The Joyce Special Graham Company Celebration, 3/13-18

The Martha Graham Dance Company (Janet Eilber, Artistic Director; LaRue Allen, Executive Director) is having a special engagement at The Joyce Theater, NYC; March 13-18.  Inner Landscape, the latest offering in the company's innovative series of thematic performances including contextual media and narration, features the acclaimed Graham psychological works in which she laid bare the human psyche. There will be two programs presented by the company as well as a Family matinee show on Saturday-March 17 at 2:00pm.  New works by Lar Lubovitch and Yvonne Rainer premiere on March 13 and 15 respectively.  Both programs will open with an abstract film montage which overlays excerpts of Graham dancing her psychological works with moments from psychological films of the same era.  The closing performance Sunday at 7:30pm will salute Miki Orihara.

 

Miki Orihara, in her 25 years with the company has performed almost every female role in the Graham repertory. She started in the student company, became an apprentice and moved up through the ranks to become one of the great interpreters of the Graham classics.  She is a teacher of the Graham technique and has also restaged Graham ballets for many schools.  Most recently, she coached Russian ballerina, Diana Vishneva, in the Graham masterwork Errand into the Maze.  Miki will be performing one of Graham's signature roles for the first time for this celebration.  She will play Jocasta in Night Journey.  There will be a special announcement from the stage and various friends, colleagues and former dancers will be in the audience to celebrate with her.

 

Inner Landscape theme is latest in company’s new approach to programming. In recent years, the Graham Company has led the field of modern dance in its experiments with new forms of audience access.  Following the success of its “Political Dance Project” of 2010, with it’s over-arching theme of political activism in dance, the Company has chosen Inner Landscape as the focus for its 2012 season. A range of performances, partnerships and educational activities will explore the psychological aspects of dance and the great Graham masterworks in which she made the mind visible. 

 

Program A (Tuesday-March 13 at 7:30pm, Friday-March 16 at 8:00pm, Sunday-March 18 at 7:30pm) opens with the film, then Witch Dance, a seminal work by the German choreographer, Mary Wigman, a Graham contemporary. Witch Dance has been recreated by Mary Anne Newhall. The program continues with Every Soul is a Circus, combination A of the Lamentation Variations, and Night Journey, the Graham masterpiece based on the tragedy of Oedipus and Jocasta.

 

Program B (Thursday-March 15 at 8:00pm, Saturday-March 17 at 8:00pm, Sunday-March 18 at 2:00pm) will also open with the film followed by a solo from Lyric Suite by Anna Sokolow, a major 20^th Century choreographer who began her career dancing in the Graham Company. The solo will be restaged for the company by Lori May. This will be followed by the Graham masterwork from 1944, Deaths and Entrances, combination B of the Lamentation Variations and Chronicle from 1936.

 

Martha Graham choreographed 181 works in her lifetime. Though Martha Graham herself is the best-known alumna of her company, having danced from the Company's inception until the late 1960's, the Company has provided a training ground performers and choreographers including: Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Pearl Lang, Elisa Monte, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley, and Pascal Rioult. Among celebrities who have joined in performance are Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Bloom, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, and Kathleen Turner. The Martha Graham Dance Company has commissioned works from Twyla Tharp, Robert Wilson, Susan Stroman, Lucinda Childs, Maurice Béjart to name a few.    

 

Ticket prices at The Joyce: $19, $35 and $59 (Prices subject to change based on demand) and are available at the box office, or through JoyceCharge (212) 242-0800 and www.joyce.org.