Martha Graham is the doodle dancer on Google today

Today's Google doodle is strictly coming dancing, with an animation celebrating the moves of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham. Graham, who would have been 117 today, was a Pittsburgh-born hoofer and choreographer credited with inventing a new language of modern dance.

She's no relation to our own Flora Graham, who also invents a new language of dance every time she hits the dancefloor. What that language is we're not sure, as it's certainly not one we can understand.

Martha Graham was a pioneer of contemporary dance in a career that lasted from 1926 to 1970, dancing to the ripe old age of 75 and continuing to choreograph new and revived ballets until her death in 1991, aged 96.

Graham was the first dancer ever to perform at the White House, was named by Time magazine as the "Dancer of the Century", and taught students including Madonna and Woody Allen.

She resisted recordings of her ballets, believing they should exist only on the stage, but did appear in a number of short films and series of photographs. She was also the subject of docudrama Ghostlight, starring dancer Richard Move as Graham and Blondie legend Debbie Harry as herself.

Here's Graham in action in Lamentation, a portrait of a grieving woman described by one critic as "both a piece about the emotion of grief and a visual homage to contemporary architecture". We'd like to see Alesha Dixon manage that combination...

We've had a lot of fun with the Google doodle lately, with a cast of Mr Men and Little Miss characters celebrating the birthday of Roger Hargreaves earlier this week. Previous doodles have commemorated steam-age antics, the Bunsen burner and the first man in space.