The world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company has begun the second season of GRAHAM100, a three-season 100th anniversary celebration of Martha Graham and her Company’s legacy. Curated under the theme Dances of the Mind, the 2024-25 season focuses on Graham’s psychological works, multifaceted women characters, and longtime artistic partnership with renowned visual artist Isamu Noguchi.
The Company’s 2024-25 touring kicked off in July with performances in 18 cities across the U.S. and a five-city tour in Spain. The popular Graham Studio Series returns, offering audiences a behind-the-scenes look at the Company in the intimate setting of the Martha Graham Studio Theater. The studio series features a range of programs from showings of new works-in-progress to GrahamDeconstructed events and open rehearsals, all followed by discussions with the Company and special guests.
“Our GRAHAM100 celebration is ever-expanding as we launch into the second season of our three-year centennial,” said Artistic Director Janet Eilber. “The Company is segueing from Martha’s Americana of the 1930s to her groundbreaking psychological works of the ’40s and ’50s. Using characters such as Emily Brontë, Medea and Clytemnestra, Martha transformed the patriarchal playbook by illuminating and empowering the women of these stories. Our modernist masterworks will be in conversation with our new works by Jamar Roberts, Hofesh Shechter, and Baye & Asa. Meanwhile, we’re thrilled that many GRAHAM100 partners around the world — from schools to professional companies — will be dancing Graham classics and creating new Lamentation Variations in celebration of the lasting influence of our historic legacy.”
Graham masterworks to be presented on tour throughout the season include Cave of the Heart (1946), Errand into the Maze (1947), Immediate Tragedy (1937), Appalachian Spring (1944), Dark Meadow Suite (1946) and Diversion of Angels (1948). These classics will be presented alongside Jamar Roberts’s powerful We the People featuring music by Grammy-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens. Called a “bracingly moving…and electrifying new protest dance” by Fjord, the work premiered as part of the Company’s American Legacies season at New York City Center in April 2024. Hofesh Shechter’s thrilling and pulsating CAVE, with an electronic score by Shechter and German duo Âme, will also be presented. CAVE premiered as part of the Company’s season at City Center in 2022.
The Company’s New York season in the spring will feature 10 works across three programs. Highlights include three of the great Graham/Noguchi collaborations: Frontier (1935), Errand into the Maze (1947) and Clytemnestra, Act 2 (1958). Her Deaths and Entrances from 1943, featuring set design by Arch Lauterer and costumes by Oscar de la Renta (created for the work’s revival in 2005), will be presented for the first time since 2012.
The season will also feature the premiere of an expanded version of Baye & Asa’s Cortege, inspired by Graham’s 1967 Cortege of Eagles. Baye & Asa’s work focuses on Charon, the ferryman who shepherds souls to the underworld. In Graham’s work, Charon is a harbinger of Troy’s inevitable fall. In their creation, Baye & Asa reimagine this character through a contemporary lens and ask: Who is the ferryman for the fall of the American Empire? The work is set to a score by Aidan Elias that samples from Eugene Lester’s original composition.
Excerpts from Cortege will be presented as part of the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim on September 29. The event will include a discussion with Baye & Asa and Graham Company Artistic Director Janet Eilber. This event culminates a one-week Works & Process LaunchPAD technical residency for the work at the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Center for the Performing Arts, including a local community sharing in Tannersville, NY, on September 28.
As part of the 100th anniversary celebration, several other companies will be performing works by Graham in spring 2025. Miami City Ballet will perform Diversion of Angels in Cutler Bay, FL (February 2025), Texas Ballet Theatre is set to perform Maple Leaf Rag in Dallas and Fort Worth (February/March 2025), and Orlando Ballet will perform Maple Leaf Rag in Orlando (March 2025). In April 2025, dancers from across Los Angeles will join forces for The Soraya’s second contribution to GRAHAM100. The program will feature L.A. Dance Project in Clytemnestra Suite, Lula Washington Dance Theater in Deep Song and Satyric Festival Song, and USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance in “Ritual to the Sun” from Acts of Light.
Texas Ballet Theatre, L.A. Dance Project and Lula Washington Dance Theater are also among the organizations participating in the Company’s worldwide Lamentation Variations project, creating new dances inspired by Graham’s iconic solo from 1930.
The dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company are So Young An, Ane Arrieta, Laurel Dalley Smith, Zachary Jeppsen, Meagan King, Lloyd Knight, Antonio Leone, Devin Loh, Marzia Memoli, Amanda Moreira, Ethan Palma, Jai Perez, Anne Souder, Richard Villaverde, Leslie Andrea Williams and Xin Ying.
For more information, cities and dates visit marthagraham.org.
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