Latest news with #MarthaGrahamDanceCompany
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Announcing The Soraya's 2025-26 Season
Highlights of the 15th Anniversary Season:Opening Weekend - Fiddler on the Roof in YiddishWorld Premiere: Martha Graham Dance Company & Leonard BernsteinDisney and Pixar's Toy Story 30th Anniversary Live-to-Film ConcertQuincy Jones Tribute Concert; Chris Walden and Pacific Jazz OrchestraGregory Porter: Christmas WishRiccardo Muti Conducts Chicago Symphony OrchestraDuke Ellington Concert of Sacred Music: Led by Gerald Clayton For story development and interview requests: Marketing & Communications Specialist Marie Estrada ( Click HERE for full press release & press kit LOS ANGELES, May 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Executive and Artistic Director Thor Steingraber unveiled The Soraya's 15th Anniversary Season May 9 at the annual Director's Dinner. The season will include 41 performances across 32 events, and run from Sept. 13, 2025 to Apr. 25, 2026. "Each of The Soraya's performance seasons is a journey, an exploration of new or novel themes, as well as a return to timeless ideas," said Steingraber. "The Soraya's 2025–26 Season—our 15th—encompasses diverse experiences including the nightlife of Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City; the daily life of West Africa; the spiritual realms explored by Alice Coltrane and Duke Ellington; the masterworks of Brahms and the megahits of Quincy Jones; and more." Continuing a Soraya tradition, the season features events from nearly every performing arts genre — jazz, dance, classical, Broadway, and film, along with Soraya original productions. The 2025–26 Season Includes: The Classical Music series with the Soraya debut of violinist Ray Chen (Oct. 30); the return of Joshua Bell and Academy of St Martin in the Fields (Feb. 26), and The Soraya debut of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra with Yuja Wang (Apr. 25). The Soraya's Music Knows No Borders series, which brings not only a wide spectrum of world-class international musicians to The Soraya stage, but their cultures as well. The series will begin Nov. 6 with fado singer Mariza and includes the Tigran Hamasyan Trio (Mar. 7); Quinteto Astor Piazzolla (Mar. 21); and Cirque Kalabanté's Afrique En Cirque (Mar. 22). The fifth-annual Jazz at Naz festival, held in Feb. 2026. Recently named by DownBeat magazine as one of the world's top jazz venues of 2025 and the winner of "Best Festival" in San Francisco Classical Voice's 2024 Audience Choice Awards. Members-Only Sales: May 9-July 8Public Single Ticket Onsale: July 9 Click HERE for Full Press Release & Season Calendar. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts at California State University, Northridge
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
L.A.'s Top Dancers Come Together to Celebrate the Legacy of Martha Graham
One hundred years ago, dancer Martha Graham reinvented her art form and became an American icon. Her modern styles created a whole new language of movement that is being celebrated this month with LA Dances Graham100 at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts in Northridge. Soloists from the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York; the Lula Washington Dance Theatre; USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance; CSUN Dance at California State University, Northridge; and Los Angeles County High School for the Arts dance groups will take the stage on April 26. The grande dame of dance lived to be 96 and performed until her last days. We asked four CSUN performers from the show about jumping, stretching, kinesiology and how movement affects every aspect of health and wellness. Imani Foreman Imani Foreman fell in love with dance as a child dancing in the aisles at her family's church in Pacoima before discovering what she calls the 'hidden gem' of a dance program at CSUN. 'In dance, I need stronger stamina. Ballet and modern dance focus on muscles that we don't use very often, even when we do work out.' She specifically cites training of the transversus abdominis and rectus abdominis muscles as key to maintaining back and core strength and stamina, and emphasizes taking care of your body when you're injured. 'Dance requires a lot of discipline,' she says. 'A lot of time. A lot of self-awareness and a lot of spatial awareness.' Anastacia Lambert The daughter of a Broadway dancer, Anastacia Lambert performed in The Sound of Music at age 5. 