Martha Graham Dance Company Announces The EVE Project

In celebration of the upcoming anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which finally extended the right to vote to American women, the Martha Graham Dance Company has announced The EVE Project-a guiding force behind the Company's 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons. The EVE Project honors not only the progress of women in the last 100 years, but also provides entrée into today's most pressing conversations about gender and power. New works from several female choreographers have been commissioned, and the classic repertory will feature both Martha Graham's heroines and anti-heroines-all with an underlying statement about female power.

"The EVE Project is intended to connect audiences-in the ephemeral and visceral way dance does-to both historical and contemporary ideas of the feminine," said Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. "It provides a lens through which to consider Graham's transformative views of women in concert with the immediate and personal creations of today's visionary dance makers."

The 2018-19 season will feature a new work by Bessie Award-winning choreographer Pam Tanowitz. Tanowitz's work will premiere as part of the Graham Company's engagement at The Soraya/Valley Center for the Performing Arts in Northridge, CA, in March 2019, and will have its New York premiere during the Company's two-week season at the Joyce Theater in April 2019. Also premiering at the Joyce in April is a co-creation by two extraordinary dance artists Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith. Annie-B Parson's I used to love you, created for the Company in 2017 and based on Graham's comic ballet Punch and Judy, and the stunning duet from Lucinda Childs's Histoire (1999/2018) will also be performed as part of The EVE Project.

The EVE Project will also feature a range of Graham's own works-from the social activism embodied in a cast of 12 powerful women in Chronicle (1936) to the psychological dilemma of a woman breaking boundaries in Herodiade (1944). Different aspects of women in love will be featured in Diversion of Angels (1948) while the original Secular Games (1962), which has not been seen in decades, offers a wry look at sexual politics. The play within the play of El Penitente (1941), with its depiction of the Virgin Mary, will also be presented, among other dances.

The Company's 2018-19 tour includes performances at major venues across the U.S. and in France, Cyprus, Romania, Germany, and China.

Link to full schedule

New commissions for the 2019-20 season of The EVE Project will be announced in the fall.

Maxine Doyle is an independent choreographer and director. Since 2002 she has been associate director and choreographer for Punchdrunk, for which she has codirected many works including the multi-award-winning Sleep No More (London, Boston, New York, Shanghai) and The Drowned Man. Her work for theater and opera includes Evening at the Talk House (NT) and The Cunning Little Vixen (Glyndebourne). Recent dance-theater work includes After Lethe for Staastheater Kassel. Doyle's work for brands includes Louis Vuitton and Selfridges. She will create a site-based dance-theater work with Struct Dance in Perth, Australia, in 2019. Most recently she has been collaborating on her first feature film, Mari.

Bobbi Jene Smith is an alumna of the Juilliard School, North Carolina School of the Arts, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. From 2005 to 2014 she was a member of the Batsheva Dance Company under the artistic direction of Ohad Naharin. She has worked and collaborated with a variety of artists and companies around the world including Ohad Naharin, Sharon Eyal, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Martha Clarke, and Punchdrunk's Sleep No More. She is a certified Gaga teacher and has taught the repertory of Ohad Naharin at schools and universities around the U.S. since 2006.

Over the past 15 years choreographer Pam Tanowitz has become known for her unflinchingly postmodern treatment of classical vocabulary. She was awarded a Bessie Award in 2009, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, and the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013-14. In 2016 Tanowitz was the Juried Bessie Award-winner for her work the story progresses as if in a dream of glittering surfaces, and a recipient of a National Dance Project production grant for her work New Work for Goldberg Variations, a collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein. In 2017 Tanowitz was the recipient of the Baryshnikov Arts Center's prestigious Cage Cunningham Fellowship. Her work was selected by The New York Times "Best of Dance" series in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. Tanowitz has been commissioned by the Joyce Theater, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bard Summerscape Festival, Vail International Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and Peak Performances, among others. She has also created or set work on the Juilliard School, Ballet Austin, New York Theater Ballet, and Saint Louis Ballet. Tanowitz holds dance degrees from the Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and currently teaches at Rutgers University.

About Martha Graham Dance Company

The Martha Graham Dance Company has been a leader in the development of contemporary dance since its founding in 1926. Today, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. With programs that unite the work of choreographers across time within a rich historical and thematic narrative, the Company is actively working to create new platforms for contemporary dance and multiple points of access for audiences.

Since its inception, the Martha Graham Dance Company has received international acclaim from audiences in more than 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 in Egypt and in the ancient Herod Atticus Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens. In addition, the Company has also produced several award-winning films broadcast on PBS and around the world. For more information about the Company, visit: www.marthagraham.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.