Martha Graham News

New York, NY, August 8, 2016 – The GrahamDeconstructed series brings audiences behind the scenes for an intimate view of Martha Graham's masterworks. On September 13 and 14, the Martha Graham Dance Company will present a rehearsal showing of Dark Meadow Suite, an arrangement of highlights from Dark Meadow (1946). 

The Marblehead School of Ballet (MSB) celebrates its 45th anniversary this fall with a new season of classes for 2016-2017, beginning on Monday, August 29.  Classes are taught at the school's studio, located at 115 Pleasant Street, in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

The Martha Hill Dance Fund is pleased to announce The 2016 Martha Hill Awards Gala, which will take place Monday November 21, 6 to 10 PM, at the Manhattan Penthouse in New York City. 

CUNY Dance Initiative and John Jay College present the World Premiere of Rites of Passage on September 24, 2016 at 8pm at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, 524 W. 59th Street, NYC, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

The Alden in McLean's riveting 2016-2017 Professional Artist Series brings many of the sold-out, audience favorites' of past seasons back for an encore. The result is an amazing and diverse offering of some of the best performers in the dance, theatre and music worlds, all conveniently accessible to residents of the DMV.

ROBERTO VILLANUEVA, Executive & Artistic Director and Founder of BalaSole Dance Company, presents the 6th Year Anniversary and 17th NYC concert season of BalaSole in 'MIXTUS,' a new program of solos in a broad range of dance styles, music choices and artistic voices, on August 13 & 14, 8PM, at Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55 Street.

Voices Carry, Inc. will present the World Premiere of Strings Attached, a multidisciplinary project, involving contemporary dance, abstract puppetry, an original score, and performance art, for two weekends opening on Thursday, October 6, 2016 at The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles in Downtown LA. The work, which has been in development for three years, is a window into the human capacity to love, with a focus on the universal feelings of grief, forgiveness, devotion, entrapment, and joy. Voices Carry, a nonprofit corporation guided by Artistic Director Madeline Leavitt, is dedicated to breaking down cultural barriers and embracing diversity through dance, theatre, and performance art. 

Sulie Harand Friedman, co-founder of Harand Camp of the Theatre Arts, passed away Saturday evening, August 6 at the age of 97.  Sulie was preceded in death by Harand Camp co-founders - husband Byron Friedman, sister Pearl Harand Gaffin, and brother-in-law Sam Gaffin.  In addition to her legacy as a teacher, director and businesswoman through Harand Theatre Camp, Sulie was renowned for her one-woman interpretations of classic musicals. She will be remembered for her contributions to performing arts education and lasting impact on thousands of Haranders around the world.

Artistic Director, Jacqulyn Buglisi, and Buglisi Dance Theatre have been welcomed back by Lincoln Center for a sixth presentation of the transcendent  '9/11 Table of Silence,' a public performance tribute to 9/11 and prayer for peace and healing, conceived and choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi in collaboration with Italian visual artist Rossella Vasta.  

The Grand 1894 Opera House presents Steppin' Out Live with Ben Vereen, Saturday, September 24, 2016 at 8 pm. Tickets may be purchased at The Grand's Box Office, 2020 Postoffice Street, by calling 409.765.1894, 800.821.1894, or online at www.thegrand.com.

Opening night on August 1st 2016 of a shared week at the Joyce presented by the venerable American Dance Festival got the six-day run off to an auspicious start. Provincial Dances Theatre, a company from Russia, treated dancegoers to two mesmerizing contemporary works by Tatiana Baganova that will also be on the boards August 2nd and 3rd. From August 4th to 6th, the Miami-based Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre will complete the season.

Malpaso Dance Company returns in 2016 to the scene of their overwhelming, standing- room-only triumph in the 2015 YARD ARTS season with two (2) new and different programs - 1) a sparkling repertory of Cuban and American works on Tuesday, August 16th at the MVPAC in Oak Bluffs (at 7 PM); and 2) a work in progress, Dreaming of Lions, based on Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," developed in part in a Yard 2016 Offshore Creation Residency, on Thursday, August 18th, at The Yard's Patricia Nanon Theater (2 performances, at 11 AM and 8 PM).

The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) a production of The Present Company presents HELD: A Musical Fantasy, a poignant story of childhood friends growing apart in a world where reality is fluid and time can stand still, with book and lyrics by Kelly Maxwell and music by Meghan Rose.

New York City Center presents Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC, November 3 through 6, celebrating Damian Woetzel's tenth year as artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival. Channeling the spirit of the summer dance happening in the Rocky Mountains with three programs and an UpClose event, Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC brings the unique collaborative sensibility of Woetzel's festival to New York City, featuring dancers and musicians from many genres.

Three men engage in acrobatic entanglements that transform from free-moving sculptural configurations to crumpled masses of bodies that roll all over the floor of a darkly lit fog filled stage. Resembling an improv-ed floor-work exercise full of incongruously musical acrobatic manipulations, this indulgent routine - replete with lingering touches and mashing of bodies into each other - revealed little about its performers and even less about itself the longer it went on.

Instead of the usual gala fare -- bits of firecracker variations and pieces of ballet classics -- Sergei Danilian's 'Ardani 25 Dance Gala' at New York City Center, August 19 and 20, is classic Danilian. The intrepid impresario, who has never side-stepped risk, will celebrate Ardani Artists's quarter century of producing in the United States and abroad with a trio of U.S. premieres, two by young, unknown, but up-and-coming Russian choreographers, and one by American Ballet Theatre principal Marcelo Gomes.

Though it was hot and muggy on the evening of July 24th, 2016, the jam-packed audience at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center was grinning agog like newly minted parents infatuated with their brood. The cause: a troupe of adorable bambine from Staten Island Ballet performing Ellen Tharp's 'Tarantella'. Though only one of these girls was delivering the movement nel modo Italiano, they were all so lively with their tambourine strikes and hops that even the most curmudgeonly of audience members applauded with gusto.

Seven choreographers/companies will present world premieres. Bessie Award-winning performer Caleb Teicher will premiere his full-length Variations, set to Glenn Gould's iconic recording of Bach's "Goldberg Variations." Gabrielle Lamb will present a new group work inspired by artist Soghra Khurasani's woodblock prints, Chloe Arnold's Apartment 33 debuts, and Dzul Dance's new work, presented during Hispanic Heritage Month, explores the idea of ritual as a transformative experience via pre-Hispanic rites of passage. The fall season also includes premieres and performances by CDI artists Azul Dance Theatre, Lauren Cox/Humans Collective andMAWU, and showings by mwest dances, luciana achugar, and Urban Bush Women. Program details and schedule follow.

Antonio Fini, dancer/choreographer/producer presents the third annual Fini Dance Festival, featuring guest companies from Milan and Naples, appearing with U.S.-based companies with an 'Italian connection.'