Martha Graham Dance Company to Present 2026-27 Season and Global Tour
New Lamentation Variations by Pam Tanowitz, Lar Lubovitch and Rashid Johnson will mark the series' 20th anniversary.
Click for Tickets
The centennial celebration of the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company continues throughout the 2026-27 season.
For the past three years, in honor of its 100th season, the Martha Graham Dance Company has been celebrating Martha Graham's groundbreaking work and artistic legacy through a series of performances, exhibitions, and educational activities that reflect both the Company's legacy of innovation and its forward-looking vision. With continued resonance, the 2026-27 season marks the culmination of GRAHAM100 as the Company looks toward the future with its new headquarters in Times Square, new creative projects and partnerships, and an expanded educational program.
This season's theme, We Are Our Time, builds on the ideas explored in the recently released PBS documentary about the Company and reflects on Martha Graham's belief that each person is shaped by the historical moment in which they live. As she famously said, 'No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time.'
The 2026-27 season includes engagements at major venues across the US and in Canada, England, Spain, Mexico (the Company's first trip to Mexico since the 1980s), and China (the Company's fifth tour to China since 2008).
Touring repertory for the season builds on the works featured in the We Are Our Time documentary and includes Martha Graham masterworks Chronicle (1936), Night Journey (1947), Appalachian Spring (1944), Errand into the Maze (1947), Diversion of Angels (1948), Dark Meadow Suite (1946), and Graham's iconic solo Lamentation (1930). Virginie Mécène's 2024 reimagining of Graham's lost solo Immigrant, Graham leading dancer Xin Ying's Letter to Nobody, and recent commissions created for the Company, including Baye & Asa's Cortege and Jamar Roberts's We the People, will also be presented.
The Company is also thrilled to present three new Lamentation Variations. This series, created by Artistic Director Janet Eilber in 2007, invites choreographers to create short responses to a 1940s film of Graham performing Lamentation. This season marks the 20th anniversary of the series, and will feature new Lamentation Variations from acclaimed choreographers Pam Tanowitz and Lar Lubovitch and visual artist Rashid Johnson. These new Variations will premiere in spring 2027.
On the morning of September 14, the Company will celebrate the official opening of its new home at 1501 Broadway with a Ribbon Cutting ceremony. Throughout the week, the Company will welcome the dance community and cultural partners into the new space for open classes, screenings, and celebratory gatherings, honoring the artists, students, supporters, and community members who have helped bring this vision to life.
Times Square Live will present GRAHAM FIT on September 16, at 5pm. This high-energy movement and conditioning class is inspired by the strength, power, and expressive physicality of the Martha Graham Technique. The class is designed for movers of all backgrounds and experience levels, and will be taught by Graham dancers Anne Souder and Meagan King.
The Company and international design studio APPARATUS have also collaborated on a film that will feature APPARATUS Artistic Director, Gabriel Hendifar's new collection, ACT V, and be unveiled episodically throughout the fall. Company dancers are woven into the episodes, accentuating the collection's themes of the divine feminine and the pursuit of knowledge.
And the not-to-be-missed exhibit, Martha Graham: The Mother of Psychological Dance, curated by Jack Ferver, at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, is on view through November 7, 2026.
The dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company are Lloyd Knight, Xin Ying, Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne Souder, Laurel Dalley Smith, Marzia Memoli, Devin Loh, Antonio Leone, Meagan King, Ane Arrieta, Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Amanda Moreira, Jai Perez, Ethan Palma, Darion Turner, Ashley Bromfield, and Meredith Brown.
TOUR DATES
2026
August 12-16 — Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Becket, MA
August 14 — Tanglewood, Lenox, MA
September 22-23 — Fall for Dance Festival, New York City Center, New York, NY
October 16 — Heymann Performing Arts Center, Lafayette, LA
October 20 — Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico
October 23-24 — Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato, Mexico
October 27 — UT Tyler Cowan Center, Tyler, TX
November (dates TBA) — China Tour
2027
January 20-23 — Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, England
January 29-30 — Royal Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia
February 22-23 — Argyros Performing Arts Center, Sun Valley, ID
February 26 — Sunset Cultural Center, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
April 3 — Center for the Arts at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
April 6-18 — New York Season
April 24 — The Hanover Theatre, Worcester, MA
April 30-May 2 — The Terminal Theatre, Toronto, Canada
May 8 — Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Norfolk, VA
May (dates TBA) — Spain Tour
More information at https://marthagraham.org/events/.
ABOUT Martha Graham
Martha Graham (1894-1991) is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century, alongside James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. TIME magazine named Martha Graham 'Dancer of the Century,' and People magazine named her among the female 'Icons of the Century.' The diversity and depth of her extraordinary artistic legacy, often compared to Stanislavski's Art Theatre in Moscow and the Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan, is perpetuated in performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company and Graham 2, and by the students of the Martha Graham School.
