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Yes, arts·meme got a special tenth birthday card last year from the Martha Graham Dance Company. Many women in dance reserve a special place in their heart for Martha Graham. Typical for dancers of my generation, my first modern-dance class was in the Graham technique. (It was true, as well, of Twyla Tharp.) At that time, Martha Graham (1894-1991) still walked the earth.
These many years later, it will be my great honor to conduct a panel discussion with Janet Eilber, Martha Graham Dance Company Artistic Director, Christopher Rountree, the conductor of wildUp, a chamber orchestra accompanying the Graham troupe, and choreographer Pam Tanowitz, who has a particular thrill that night, March 2, at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts. She’ll premiere a commissioned work for the Graham Company — a humongous honor for any choreographer, but for a female one, so wonderfully special.
The performance is the third for the Graham Crackers at The Soraya. At the company’s first appearance there, in 2015, I gave a fun and informative talk, “Our Martha Graham,” which traced Graham’s roots in southern California.
The March 2 performance marks the launch of a Graham Company homage, the EVE Project, commemorating the centenary of the 19th Amendment. Our sisters in Congress wore suffragette white at the State of the Union address to mark the anniversary — we’re doing it in dance, led by the mother of us all, Martha Graham.
Martha Graham Dance Company The “EVE” Project | The Soraya | March 2, performance 8 pm | pre-talk “Graham Gears Up: How America’s Legacy Company Advances Dance” moderated by arts·meme’s Debra Levine 6:45 pm