Patricia Wilde, former artistic director of the Pittsburgh Ballet, was a very good friend of dancer Martha Graham.  Warhol's portrait of Graham reminds her of Graham's technique, which she studied as a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet.
 

Martha was one of the most photogenic dancers I've ever known…she was drama incarnate.  She created her own costumes, she sewed them—she did it all.  She was the first to use tubular material, and her early solo in a shroud of tubular material was amazing.

When you look at the Warhol portrait you see the drama is there—you see how her hands are cupped.  These things have so much meaning and detail in Graham's technique and choreography. 

I really knew her quite well. She did a section of a work called Episodes for the New York City Ballet (George Balanchine did the second section), and I told her I wanted to take some classes with her at her school.  She gave me a whole list of principal dancers to work with. 

As a teacher she was very demanding and hard, but she had a wonderful way of describing what she wanted to get from you—she could make you visualize the "feeling of the moment."  After I once worked with one of her principal dancers for about three hours, she said to me, "You're ready for the 'falls.'"  I worked on it on one side, and told her that I needed to do it on the other side—the right side.  She said, "What, don't you know that there are no falls to the right?"  Martha had an entire philosophy, and no one had explained this rule to me.

She was a great dog lover.  I had a poodle I took with me to the theater before performances, and she loved it.  She always petted it…to bring good luck.