In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company and school while living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in Midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, Graham experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the elemental forms of contraction and release. Using those principles as the foundation, she built a movement vocabulary that would 'increase the emotional activity of the dancer's body.' With this pioneering technique, which has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude, Graham's 181 dances expose the depths of human emotion through movements that are sharp, angular, jagged, and direct.
As complex as she was prolific, Graham and her approach not only revolutionized the art form of dance with an innovative physical vocabulary, but she also expanded the scope of the art form by rooting works in contemporary social, political, psychological, and sexual contexts, deepening their impact and resonance. Graham's ballets were inspired by a wide variety of sources, including modern painting, the American frontier, religious ceremonies of Native Americans, and Greek mythology. Many of her most important roles portray great women of history and mythology: Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc, and Emily Dickinson.
As an artist, Martha Graham conceived each new work in its entirety—dance, costumes, and music. During her 70 years of creating dances, she collaborated with such artists as sculptor Isamu Noguchi; actor and director John Houseman; fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein; and renowned composers including Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Norman Dello Joio, Louis Horst (her mentor), Gian Carlo Menotti, William Schuman, and Carlos Surinach.
Always a fertile ground for experimentation, Martha Graham and her Company have been an unparalleled resource in nurturing many leading choreographers and dancers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Jacqulyn Buglisi, Merce Cunningham, Sir Robert Cohan, Erick Hawkins, Pearl Lang, Donald McKayle, Elisa Monte, Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. She created roles for classical ballet stars such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, and Rudolf Nureyev, welcoming them as guests into her Company. In charge of movement and dance at The Neighborhood Playhouse, she taught actors such as Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Anne Jackson, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, and Joanne Woodward how to use the body as an expressive instrument.
Martha Graham's uniquely American vision and creative genius earned her numerous honors and awards, such as The Laurel Leaf of the American Composers Alliance in 1959 for her service to music. Her colleagues in theater, the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One, voted her the recipient of the 1986 Local One Centennial Award for Dance, not to be awarded for another 100 years. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford bestowed upon Martha Graham the United States' highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and declared her a 'national treasure,' making her the first dancer and choreographer to receive this recognition. Graham received another presidential honor when President Ronald Reagan named her among the first recipients of the United States National Medal of Arts in 1985.
ABOUT THE Martha Graham DANCE COMPANY
The Martha Graham Dance Company has been a leader in the evolving art form of modern dance since its founding in 1926. It is both the oldest dance company in the United States and the oldest integrated dance company.
Today, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. With programs that bring together 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 House, 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 Odeon of Herodes Atticus theater on the Acropolis in Athens. In addition, the Company has also produced several award-winning films broadcast on PBS and around the world.
Though Martha Graham herself is the best-known alumna of her company, the Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dance's most celebrated performers and choreographers. Former members of the Company include Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Paul Taylor, John Butler, and Glen Tetley. Celebrities who have joined the Company in performance include Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, Tiler Peck, Misty Copeland, Herman Cornejo, FKA twigs, and Aurélie Dupont.
In recent years, the Company has challenged expectations and experimented with a wide range of offerings beyond its main-stage performances. It has created a series of intimate in-studio events, forged unusual creative partnerships with the likes of Siti Company, Performa, the New Museum, Barneys New York, and the Greek Theater Festival in Siracusa, Italy (to name a few); created substantial digital offerings with Google Arts & Culture, YouTube, and Cennarium; and created a model for reaching new audiences through social media. The astonishing list of artists who have created works for the Graham dancers in the last decade reads like a catalog of must-see choreographers: Kyle Abraham, Aszure Barton, Baye & Asa, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Lucinda Childs, Marie Chouinard, Michelle Dorrance, Maxine Doyle, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Andonis Foniadakis, Liz Gerring, Larry Keigwin, Michael Kliën, Pontus Lidberg, Lil Buck, Lar Lubovitch, Josie Moseley, Richard Move, Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Annie-B Parson, Yvonne Rainer, Jamar Roberts, Hofesh Shechter, Bobbi Jene Smith, Pam Tanowitz, Sonya Tayeh, Doug Varone, Luca Veggetti, Gwen Welliver, and Robert Wilson.
The current Company dancers hail from around the world and, while always grounded in their Graham core training, can also slip into the style of contemporary choreographers like a second skin, bringing technical brilliance and artistic nuance to all they do—from brand-new works to Graham classics to pieces from pioneers such as Agnes DeMille, Isadora Duncan, Jane Dudley, Anna Sokolow, and Mary Wigman. 'Some of the most skilled and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see,' according to The Washington Post. 'One of the great companies of the world,' says The New York Times, while the Los Angeles Times notes, 'They seem able to do anything, and to make it look easy as well as poetic.'
For more information about the Company, visit www.marthagraham.org.
