Martha Graham was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 11, 1894 to George and Jane Beers Graham, as one of their three daughters. Martha grew up in a family with a father as a doctor and Mother as a housewife. When she was ten years old, the family moved to California because one of her sisters got breathing problems and the weather was better there for her health. Graham became interested in studying dance after she saw Ruth St. Denis perform in Los Angeles, California, in 1914. Her parents did not care much about the thought of her becoming a dancer. Graham's father died in 1914, after which she felt free to shadow her dream. After graduating from Cumnock, she enrolled in the Denishawn Studio, a dancing school functioned by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. Graham had never had a dance lesson up to that point, but the small, quiet, shy, hardworking girl impressed Shawn and toured with his group in a production of “Xochitl,” based on an Indian legend. In 1923 Graham left the company to do two years of solo dancing for the Greenwich Village Follies.