Martha Graham Dance Company in Area Debut
KEENE, N.H. 01/04/06 - Hailed as one of the world’s greatest dance ensembles, the Martha Graham Dance Company and Ensemble will make its area debut at Keene State College for one performance on Saturday, Jan. 28. The performance, at 7:30 p.m., will be held at Keene State’s Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond.
Tickets are available through the Brickyard Pond box office, 603-358-2168, or on the web at www.keene.edu/racbp. Admission is $40 and $37 for the general public, $36 and $33 for seniors and KSC faculty and staff, $20 and $17 for youth 17 and younger, and $5 for KSC students with ID.
The Keene State performance is made possible in part through funding from the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, which receives major support from the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the state arts agencies of New England and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The concert, which is billed as a “Special 80th Anniversary Preview, Martha Graham – A Life in Dance,” will feature the work of one of America’s greatest choreographers and is performed by one of the first and most celebrated modern dance companies in the world. On tour and in annual New York seasons, the Company reveals the power and magnitude of Graham’s canon. The 24-member ensemble brings to Keene an international roster of the most talented contemporary dancers in the world today.
Since its founding by Graham in 1926, the Company has received international acclaim from audiences in over 50 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Company has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, Covent Garden, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as at the base of the Great Pyramids of Egypt and in the ancient Herod Atticus Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
Though Graham herself is the best-known alumna of her company, having danced from the Company’s inception until the late 1960s (she died in 1991), the Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dance’s most illustrious performers and choreographers. Former members of the Company include Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Elisa Monte, Paul Taylor, and Pascal Rioult. Among celebrities who have joined the Company in performance are Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Bloom, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, and Kathleen Turner. The Company even numbers among its alumnae one Betty Bloomer, who, after dancing with the Company in 1938, became better known as First Lady Betty Ford. “One of the great companies of the world,” according to Anna Kisselgoff, former chief dance critic of The New York Times, the Company has been lauded by critics throughout the world. Alan M. Kriegsman of the Washington Post referred to the Company as “one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe.”
Martha Graham choreographed 181 works in her lifetime. Among them are such well known ballets as Heretic, El Penitente, Letter to the World, Appalachian Spring, Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, Diversion of Angels, Clytemnestra, Embattled Garden, Phaedra, Acts of Light, The Rite of Spring, and Maple Leaf Rag.
The Company’s Redfern Arts Center’s program will include early solos from the Graham repertoire, Serenata Morisca, Lamentation, Satyric Festival Song, and Deep Song. The evening will also feature excerpts from the evening length works Acts of Light, Dark Meadow, and Appalachian Spring. The Helios movement will be performed from Acts of Light. Visually multi-dimensional, soulful, and intense it features movements that are unique to Graham’s choreography and dance style. The Opening dance and Sarabande from Dark Meadow will be performed. Graham Choreographed the piece in 1946 and it is described as a serenely regal homage to Native American ceremonies and nature itself.
The evening will conclude with the highlights from Graham’s 1944 collaboration with Aaron Copeland, Appalachian Spring. The performance will include readings from Graham’s scripts to Copeland as he composed. To be seen are Husband’s Solo, Bride’s Solo, Love Duet, The Preacher and Followers Big dance, and the theme and variations, “Gift to be Simple.”
Those attending the performance are encouraged to attend a pre-performance discussion of Graham’s work at 6:30 p.m. in the Harry Davis Room of the Redfern Arts Center, and are invited to stay after the performance for a question-and-answer session with the company.