'My mom always jokes that I was born dancing from the womb,' she says. Lambert says that five-hour rehearsals are as much a workout for the brain as for the body. 'You have to be very well-conditioned physically,' she says. 'But there's a mental aspect, learning and remembering choreography, having to execute all of that in a very short amount of time while being really aware of the people you're dancing with.' Lambert credits her Pilates training (she teaches at a studio in Silver Lake) for her strong foundation and compares dance to marathon running, stressing the preparation and training required. Madison Schneider The science of movement intrigued Madison Schneider since high school, when she started studying anatomy and physiology — which led to her degree in kinesiology. 'Trained dancers have different motor patterns,' she says. 'We're doing something different with our hands and feet at the same time.' Schneider says that keeping the brain sharp can help the entire nervous system and developing healthy eating habits is essential. 'Learn how to fuel your body in a way that's going to nurture you for the dance you're doing,' she says. 'I try to be aware that what I'm putting in my body affects how quickly we go through energy.' Samantha Longtin Four generations of Samantha Longtin's family have been dancers and she was stretching and jumping as a toddler. 'Dance is a big stress relief,' she says. 'Once I get to the studio, the world shuts off.' Longtin shares how dance training can help across all disciplines. 'Even some football players take ballet,' she says. 'They learn flexibility and how to move their feet. It has so many benefits.' While Longtin's great grandmother studied Martha Graham's techniques in the 1950s, she is inspired by another midcentury master. 'Fosse jazz is very specific,' she says, 'It's the most unique style I've ever done.'
Wall Street Journal
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Martha Graham Dance Company Review: Its Founder's Long, Lithe Shadow
New York 'Dances of the Mind,' the Martha Graham Dance Company's program at the Joyce Theater through Sunday, comprises 11 works in three different mixed bills and celebrates the troupe's 99th season. It is dominated by four landmark Graham creations that the innovative choreographer and dancemaker (1894-1991) arranged as compelling, stream-of-consciousness theatrics that unfold in nonlinear time.
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Auditorium's 2025-26 dance season includes Ensemble Español and Trinity Irish Dance
The Auditorium Theatre, henceforth known simply as The Auditorium (50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive), has announced its calendar of dance performances for the 2025-26 season. The five performances, all by female-led dance companies, open in November with Chicago's own Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater and conclude next spring with the annual visit by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater (7:30 p.m. Nov. 15; tickets $30-$90): The company devoted to traditional Spanish dance, founded in 1975 by the late Dame Libby Komaiko, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year under artistic director Irma Suárez Ruiz. Martha Graham Dance Company (7:30 p.m. Jan. 24, 2026; tickets $35-$130): In another notable milestone, the contemporary Martha Graham Dance Company of New York dates back to 1926 and is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Trinity Irish Dance Company (7:30 p.m. Feb. 28; tickets $35-$95): Chicago's most-celebrated Irish dance company plans three world premieres next spring: founding artistic director Mark Howard and associate artistic director Chelsea Hoy's reinvention of the 1991's 'Johnny' and new works by guest choreographers Michelle Dorrance, and Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland of BodyVox. 'Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends' (7:30 p.m. March 7 and 3 p.m. March 8, 2026; tickets $35-$130): New York City Ballet dancer Tiler Peck will direct performances including Peck's own 'Thousandth Orange,' set to live music by Caroline Shaw. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (7:30 p.m. April 24-26, 2026, plus matinees at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.; tickets $40-$150): The longtime favorites make their annual visit under new artistic director Alicia Graf Mack.
New York Times
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
She's Martha Graham. Who Are You?
