modern and square dance instruction to the public. Grace Cornell Graff died in 1992 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her papers from the 1910s through 1992 are held by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.