The most arresting performer in the Martha Graham Dance Company's current season at the Joyce Theater died 34 years ago: Martha Graham. In the intriguing premiere 'Letter to Nobody,' which the outstanding dancer Xin Ying choreographed with Mimi Yin, Xin dances in front of archival footage of Graham in 'Letter to the World,' a 1940 Graham masterpiece inspired by Emily Dickinson. As the image of Graham fades in and out, Xin attacks the task of copying it with full commitment and fitful success, embodying the spiral turns, the vacillations and the forward swoon that kicks a full skirt back and up into a crescent — the move that, captured in a photo, became an emblem of the work. Near the end, Xin quotes Graham quoting Dickinson: 'I'm Nobody! Who are you?' Then, in a projected excerpt from the 1957 film 'A Dancer's World,' Graham declaims about total identification with a role, but her face has been replaced with Xin's. The use of A.I. here reads as an admission of the impossibility of replacing Graham. It's a candid encapsulation of the predicament perennially faced by this company and its dancers. In its 99th year, three decades after the loss of its founder, seven or eight decades since the height of her creative powers, the group named after Graham grasps after a legacy that fades in and out yet remains commanding enough to make relative nobodies of all who tend the flame. Besides maintaining and performing Graham repertory, which this season includes 'Frontier' and 'Deaths and Entrances,' one tactic the company has tried in recent years is to reconstruct or reimagine lost works by Graham, drawing on photographs and other archival materials and using in-the-bones knowledge of her vocabulary to fill in the gaps. The latest examples are two solos from the late 1920s — 'Revolt' and 'Strike (From 'Immigrant')' — reimagined by the former principal dancer Virginie Mécène. (She first attempted this method in 2017 with the 1933 'Ekstasis.') Like most of these efforts, 'Revolt' has the look of a photo flip book, of static poses bridged with motion. But poses by Graham are uncommonly potent; that's one reason her works photograph so well. In Leslie Andrea Williams's arrow-sharp performance, 'Revolt' seems like an exercise in vocabulary development, a study for austere, gutsy 1930s works of protest like 'Chronicle.' 'Strike' is something else, though. It, too, is period-accurate, and Xin brings to it the same scary-inspiring authority that she has shown in performances of 'Chronicle.' But partially by adding new music — the wind-and-rain sounds of a bass drum in Judith Shatin's 'Adventure on Mt. Hehuan' — Mécène pushes her reimagining into novel creation. Clasping her hands behind her head at extreme angles, Xin could be doing street-style bone-breaking or new way vogue. Present-day protesters could study this one-woman 'Strike' for lessons in the projection of power. The season's other premiere is 'Cortege' by Baye & Asa. At least it's billed as a premiere; really, it's a second draft of a work that the company debuted in 2023. I'm not sure exactly what the young dance-making duo has changed, but the piece looks improved. The lights come up on a long, mounded shape covered in a black sheet, which is removed to reveal a line of kneeling, soldier-like dancers. The work ends with the dancers in the same position, being covered by the sheet again, as if they were terra cotta warriors ready for the next deployment. Like 'Cortege of Eagles,' Graham's 1967 take on the costs of the Trojan War, 'Cortege' examines violent conflict. Spotlights single out tableaus of the fallen, with Goyaesque suggestions of cannibalism and rape. But the choreography seems enthralled by aggressive attack and speed. The excessive detonations in Jack Grabow's score help to make the dance feel like a video game, a first-person shooter. It's a fairly engaging contemporary piece, but what the Graham company and its uncommonly versatile dancers gain by performing it remains unanswered. The best non-Graham work of this season is the best non-Graham work of last season: 'We the People' by Jamar Roberts. Its bluegrass score by Rhiannon Giddens, arranged by Gabe Witcher and played live last year, retains its savor in a recorded version. (The same isn't true of Witcher's bluegrass arrangement of the paradigmatic Copland score for Agnes de Mille's 'Rodeo,' and the thinness of sound contributes to the overall thinness of this year's rendition, making the dance even quainter than usual.) 'We the People' is far from quaint. The music could swing a hoedown like the one that ends 'Rodeo,' but Roberts's choreography has the frontal attack of hip-hop and the energy of a roadhouse just before fists start to fly. Solos in silence that precede each of the work's four sections have a gestural clarity that recalls Graham's description of her own works as fever charts of the heart. Made as a companion to last year's revival of 'Rodeo,' 'We the People' resonates more strongly with 'Revolt' and 'Strike.' Like few of the company's commissions, it complements Graham.
